The Labour Government

[metalblue]

The cost of developing the F35 was around 40Bn, our entire defence budget was only 52Bn last year. Once you have a platform sustainment becomes a major factor and this is where economies of scale become important as it significantly reduces the costs.

Working with European partners was damaged due to Brexit and the need for VTOL aircraft is pretty limited considering only a handful of friendly nations have operational aircraft carriers.

Whilst the principles of ultra low radar cross section aircraft are well understood, the US is still the leader in this field and from a NATO perspective having a common integrated platform with networked targeting systems allows a much more effective use of ordinance.

All in all it made sense to use the F35B. It should be noted that a fair proportion of the F35 is actually provided by the UK including electronic systems and some parts of the airframe.

All very fair points mate. I seem to recall at the time when we decommissioned the harriers the US navy purchased them before going on to build their own VTOL - I might be wrong on timelines.

We’ve built some amazing aircraft over the years.

 

[threespires]

I don't go to Tesco

Been reading a fair bit about the UK food system recently, it's so dysfunctional it's headspinning.

 

[inbetween]

The cost of developing the F35 was around 40Bn, our entire defence budget was only 52Bn last year. Once you have a platform sustainment becomes a major factor and this is where economies of scale become important as it significantly reduces the costs.

Working with European partners was damaged due to Brexit and the need for VTOL aircraft is pretty limited considering only a handful of friendly nations have operational aircraft carriers.

Whilst the principles of ultra low radar cross section aircraft are well understood, the US is still the leader in this field and from a NATO perspective having a common integrated platform with networked targeting systems allows a much more effective use of ordinance.

All in all it made sense to use the F35B. It should be noted that a fair proportion of the F35 is actually provided by the UK including electronic systems and some parts of the airframe.

F35 may have cost £40bn to develop but that cost is spread over many years whereas the defence budget is per year. If F35 development began say 15 years ago then that's still only £2.5bn per year, 2.5% of the defence budget. It doesn't quite work like that but we certainly don't need to find £40bn from anywhere this year or any year for F35.

The cost savings for F35 will come once they eventually achieve full operating capability (late 2025) and then start to move more support work into UK industry.

A major reason why many European operators have bought F35 is purely because unlike other European aircraft F35 is certified to carry US nuclear weapons. Having a fleet of stealth F35s to call upon is a major capability advance for the NATO nuclear deterrence.

Brexit is pretty irrelevant to defence. If the worse happens and European countries and the EU bureaucracy are too busy arguing over political borders then we're in more trouble than we thought...