Article courtesy of Joe (thanks).
via Yahoo News.
I wonder how I forgot this part of the story.France said Friday it regretted Britain's decision to reverse its choice of fighter jets for future aircraft carriers, with the result that French warplanes will no longer be able to use the ships."This choice threatens to restrict our naval aviation cooperation, which we regret," foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, referring to Britain's opting for a jump-jet model of the US-built F-35 instead of the conventional takeoff and landing version to save money on equipment.
"We would like to believe that this decision, which the British government says is based on budgetary reasons, does not jeopardise our cooperation" in this field, he told a regular press conference at the foreign ministry.
Britain confirmed Thursday it had changed its mind over which model of the F-35 to purchase for its planned new carriers because of the extra cost of fitting launching catapults and arrester gear to the ships.
Such equipment is required for France's Rafale warplanes, which were to have shared use of the two carriers under a 2010 defence deal between the two countries.
It is not needed for the F-35B fighter that Britain has now decided to purchase, unlike the more conventional F-35C.
The change risks being politically damaging to Britain's coalition government and is an awkward start to Britain's relationship with French president-elect Francois Hollande.
The Brits and the French were talking about if not sharing carriers then at least having each others military members aboard each others ships.
I wonder how they fix that planning?
All is not well with that budding alliance. Sidenote. The test model of the F-35 is a really light weight looking fighter. I wonder how weight gain became an issue. And I wonder if requirements creep didn''t lead to some of the issues.
"The test model of the F-35 is a really light weight looking fighter. I wonder how weight gain became an issue. And I wonder if requirements creep didn''t lead to some of the issues."
ReplyDeleteThe difference between an experimental aircraft and a production one. The X-35 had no internal weapons bays, minimal avionics and sensors, lower fuel load, etc.
The French and the British have the standard naval problem: to keep one ship deployed on station you need three. Cross decking doesn't seem all that important when you just think about ships sailing around but when you consider things like the De Gaulle's first major overhaul took 15 months the idea of being able to fly off the other guys carrier if a new Libya suddenly cropped up could be very important for getting French or British naval air into the fight.
ReplyDeleteThe F-35B tilts the equation to one where the British could operate off a French carrier but not the other way around. It's better than nothing for the alliance but not a good deal for France. Still, Hollande is a socialist so from each according to his carrier abilities and to each according to his carrier needs . . .
Plus I can't help thinking the French were looking for a Rafale sale.
Isn't F35c to heavy for CdeG anyway? So what the French are loosing as BB said is the ability to operate Rafale-M off CVF. What is going to happen now is, deck coverings etc. permitting, is we will be able to operate off CVF and CdeG (and Juan Carlos, Cavour, USMC flat tops, etc.)
ReplyDeleteRe: sferrin's comment on the X-35.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, some busy bee(s) decided between when the original X-designs were laid down and SDD build commenced that it would be real 'cool' to change the B's weapons bays to handle 2k pounders like the A and C instead of 1K, all for the sake of 'commonality'. All three variants were tweaked based upon the changed for the 'B'. Then the revelation that the change made the B too darned heavy, so back to the 1k pounder bays for the B, and reoptimize the structure between the A and C. As a 'benefit' of all this back and forth all the variants will probably be lighter than they would have been without the B model payload changes, at quite a penalty to cost and schedule. So Solomon is right as far as 'requirements creep' impact.
And I think BB1984 is correct on all points as well.