Germany ordered F-35As with delivery starting in 2026 because B61 is already integrated.
Italy already has F-35As with more on the way.
What makes you think Germany and Italy would want to share B61 integration costs on Typhoon at this stage, when they already have an aircraft where the US paid for B61 integration? That ship sailed when Germany threw in the towel and ordered F-35A.
The whole F-35A / B61/12 is utter nonsense, and those who were pushing it following a mis-reading/mis-understanding of the SDR have backpedaled rapidly.
There simply is not the money. We're getting Tranche 2 of 27 x F-35B and that is it. Combat Air Budget is totally spent on that and Typhoon MLU, F-35B Block IV/propulsion etc upgrades, CCA, Protector and, the big one, GCAP....
People see the increase in spending and forget about the bow wave of unfunded kit in the equipment plan that MoD already had...the uplift will go on that....and some other modest capabilities.
But...to be fair....the fact that the US might be cutting its annual purchase of F-35A might make delivery slots easier to come by...no-one tell the RAF eejits who keep pushing it though (really though MoD needs to find who they are and get rid...).
There is zero chance of B-61 integration on Typhoon. The US wanted access to Typhoon source code for the integration, the Europeans rightly said no....so it died permanently right then. And you are correct in saying that Germany and Italy would have less than zero interest in funding integration for the UK....
Not sure B61s physically fit into F-35B, not to mention that F-35Bs do not have the PAL systems installed.
They could, just. With c40cm to spare. But IIRC there would need to be some adaptations in the bay...plus the whole integration and testing campaign which would not be cheap.....USMC, Italy, Japan etc would have no interest in it whatsoever...so no sharing costs...to be fair probably piggy back off some of the F-35A work though...
If the UK Gov/MOD really is serious about joining the NATO tac nuke club, the only realistic possibilities are to integrate them with F-35B (which I assume is not impossible?) or buying/loaning/begging F-35A. But even so, tossing nukes like its 1962 is probably not really a smart move given modern air defences and I doubt RAF pilots would be keen on that kind of mission profile.
Indeed. Never understood why B-61/12 was developed....does anyone really want to open those bay doors and drop a gravity bomb over a well defended target even in an F-35....mind you that's what we'll be asking F-35B pilots to do for the next 8 years regardless of nucs....
Nuclear warheads for the Storm Shadow cruise missiles might be a better way to go. It may be most effective to buy new dedicated nuclear armed examples. Developing & procuring nuclear armed MdCN missiles for the Royal Navy may also be a good investment.
That was the direction of travel before WE.177 and the tac nucs were removed. If we were genuinely interested in tac nucs for the future it would make more sense to develop a weapon in an FC/ASW variant (have to be quite a mod though if we wanted to retain the ability to still export FC/ASW).
To be honest if tac nucs were really a thing we want to do....it would make more sense, both industrially and militarily, in the short term to buy some Typhoon EK to support the Italian, German, Dutch, Belgian and US F-35's in a war to actually help them survive long enough to drop their B-61/12's...and then take a long slow development path to our own capability and integrate with GCAP....
