To discuss the baseline or vanilla F-35, Second Line of Defense talked with a former F-16 pilot and USAF Academy graduate Dr. Put another way, what will the F-35B as a flying sensor system be able to do right out of the box?Īnd one must remember that the upgrading capability is built into the aircraft, or put another way the aircraft both as platform and FLEET is inherently upgradeable.īut not fully grasped is that the first F-35s are already superior aircraft to any plane they are designed to replace. They are production aircraft are the immediate forerunners of the IOC USMC aircraft. With one exception, the jets in assembly at Lockheed Martin’s F-35 facility in Fort Worth are not test aircraft. Too often an understanding of the basic aircraft rolling out of production right now is lost in the shuffle. Additionally, the F-35 takes an innovative approach to collaborative upgrades over the airframe and global fleet’s life cycle. purchase is now somewhere in the region of 60-72 jets,” he said.The F-35 represents a new approach to the development, production, system and sustainment of a fleet of combat aircraft. “But the level of ambition and emphasis being signaled on Tempest probably means that the highest plausible U.K. The report specifically called out Tempest as providing employment opportunities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.įor a decade, it’s appeared unrealistic that Britain could afford 138 F-35 jets, according to Bronk. When the model for Tempest was unveiled at the 2018 Farnborough Airshow, one of the biggest questions was how the government could afford it while also maintaining its F-35 buy.Īccording to the review, Britain has allocated £2 billion in development funding for Tempest over the next four years - a notable sum at a time the French-German-Spanish alliance to build a competing European fighter seems to be wobbling.īut the latest review emphasized Tempest not only as a future fighting capability but as a vital part of the defense-industrial base, saying the program “has already created over 1,800 new STEM jobs in over 300 companies nationwide, sustaining and supporting over 18,000 existing highly skilled jobs in the sector, as well as tens of thousands more in the wider supply chains across the UK.” The idea that the F-35 may see a cut due to the Future Combat Air System program, dubbed Tempest, is not a surprise. “However, the lack of detail suggests funding for future orders has not yet been identified, as the government has decided to put national industrial sustainment - Tempest - ahead of operational needs in the combat air arena for the foreseeable future.” “The U.K.’s operational requirements across the whole joint force for credible, penetrating, and strike capabilities cannot be met with 48 aircraft, especially given the latter will be heavily committed to supporting global carrier deployments,” Bronk added. Marine Corps, which is the other major user of the F-35B model. counterparts in private,” particularly for the U.S. Justin Bronk, an air warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute in England, said the government’s “stated position, without details on future order plans, is probably politically unsustainable unless concrete assurances have been made to, and believed by, U.S. While Air Marshal Richard Knighton, the deputy chief of the Defense Staff for capability, said in December that Britain knows it must “increase the number of F-35Bs to support the carrier through to its out-of-service date,” he expected to see “a definitive judgement around the total future fleet in the 2025 time frame.”
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