Rome, March 20 - Italy has frozen spending on its F-35 jet fighters program, pending a parliamentary review of military spending, says Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti. Her comments during a television interview with La7 Wednesday night, came several days after Premier Matteo Renzi said that defence spending - including the budget for the F-35 program - was under review. This could include three billion euros in potential savings for defence budgets. The government could decide to trim its Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets' budget, which is currently about 11.8 billion euros over 45 years beginning in 2015. "Today we suspended payment of installments," on the F-35, Pinotti told the program The Barbarian Invasion. "We are having a moratorium, pending the results of an inquiry by Parliament," she added.A certain blogger I know told me I was full of shit when I posted news that the F-35 would be cut to 45 jets by the Italians.
He went through a long song and dance about how this was just a minor thing and that they would be back in the fold buying 90 odd jets shortly.
That blogger failed to take into account current economic conditions worldwide.
Globalization is breaking down. Economies around the world are on the verge of bankruptcy. In short. Everyone is is in a hurtlocker and defense spending is the first sacrificial lamb of the masses.
The Netherlands was first, Italy is second, and I predict that the frugal Canadians will be third. But they won't be the last. Even the USAF will be hit with the reality bat and the F-35 order will be cut.
I say again.
The death spiral is here.
The only reason Italy hasn't cut the F-35 outright is due to the assembly line built there.
ReplyDeleteBut it's going to scaled back. Oh boy is it going to get scaled back. It's political poison with 2/3rds of the population flat out rejecting it. Italy's finances aren't much better than Greece, so the money just isn't there. With no guarantee of how much money the JSF will bring in (if any), the Italian government is finally coming to their senses.
Then there is the fact that Italy has the perfectly good Eurofighter, a mature, relatively trouble-free platform that has direct and known economic offsets. Remember, Alenia owns a 21% stake in the Eurofighter group. Dropping the F-35 for more Typhoons is, at worst, a zero-sum equation. More likely, money spent on Tiffies will stay in-country.
The crazy thing is, if the F-35 suffers from Italy's cuts or cancellation, the Typhoon has a better chance at picking up conquest sales... Leading to more Italian economic benefits.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/19/us-italy-defence-f-idUSBREA2I1V920140319
you're spot on with regards to where Italy is. additionally we're actually looking at 45 being a win if they only cut that far. i could actually foresee the Italians only buying about 20 F-35B's for their carrier.
Deletethat means that both the F-35A and B will go up in price.
YEP. YOU CAN SAY IT. DEATH SPIRAL!!!
It's going to be a "zombie shuffle", more like the F-22 and B-2. It'll live on, probably way too long, but only see a fraction of the originally planned numbers. I'm guessing 750-1000 at the most.
DeleteLike the F-22 and B-2, it'll be a hangar queen, brought out mostly for high-profile missions and photo ops. Meanwhile, the Super Hornet, F-15E, and the B-52 will be the ones actually getting shit done.
i think its worse than that. i think the US Navy is the only branch that actually crunched the numbers, took into account the politics and they arrived at the decision that advanced super hornets was the way to go.
Deleteyou say 750-1000? i say they'll be lucky to get that many.
worse case scenario? they kill all the legacy airplanes now and end up with a much smaller, less capable force in the future.
worse still? once those squadrons go away they won't make it back for several generations.
these idiots in the Joint Chiefs of Staff have crippled America's defense...all because they bought the song and dance from Lockheed Martin.
greed and false faith have hurt us badly.
The Italians want an aircraft that can fly faster backwards.
DeleteLOL How's that prediction thing going! As Australia has ordered 72 and it is said that Canada will order 65 any day now....Plus, order in the past year from both Japan and South Korea. None of which count orders from the US, UK, Netherlands, and Turkey.
DeleteWhat the hell are you talking about? Lockheed Martin didn't come up with the JSF concept, they just won the contract over Boeing because the X-35 was superior to the X-32. The JSF idea was the work of DoD types and they asked industry to answer that call.
ReplyDeleteEven by the standards of our politicians we'd have to be unbelievably stupid to start slashing our military's plans as "flyaway" costs are going down with each lot despite the critics.
Everybody knows that a good part of Western Europe will continue to disarm themselves and won't be concerned unless the Russians are literally right upon their doorstep. We've seen it since the end of the Cold War. It isn't exactly a surprise whenever the Italians or Dutch or our more stalwart allies like the UK make another round of cuts.
The program can endure some cutbacks in foreign orders. There are also interested customers in the Pacific region that can somewhat make up for Europe's cutbacks. What's key to the program is the bulk of orders from the USAF and USMC.
When 120 or so planned bombers get slashed to 21 of course the B-2 ends up as something of a "hanger queen" because they are so few in numbers and that has a lot of effects on the logistics/support situation for an aircraft. The B-2 like so many other ambitious projects also had a lot of bugs to work out.
Even with the huge cut in production the F-22 is not a hanger queen with the exception of the early aircraft that have not yet been upgraded to later standards. Of course a dedicated air-superiority fighter doesn't see much use when enemy aircraft are not a problem. Yet the aircraft still has a limited capability to hit ground targets with JDAMs unlike the F-15C/D.
If I had a dollar for every time somebody has screamed "the death spiral is here!" I could buy an F-35 myself.
ReplyDeletewho the fuck are you? i'm wondering. you sure seem bent on protecting both the fatally flawed F-35 and LM.
Deletewell let me give you a hint. the Italy story is a big deal. they're losing orders, the price hasn't stabilized and the death spiral IS here.
the future is clear. this plane is gonna suffer the same fate as the F-22 and the B-2. the solution? the USAF will follow the Navy's lead and get serious about developing long range anti-air and strike missiles.
LRIP prices for lot 7 were:
Delete$98 million (excluding engine) per F-35A
$104 (excluding engine) per F-35B
$116 million (excluding engine) per F-35C
Now you can say the lack of engine makes these numbers a bit disingenuous, but this practice isn't exclusive to the F-35 program and probably represents ongoing negotiations with P&W over engine pricing.
Are those big numbers? Yes. However compare those costs to LRIP lot 5 and tell me that cost isn't going down. Everybody including myself wants to see costs drop faster. I want the government to negotiate solid contracts that hold LM even more responsible for the quality of the aircraft. Does this always happen? No. Yet abandoning the program and restarting at step one isn't a smart idea.
I still want to see 2,000 American F-35s and plenty of foreign ones. I still wish we were continuing production and development of the F-22. And I still think the Navy needs something more capable than the F-35C to respond to the continued development of Chinese and Russian fighters and air defense systems. Yet I do not and have not worked for Lockheed Martin.
I've always been a proponent of airpower but that doesn't mean I don't recognize the flaws of the F-35. Its flight characteristics is comparable to the F/A-18 and not exceptional by today's standards. That was one of the reasons the USAF wanted both the F-22 and F-35. It is overweight and it's very unfortunate that it didn't hit the (somewhat ambitious) target specifications, although few fighters do. There is still a lot of work to do in the way of software and weapons integration as well as other areas. Yet as a replacement for the F-16, F/A-18, and AV-8 it is a significant improvement and should do a great job of "hauling the iron" and succeeding the F-16 as the multi-role fighter that it became.
New GAO report due next Wednesday. They are making some progress on cost cutting for the CTOL and CV versions, but not the STOVL version. Still, costs have to be reduced by an average of $49M/jet to meet the program's cost goals. That is a lot of fat that needs to be squeezed out of each aircraft.
DeleteWe've brought other programs like the C-17 back from the brink in the past. There are still a lot of risks involved I understand but we've crossed the point of no return a long time ago. There isn't any serious backup plan. I'd love to see Boeing or Northrop roll out their own prototypes for their own 5th generation fighters, yet it hasn't happened yet and probably won't happen unless somebody is paying for it. They all remember the F-20 and that was a relatively simple aircraft.
DeleteBTW the X-32 and X-35 were technology demonstrator/proof of concept aircraft as opposed to true prototypes for a combat capable JSF. It may have been wise to go further with the competition despite the X-32 being rather unimpressive. It's unfortunate that McDonnell Douglas' JSF proposal wasn't selected. Yet in terms of STOVL Lockheed's method was still the most promising.
@NukefromOrbit
DeleteThe prices you quote are those claimed by the F-35 program office.
The GAO report (see table, page 14) says they are, in reality:
- $124.8 million for the F-35 CTOL variant;
- $156.8 million for the F-35B STOVL version, and
- $142.6 million for the F-35C carrier variant
for aircraft ordered in 2013.
Not quite the same, are they? Even Korea's DAPA says Lockheed's price projections are "too rosy"
In fact, a few bloggers are the only people on earth who still believe Lockheed's propaganda
Yet, the price is dropping.........Just as predicted I mite add!
DeleteNo offense but you're really just starting to sound like one of those APA nutjobs or the numerous people who've fallen under this "praise the Eurocanards, stealth is not useful" thinking.
ReplyDeletelets clear something up. i don't kiss ass, and i don't praise easily. with that being said APA aren't nutjobs and i don't praise eurocanards and i am beginning to wonder if stealth is worth the squeeze.
Deletei would be a HUGE supporter of the F-35 if it met cost goals. IT HASN"T.
i would be a HUGE supporter of the F-35 if it performed better than the F-16, F-18 and A-10. It DOESN"T!
APA, Sweetman, Goon, Kopp and the rest of the them were spot on about this program and i was once in your position of defending the undefendable.
THINK ABOUT IT. THE COMANCHE! NEED IT. LESS COST OVERRUNS THAN THE F-35 ...CANCELED! THE EFV! NEED IT. LESS COST OVERRUNS THAN THE F-35.
I COULD GO ON BUT THE F-35 IS CAUSING US TO THROW AWAY PERSONNEL AND EQUIPMENT FOR AN UNDERPERFORMING PIECE OF SHIT. I WOULD HATE ON LM EXCEPT THAT THEY HAVE A GOOD "LAND" DEPARTMENT THAT PUTS OUT GOOD GEAR. EVEN WITH THAT I WISH THAT HALF THAT COMPANY WOULD ROT IN HELL.
APA has been a bunch of NUTJOBS for years now. The last time they got their say in front of Australian officials they were practically laughed out of the room! In all of their hypothetical scenarios the Russian ECM and missile systems work perfectly while ours don't. Their RCS "calculations" are clearly just made to push their own goal. Anybody with eyes can see the T-50 isn't stealthier than the F-35 as they would claim. Have you ever seen their concept of a navalized F-22? Laughable! Just look at Lockheed's NATF proposal to see what it would really take.
DeleteSweetman is firmly in some sort of Eurocanard driven stealth-is-dead bandwagon even despite European work on stealthy UCAVs, the Russian T-50, and the Chinese J-20 and J-31. He claims the J-31 is what the F-35 be without the compromises made for the sake of STOVL but have you seen the J-31? It isn't much different. Two smaller engines vs the F-35's large F135.
THERE IS NO FIGHTER THAT IS THE DIRECT EQUIVALENT OF THE A-10. They considered replacing it with an improved A-7 (see YA-7F), they tried on multiple occasions to replace it with the F-16 and now they intend to replace it with the F-35. The USAF believes it isn't survivable against modern air defense systems and don't think its use elsewhere is enough to justify the cost. I disagree with the latter but I'm not in charge. Yet they've been aiming to replace the A-10 with faster aircraft since the late '80s.
The F-16 has some areas where it performs better than the F-35 but in most areas it does not. Same goes with the F/A-18. What the F-35 does offer is performance comparable to the F/A-18 but with better acceleration, VLO stealth, excellent sensors and networking capability, plus a full multi-role capability. Operational will be easier and cheaper than an F-15 or F-22, even though it likely won't meet the very ambitious goal of matching the F-16. Plus it is the USMC's ONLY SHOT at a modern STOVL aircraft that is survivable against high-end air defense systems. It is far ahead of the AV-8B in terms of capability.
Yes it didn't go as planned, few programs do. Many of these problems should have been predicted but it is representative of a program of such large scale. You've basically got three separate fighter programs rolled into one. Yet all of the problems, delays, and increased development costs don't mean the F-35 cannot be made to work! We've done it with troubled programs in the past. Since Bogdan took over significant progress has been made in all sorts of areas. It's far better off than the poor state it was in a few years ago.
The RAH-66 was an unfortunate victim of post Cold War budget cuts and some questioning the need of a scout helicopter. These days the Army is saying (at least publicly) that they don't need one. The AAAV/EFV? I would have loved to seen it work but it seems they just couldn't make it reliable. They finally got everything into one vehicle but it still didn't meet many targets, it had an awkward internal layout and the cost situation compared to a conventional amtrack was worse than where the F-35 is now.
DefSec Gates made some stupid choices. Maybe that was one of them. Maybe the last couple of years saw seen significant improvements in the vehicle. I do not know. Yet blaming it on the F-35B? That's not the most likely scenario.
PERSONNEL AND EQUIPMENT IS BEING THROWN AWAY BECAUSE OF THE INCOMPETENT FOOLS THAT ARE LEADING OUR COUNTRY INTO RUIN. YOU CANNOT BLAME EVERYTHING ON THE F-35.
Despite all of the problems Lockheed is the only one of our three remaining aerospace giants that has actually built a new fighter versus upgrades of designs first built in the 1970s. While the F-35's troubled history has been disappointing thus far, what we've seen from Boeing and Northrop beyond the realm of concepts hasn't been all that impressive either when compared to what this country has accomplished in the past.
Well, both F22 and F35 are both scam planes. They can not deliver what they are touted to do and they seem to be inferior to su35 and su27. Pilots themselves are coming out saying they have lost to f15 and f16 on many test fights. it was a stunt to give money to military industrial complex and politicians get kickbacks by accepting these deals. American tax payers are the biggest losers in this scam.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteOh bull****. Inferior to the Su-35 and Su-27? The F-22 would eat those aircraft for lunch. Where are these mysterious unnamed pilots? The F-22 has proven itself downright superior to the F-15 in the air superiority mission. It has superior flight performance even compared to the Su-35. Of course the F-15 gets the occasional simulated kill on an F-22 but how many are lost in exchange? Same goes with the F-16 and F/A-18. Training is done for a reason and even against a superior aircraft a technically outclassed fighter can still have a chance. New F-16 pilots up against veteran F-5 Aggressor pilots have been learning that lesson for decades.
DeleteHI Solomon, I'm a french reader of your blog.
ReplyDeleteIt is great !!!
1/ I Think DOD must scrap F35C and Invest money saved in F35A and B.
2/ Buy more F35 B for the corps to replace the existing F18.
3/ Buy Advanced Super Hornet for the Navy.
4/ Developed a "Ultra Hornet" like this : http://www.ducker.se/images/profile_spine_720p.jpg.
5/ And finally go to the 6th Gen aircraft from Boeing for the Navy in the next decade .
First to cut the F-35C would be crazy! Yet, in around about way you're correct about cutting one model of the F-35. Which, should be the F-35A. As the F-35C will already operate from air fields when based ashore. This would have save considerable amounts of money in the program. Nonetheless, to late now.......
DeleteI suppose the "certain blogger" is me. And Sol, i was right all along. As of today, government has only stopped the early payments for LRIP 10, which means that all other contracts coming together (including LRIP 8 for this year and LRIP 9 for the next) are actually going on.
ReplyDeleteIf you actually read what i said as far back as March 18, you would perhaps know what is actually going on: http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.it/2014/03/italy-and-f-35-what-is-actually.html
And note that, already then, i said that a freeze, a slow down, a reduction in total numbers, are indeed all very possible. But halving the order? Wouldn't bet on that.
And if you read the latest update too: http://ukarmedforcescommentary.blogspot.it/2014/03/italy-and-f-35-pd-document-that-backs.html You'd be able to see by yourself the vaunted document of "italian lawmakers" that backs the F-35 cuts, and see how completely demented the document is. Best part of it? The politician who wrote it believes the french Rafale is called Raphale and is the french variant of Typhoon.
Even the trade union, which finally understood that a cut to F-35 will never mean more Typhoons, is already starting to back off from its earlier statements.
You are running way too fast, and your screams of death spiral coming at every chance, even the most ridiculous ones, are getting boring. Calm down a little, will ya?
The F-22 and F-35 are vastly superior that anything currently flying or projected to for the next 2-3 decades.
ReplyDeleteSure ?
DeleteFrench Rafale vs F22 in dogfight: 4:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGuWadoTgkE