IT’S BEEN A good week for the Joint Strike Fighter. The one-size-fits-all, multi-purpose fighter, designated F-35, is slated for its first flight test this week, after delays of more than a year. Perhaps more significant was the Pentagon’s acquiescence to British demands for “operational sovereignty” over the aircraft. The dispute centered on the Pentagon’s reluctance to provide our British allies with some of the more sensitive information–mostly computer software–that would be necessary in order to maintain the aircraft. Essentially, the Pentagon wanted the British to allow Americans to maintain these systems in order to guard against the transfer of classified technologies, while the British threatened to pull out of the project altogether unless the Pentagon provided them with complete access.
The British have already made a $2 billion investment in research and development for the JSF, and have plans to purchase as many as 138 of the aircraft, all in a configuration referred to as STOVL (short take-off and vertical landing). The planes would replace an ageing fleet of Harriers that will be retired just as two new aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, are being deployed.
While Britain has the largest stake in the project of any foreign government, a number of others have made significant commitments to the JSF in the last week. Officials from the Canadian government were in Washington on Monday to sign a “memorandum of understanding” that “covers Canada’s involvement with the aircraft over the next 39 years and acts as a road map for any future purchase.” The Canadians are expected to purchase as many as 80 of the planes to replace their own aging fleet of CF-18s, but probably not until late in the next decade.
Australia, too, signed a memorandum of understanding this week with officials at the State Department, and is likely to commit to a purchase of as many as 100 of the aircraft by 2009.
Of course, it was unlikely that any of these Anglophone militaries would pull out of the project, especially the British, who are relying on the Pentagon to provide a STOVL aircraft for their carriers, and for which there is no comparable European alternative. More unexpected was the announcement this week that Turkey will also sign a memorandum of understanding before year’s end, and will likely make a firm commitment to purchase approximately 100 F-35s in 2008. European governments had been pressing Turkey hard to join the Eurofighter Consortium, the EADS-led European rival to the JSF program, which has already delivered 100 Euorfighter Typhoons to Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. In a last ditch effort to secure Turkish participation, the consortium offered to make Turkey a full partner in the program, guaranteeing the “Turkish government $9 billion, $6 billion and $3.2 billion work share in return for the purchase of 120, 80 and 40 aircrafts respectively.” But the Turks passed on the offer in favor of the JSF.
And finally, Saudi Arabia’s previous commitment to purchase 48 Eurofighter Typhoons, with an option for an additional 24, is now in doubt. The Sunday Telegraph reported that “the row was sparked by a Serious Fraud Office investigation into an alleged £20m slush fund linked to Saudi arms deals and firms supplying BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest defense company.” That investigation was scuttled yesterday by the British attorney general in the interests of avoiding “serious damage” to relations between the two countries. Still, the Eurofighter appears ever more vulnerable to competition from the F-35. As the Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson explains, unlike the stealthy F-35, the Eurofighter is “the perfect design for returning a radar signature . . . it’s not survivable.”
Still, there are some serious concerns about the JSF. The program was designed to avoid the “death spiral” which has plagued the F-22, the Air Force’s next generation, stealth fighter. The F-22 is the most sophisticated fighter in the world and the Air Force had initially planned to purchase 750 of them, but that purchase order now stands at just 183 planes. Unlike the F-35, the F-22 is considered too expensive, and too sensitive, to be exported. As costs for the F-22 increased, the Pentagon cut its order, which has led to a higher cost per unit–the “death spiral.” The F-22 now costs $350 million a pop, seven-times the price of the F-35.
At $275 billion, the JSF is the largest Pentagon spending program ever, but unit costs were designed to remain low. As Jacques Gansler, undersecretary of Defense in charge of contracting during the late 1990s, told the Associated Press, “It is going to be a very expensive program, but it is a low-cost airplane . . . It is hard to put those words together, but the reality is that it is a low-cost airplane times a large number of airplanes.” The original contract was for 2,800 of the planes to be purchased by the Pentagon at a unit cost ranging from $37 million to $47 million, depending on the version. Since then the number of aircraft to be built for the U.S. military has fallen to 2,450 with a per unit cost ranging from $50 million to $70 million each.
Designing an aircraft that all three services–the Air Force, Navy, and Marines–would purchase was supposed to constrain costs by boosting production, but the different requirements of each service have had the opposite effect. In particular, the Marine Corps, like the Royal Navy, is only interested in the STOVL variant, and plans to purchase 450 aircraft in all. The Air Force has plans to purchase 1,783 F-35s, but at a cost of only $50 million each, $20 million less than the per-aircraft cost for the Marine Corps. The Navy will purchase 260 F-35s in a third, more durable variation which is designed to withstand the strain of carrier take-offs and landings. The cost for those planes will fall somewhere in between the cost of the Air Force and Marine Corps versions.
In addition to concerns about rising costs, the JSF has been dogged by questions about its ability to deliver as promised. While it is stealthy, it isn’t nearly as stealthy as the more expensive F-22. And unlike the F-22, it is not capable of supercruise–supersonic flight without the highly inefficient use of afterburners. Furthermore, although the aircraft will replace the F-16, the workhorse of the Air Force, it cannot carry as large a payload as the F-16, and thus “faces a very demanding one shot one kill requirement.”
Still, the F-35 now looks set to dominate the export market much as its predecessor, the F-16, has done for the past two decades.
Michael Goldfarb is deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
