I’ll be quite surprised if this comes to pass but I thought it was worth sharing as it’s the first time in a long time I’ve seen the 138 number cited as still a committed thing. Although the assumption has usually been that we’re buying fewer aircraft on cost grounds, there are also some quite good other reasons to divert the money elsewhere – although F-35 as an aircraft is by all credible accounts fantastic the program has some horrible problems like a refusal by the Americans to allow us to operate them in a fully sovereign way, looooong delays integrating our weapons and a production rate that means any new orders we place likely won’t be delivered until around the time we start taking deliveries of Tempest anyway…so there’s some legitimacy in my view to the idea that we might be better off just buying more Tempest faster for the RAF and letting the Navy keep whatever F-35s we’d gotten in the first two batches.
Still, if it happens that’s a good thing – F-35 is one of those platforms that are genuinely going to make Russia think twice given the proven ability for stealth to make it through their ground based air defences.
Isn’t pretty much every branch of the military understaffed/has recruitment difficulties?
Who is going to fly these planes?
Good.
Of all the things that needs a commitment this is it.
“appears” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, so expect this position to abandoned at some point in the near future.
i doubt we can afford this if we are cancelling railways to fill in potholes.
Preparing for WW3. The exact same pattern is happening that happened prior to WW2.
They should reduce the numbers of Bs and get some As instead. Lighter, longer range, cheaper. No stovol but that’s less relevant for a European war unless we expect to be taking off from highways like the swedes
rattle the ol’ war drum, shake the ol’ money tree, everyone gets on the board of directors at BAE systems! at least the tories are making sure they’re all getting looked after when they all lose their jobs after the next election
I bet £1000 that is just the Tories flexing before the GE and none of them will be delivered.
9 comments
I’ll be quite surprised if this comes to pass but I thought it was worth sharing as it’s the first time in a long time I’ve seen the 138 number cited as still a committed thing. Although the assumption has usually been that we’re buying fewer aircraft on cost grounds, there are also some quite good other reasons to divert the money elsewhere – although F-35 as an aircraft is by all credible accounts fantastic the program has some horrible problems like a refusal by the Americans to allow us to operate them in a fully sovereign way, looooong delays integrating our weapons and a production rate that means any new orders we place likely won’t be delivered until around the time we start taking deliveries of Tempest anyway…so there’s some legitimacy in my view to the idea that we might be better off just buying more Tempest faster for the RAF and letting the Navy keep whatever F-35s we’d gotten in the first two batches.
Still, if it happens that’s a good thing – F-35 is one of those platforms that are genuinely going to make Russia think twice given the proven ability for stealth to make it through their ground based air defences.
Isn’t pretty much every branch of the military understaffed/has recruitment difficulties?
Who is going to fly these planes?
Good.
Of all the things that needs a commitment this is it.
“appears” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, so expect this position to abandoned at some point in the near future.
i doubt we can afford this if we are cancelling railways to fill in potholes.
Preparing for WW3. The exact same pattern is happening that happened prior to WW2.
They should reduce the numbers of Bs and get some As instead. Lighter, longer range, cheaper. No stovol but that’s less relevant for a European war unless we expect to be taking off from highways like the swedes
rattle the ol’ war drum, shake the ol’ money tree, everyone gets on the board of directors at BAE systems! at least the tories are making sure they’re all getting looked after when they all lose their jobs after the next election
I bet £1000 that is just the Tories flexing before the GE and none of them will be delivered.