Check this out.
(Reuters) - Singapore is in the "final stages of evaluating" the F-35 to upgrade its air force, a process U.S. sources say should turn quickly into orders for several dozen of the stealthy warplanes that have been beset by cost overruns and delivery delays.Wow. I've always said the Chinese play chess while we play checkers. Well to be honest they got caught up in nationalism and arrogance.
Singapore, a major business and shipping hub with the best-equipped military in Southeast Asia, is expected to submit a "letter of request" soon for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, said two U.S. government officials who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The city-state could start the process as soon as this week to buy the planes built by Lockheed Martin Corp, one of the officials said. Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, makes the engine for the F-35.
Singapore's defence minister, Ng Eng Hen, said on Tuesday the air force "has identified the F-35 as a suitable aircraft to further modernise our fighter fleet".
"Our F-5s are nearing the end of their operational life and our F-16s are at their mid-way mark," he said in parliament. "We are now in the final stages of evaluating the F-35."
Ng gave no timeline but said the defence ministry "will have to be satisfied that this state-of-the-art multi-role fighter meets our long-term needs, is on track to be operationally capable and, most importantly, is a cost-effective platform."
Singapore's air force now has 24 F-15SGs, 20 F-16Cs and 40 F-16Ds, 28 F-5Ss and nine F-5Ts, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. It also has 19 AH-64D Apache attack helicopters among its other assorted aircraft.
The wealthy island nation of about 5.3 million people plans to spend S$12.3 billion ($9.85 billion) on defence in the 2013 fiscal year that starts in April, a rise of 4.3 percent from the previous year, the government's budget shows.
Singapore - home to a global financial centre, the world's second-busiest container port and major energy operations - is the region's biggest military spender, dwarfing its much larger neighbours Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Imagine if they had kept their stealth airplanes under wraps for another 5 maybe 10 years. Budget pressures in the West would have killed the airplane and the US military would probably be in the midst of a massive reduction.
Now the Warhawks like McCain have a viable and real threat to point to when it comes to rallying for maintaining defense spending at current rates.
Arrogance and nationalism spoiled what could have been a deadly strategy. Instead of facing the West with an array of modernized 4th gen fighters they're instead going to be facing a Pacific filled with F-35's.
The Chinese royally screwed up.
That's a great point. We know that both Russian and China have stealth planes in works and we're still cutting the military to pay for more food stamps.
ReplyDeletePerception was 5 years ago the best the Chinese had were some poor Russian knock-offs. It would have been to their advantage to keep that perception in place.
all they had to do was play weak for a few more years and they could have achieved perfect warfare. winning without having to fire a single shot.
Delete