{"id":37976,"date":"2018-03-19T14:30:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T03:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=37976"},"modified":"2018-03-19T14:08:53","modified_gmt":"2018-03-19T03:08:53","slug":"f-35-update-good-bad-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/f-35-update-good-bad-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"F-35 update: the good, the bad and the unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The past couple of weeks have been a case of \u2018good news and bad news\u2019 for customers of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. As a country about to commit to the bulk of its currently approved 72 aircraft purchase, it\u2019s to be hoped that our defence procurement people have been watching recent developments closely. We\u2019re now looking at a longer wait and a higher price for some of the key capabilities we\u2019re after\u2014especially a dedicated maritime strike capability.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s start with some good news. The USAF budget request for the 2019 financial year<\/a> was released recently and, as was the case in the past<\/a> few<\/a> years<\/a>, the forward prices reflect an increasingly mature production effort.<\/p>\n

The figure below, drawing on budget requests since 2013, shows the \u2018flyaway price\u2019 of the air force variant that Australia is buying. As usual, I\u2019ve included a calculated \u2018learning curve\u2019 of prices that represents the industry standard. This year\u2019s figures are shown in black and the predicted prices are flattening out as expected. There are only very slight year-on-year changes over 2017, 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

So far so good. The bad news is in two parts. First, those numbers are just budget placeholders, and don\u2019t yet represent contracted figures. It\u2019s not unusual for there to be a certain amount of argy-bargy between the government and contractors during price negotiations, but the public discourse between the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin is getting a little heated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re now five months past the Pentagon\u2019s preferred October 2017 contract signature date. If all else fails, the Pentagon can take unilateral action to finalise the deal, as it did in 2016<\/a>. But it would be better for both parties to agree on the price and terms.<\/p>\n

The contract details matter to Australia. Despite having been partners in the program since 2002, the amount we end up paying will still reflect the production costs in the US-based program\u2014there are no fixed price deals here.<\/p>\n

The second lot of bad news concerns the jet\u2019s capabilities. The figures above refer to aircraft at \u2018Block 3\u2019 standard. Many of the capabilities we really want\u2014especially a dedicated anti-ship weapon\u2014won\u2019t be delivered until later capability blocks. We\u2019re now starting to get some public indications of the costs of those future capability increments, and they aren\u2019t especially reassuring.<\/p>\n

The F-35 \u2018modernisation program\u2019, in truth, actually includes many of the capabilities that customers originally thought would be in earlier deliveries but have since been pushed out in order to streamline the already-delayed development program. The upgrades now might carry a price tag of US$16\u00a0billion<\/a>, considerably more than previous estimates. The international partners in the program will potentially be required to pay US$3.7\u00a0billion of those additional costs.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the upgrades\u2014though not all\u2014will be implemented through software, rather than through physical modifications to the aircraft or its subsystems. That\u2019s only partially reassuring though\u2014the aircraft\u2019s processors probably need replacing to run later software loads, and software development and testing are also frequent sources of delays.<\/p>\n

And not everything can be done with code. My reading is that a decision is needed in the next couple of years as to whether to include the required hardware modifications on the production line, or to retrofit them later. There are pros and cons to either approach.<\/p>\n

Changing the hardware fit on the production line now, just as the benefits of the learning curve are kicking in, risks slowing the production rate and bumping back up the learning curve until the changes are completely assimilated. But retrofitting later necessarily takes aircraft offline for a while and is generally more time consuming (read: expensive) than building changes in from the start. And it\u2019s unclear how any such decisions would impact the move towards a multi-year \u2018block buy<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

So it seems that Australia faces additional costs\u2014or a longer wait\u2014for capabilities we previously identified as \u2018must haves\u2019. Block 3 aircraft will be very capable and would certainly be a step up in capability from the Hornets and Super Hornets we\u2019ve sent to Iraq in recent years. But those missions don\u2019t reflect our regional strategic circumstances, which really require advanced maritime strike capabilities.<\/p>\n

The F-35 program continues to offer a mix of promised advanced capability and disappointment. While there\u2019s no real alternative for the 2020s (and probably for some time beyond), we\u2019re still going to be flying Super Hornets until the Block 4 or 5 F-35s mature. And potential adversaries are working on closing the gap, so the F-35s\u2019 slow development means that users will get less utility from the purchase than would have been the case had the jets been delivered close to the original schedule.<\/p>\n

In that context, I think it\u2019s worth reiterating something that Malcolm Davis and I wrote<\/a> a couple of years ago: the RAAF shouldn\u2019t rush to buy more F-35s early in the 2020s. Time\u2019s moving on, and there might be smarter options coming along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past couple of weeks have been a case of \u2018good news and bad news\u2019 for customers of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. As a country about to commit to the bulk of its currently …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":37978,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[668,271,726],"class_list":["post-37976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-air-capability","tag-f-35","tag-raaf"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nF-35 update: the good, the bad and the unknown | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/f-35-update-good-bad-unknown\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"F-35 update: the good, the bad and the unknown | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The past couple of weeks have been a case of \u2018good news and bad news\u2019 for customers of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. 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