What will the Government buy if the F35 is cancelled?

[aeropilot]

DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.

Ooh err........takes all sorts I suppose

[Globs]

Nothing wrong with a bit of loving Nanook, nothing to be ashamed about.

I was not referring to your personal bank account, but rather the return on investment for a country of 65 million+ people.
Buying expensive foreign planes to bomb other countries into submission has no good Return On Investment for 99.99999% of us.
Indeed it merely creates enemies and stops 99.99999% visiting that country. Fancy a touring holiday in Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Yemen? Not any more matey, trips your dad could have made are now out. Hell, trips Top Gear made are now out. Even trips across the Ukraine like Boorman and Ewan made are out too.

Spend that money on a decent road or better food though: everyone benefits, the countries standard of living rises.

Still, keep with the loving, few people ever die from that and it can be very creative

[Dr Jekyll]

Globs said:

Buying expensive foreign planes to bomb other countries into submission has no good Return On Investment for 99.99999% of us.

It did in WW2.

[Evanivitch]

Globs said:

I.e one that actually works, battlefield proven and has two decent engines instead of one overstressed inefficient one taking up all the space you'd want to put stuff in. The biggest threat the F35 can boast of is to our wallets.

Trololololololol.

What a bright idea, but why wouldn't we more Typhoons instead? You don't need to answer that, because it's clear you haven't got a clue already.

[Evanivitch]

Globs said:

I was not referring to your personal bank account, but rather the return on investment for a country of 65 million+ people.
Buying expensive foreign planes to bomb other countries into submission has no good Return On Investment for 99.99999% of us.
Indeed it merely creates enemies and stops 99.99999% visiting that country. Fancy a touring holiday in Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Syria? Yemen? Not any more matey, trips your dad could have made are now out. Hell, trips Top Gear made are now out. Even trips across the Ukraine like Boorman and Ewan made are out too.

Spend that money on a decent road or better food though: everyone benefits, the countries standard of living rises.

Still, keep with the loving, few people ever die from that and it can be very creative

I work in defence and you know what, I have no issue if the UK wants to take an isolationist, non-intervention position on international politics, human rights, natural disasters and conflicts.

But, I find more often that's not what the British public want.

Yes, they want to only send our men and women into conflict with the equipment they need, and for the right reasons and to have a positive outcome. But I don't know many that want to sit back and watch the world burn around them.

[Ceeejay]

Globs said:

I'm not seeing how we can have a return on investment on a foreign warplane we don't need.

You know we are only buying 140 or so for the UK....

But the UK aviation industry has been in on the design, and is building parts for over 3000 aircraft... Thats a really good business to be in, building thousands of really expensive things for the next 20 years.

[RizzoTheRat]

Globs said:

donutsina911 said:

500 UK companies have F-35 contracts. Workshare is 15% of every aircraft built. Return on investment approximately £3 for every £1 UK spends.

I'm not seeing how we can have a return on investment on a foreign warplane we don't need.
The money spend won't give anyone better roads, housing or food, it's 100% dead money: that's what military spending is: dead money.

Think about what actually happens to that money. For every pound the UK spends on F35, 15p of it goes to British companies like Rolls Royce, British Aerospace, and a host of smaller companies. They pay some if it in tax and a lot of it in wages to their staff. However even better than that for every dollar the USAF/USN/USMC spends on them, we get 15c* as well. And they're buying a hell of a lot more of them than we are.

Globs said:

If we really really need a decent plane we should just buy them from our neighbour anyway:

https://www.defensetech.org/2017/07/20/watch-russi...

Which would be truly dead money as far as the UKs concerned as it would end up with the Russian workforce.


* Probably not quite that much as the UK build share on the B is larger than the A and C models that the USAF and USN are buying. Not sure if the 15% figure refers to the B or the whole programme

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Monday 24th July 09:50

[Vitorio]

Ceeejay said:

You know we are only buying 140 or so for the UK....

But the UK aviation industry has been in on the design, and is building parts for over 3000 aircraft... Thats a really good business to be in, building thousands of really expensive things for the next 20 years.

Same goes for us dutchies, we get some lucrative maintenance contracts out of our participation.

That's not to say the F-35 is a best case project, but backing out now would be plain stupid

[aeropilot]

RizzoTheRat said:

* Probably not quite that much as the UK build share on the B is larger than the A and C models that the USAF and USN are buying. Not sure if the 15% figure refers to the B or the whole programme

The F-35 waters are so muddied, I'm not sure anyone knows the definitive answer to that

The main difference is RR's involvement, which is for the lift fan thingy on the B, and is therefore B model only, as with the F136 engine option being dropped RR have no involvement in the A and C.
Given that's a substantial bit of kit for the B model's, I'd guess the 15% is an average for the whole programme...?????

[RizzoTheRat]

Looks like there's a fair few bits common to all 3 that are UK made,I hadn't realised there was that much besides the lift system



https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/british-f-35/

[donutsina911]

Described by an F35B pilot as the best article he's seen on the jet:

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/uk-f-35b-on-final...

Sounds like a doddle to fly too

[donutsina911]

Another update

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/inside-f-35b-flig...

Looking good

[Kccv23highliftcam]

WASHINGTON: Perhaps the most damning thing a director of Operational Test and Evaluation can say about a weapon is that it is not “operationally suitable.”

https://breakingdefense.com/2018/01/f-35-problems-...

[aeropilot]

This sort of stuff is hardly news now, such is the continuing fiasco of this project.

Should have been put to the sword a decade ago, but it is what it is, and will continue no matter.

I like this line from the report on the -B....

"......Average F-35B tire life is below 10 landings...."

No wonder they wanted to call it a Lightning then..........

[Ninja59]

Just to add even if some of the composite production was handed to an "American company" the actual production occurred/occurs in part in Wales and Germany. So in regards to sourcing you may find that production occurs some miles away in a different country

It also produced the composites for the F22 and few other well known civilian planes.

Company in question has been handed a contract until at least 2020....

[ecsrobin]

The US marine corps conducted their first combat air strike from F35 today.

http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-...

[RobGT81]

ecsrobin said:

The US marine corps conducted their first combat air strike from F35 today.

http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-...

Mud hut and Toyota Hilux destroyed with massively expensive jet and massively expensive payload satis.

[Tony1963]

RobGT81 said:

Mud hut and Toyota Hilux destroyed with massively expensive jet and massively expensive payload satis.

Well, there's not a whole lotta choice out there right now. Russia might get angry if an F35 was to drop an LGB onto a command bunker near Moscow, just to prove to an internet forum that the platform works.

[LotusOmega375D]

RobGT81 said:

Toyota Hilux destroyed.

Are you sure about that? I bet someone's kicked the corpses out and is driving around in it already!

[Kccv23highliftcam]

RobGT81 said:

ecsrobin said:

The US marine corps conducted their first combat air strike from F35 today.

http://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-...

Mud hut and Toyota Hilux destroyed with massively expensive jet and massively expensive payload satis.

Despite my criticisms of the program[s], it is a positive that it is it being employed in it's innate environment.