Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

Spain and portugal possible future F-35 customers? That is surprising news, also Spain buying both the F-35A and B variants. Something that the UK should have done especially to replace the Tornado GR.4/ADV.
 
FighterJock said:
Spain and portugal possible future F-35 customers? That is surprising news, also Spain buying both the F-35A and B variants. Something that the UK should have done especially to replace the Tornado GR.4/ADV.
Click to expand...
Indeed, the B is too limited in internal carriage, it's like half an F-35 really.
 
In an ideal world we should have bought both the A and C variants of the F-35 no messing around with CTOL or STOVL carriers the C has better internal capability than the B and also has better overall range. But we were left with the limited capability B which was a bad mistake.
 
FighterJock said:
In an ideal world we should have bought both the A and C variants of the F-35 no messing around with CTOL or STOVL carriers the C has better internal capability than the B and also has better overall range. But we were left with the limited capability B which was a bad mistake.
Click to expand...
A proper CVN CATOBAR carrier like so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_French_aircraft_carrier
BTW you meant STOBAR by CTOL I think. CTOL would involve something Habakkuk size. ;)
 
I’m curious about the Czech delivery timeline (2031-2035)… does that mean there are no delivery slots left for international customers before the early/mid-2030s?

Or are the Czechs just choosing a slower timeline for their own reasons.
 
I like the looks of the PANG, that is how I would imagine the Queen Elizabeth carriers to have been were they built that way originally Scott Kenny.
 
Forest Green said:
https://www.janes.com/defence-news/...al&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-70529694

View attachment 719318
Click to expand...

Portugal is definitely in the mix. But Spain is very much in the balance at present, rumours out of Spain seem to indicate that sentiment has turned against F-35, particularly the A variant. I don't see the B variant order, if it does happen (its more likely than A), being more than 20 max, with c16 more likely. If the Spanish do go for Halcon III for additional EF and look to get a small number of F-35B I suspect they may look to the Italian Navy for joint training and support.

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/portugal-eyes-f-35-buy
 
I kinda feel sad that the European fighter market cannot be cornered by European made fighters. Especially considering that any such decision is as much a question of buying the best hardware, as is supporting the domestic aerospace capabilities. It's so sad to see that most European nation have no vested interest in manufacturing European jets.
 
Elysium said:
I kinda feel sad that the European fighter market cannot be cornered by European made fighters. Especially considering that any such decision is as much a question of buying the best hardware, as is supporting the domestic aerospace capabilities. It's so sad to see that most European nation have no vested interest in manufacturing European jets.
Click to expand...
This might not be the best analogy but where Europe is currently with 5/6th generation fighter plans compared to ~1000 F-35s, its like your family sitting around planning for a large garden to produce their own food when there’s a grocery store down the block to shop at.
 
Don't know if anyone else on this thread knows that the UK are finally planning to purchase the full amount of F-35s (138) that were originally planned for the RN/RAF squadrons. Looks like the UK Defence Ministry has woken up at last.
 
FighterJock said:
Don't know if anyone else on this thread knows that the UK are finally planning to purchase the full amount of F-35s (138) that were originally planned for the RN/RAF squadrons. Looks like the UK Defence Ministry has woken up at last.
Click to expand...
Are they just going with "B"s or are they going back to the original plan of a mix of both "A"s and "B"s?
 
FighterJock said:
Don't know if anyone else on this thread knows that the UK are finally planning to purchase the full amount of F-35s (138) that were originally planned for the RN/RAF squadrons. Looks like the UK Defence Ministry has woken up at last.
Click to expand...

They're really not....

The MoD have kept to that line for a decade, using the 'over the lifetime of the programme' as a get out (i.e. so far in the future that they don't have to acount for it in the Equipment Plan or Combat Air budget) but the reality is there is likely to be another batch of 27 to reach 74 in total purchased and then thats it. After that ALL of the Combat Air budget for the foreseeable is in GCAP, Typhoon upgrades and F-35 upgrades. There is neither the budget, pilots or bases for any significant uplift in F-35 numbers. And when GCAP arrives there is zero need for any further F-35 either....
 
riggerrob said:
Nice chart … but it ignores the Canadian purchases.
Last year Canada announced intentions to buy F-35s to replace 40 year old CF-18s. But don’t hold your breath because purchasing military aircraft is such a political football in Canada, that the process will take decades.
Click to expand...

Canada isn't in Europe....
 
More scrutiny (and delays) in the Engine Core Upgrade program:

An executive for Pratt & Whitney, the RTX-owned company that makes the jet’s F135 engines, told reporters Tuesday that the Engine Core Upgrade program’s preliminary design review is expected to take place in May 2024.


That is later than the company originally predicted last fall, when it said the review was scheduled for January 2024 [...]

In a statement to Defense News on Friday, the F-35 Joint Program Office said the design review is “event driven” and has not been delayed, but that it is taking a closer look at the engine upgrade.

“We have added a senior-level engineering and technical review to the schedule, which will take place in the February/March time frame,” the JPO said. “The JPO, in conjunction with our industry partner [Pratt & Whitney], continues to mitigate risk as we work toward the PDR [preliminary design review].”
Click to expand...

https://www.defensenews.com/industr...-back-months-as-government-takes-closer-look/
 
Elysium said:
I kinda feel sad that the European fighter market cannot be cornered by European made fighters. Especially considering that any such decision is as much a question of buying the best hardware, as is supporting the domestic aerospace capabilities. It's so sad to see that most European nation have no vested interest in manufacturing European jets.
Click to expand...
Interesting btw, how all 3 European producers managed to end up with the exact same product cycle(~2000 - MLU 2020...25 - replacement 2035...50).
Everything that comes in between them has an obvious advantage.
Furthermore, politics ensure there won't be a single victor, though commercially one has emerged nonetheless.
 
timmymagic said:
But Spain is very much in the balance at present, rumours out of Spain seem to indicate that sentiment has turned against F-35, particularly the A variant. I don't see the B variant order, if it does happen (its more likely than A), being more than 20 max, with c16 more likely.
Click to expand...
If they simply opt for a like-for-like replacement, then it could be as low as 12, which seems to be their operational EAV-8B+ force.
 
GTX said:
Not really
Click to expand...

Spanish naval aviation is trapped (ha ha, lame pun fully assumed). AV-8B+++++ won't last forever... and there is no other alternative on this planet for Juan Carlos big amphibious. Except going helicopters only.

Spanish air force on the contrary is probably fine with Eurofighter for the time being.
 
Elysium said:
I kinda feel sad that the European fighter market cannot be cornered by European made fighters. Especially considering that any such decision is as much a question of buying the best hardware, as is supporting the domestic aerospace capabilities. It's so sad to see that most European nation have no vested interest in manufacturing European jets.
Click to expand...

Alas, Europe knew since (at least) 2002 and The Netherlands chosing F-35, than sooner rather than later, F-35 will turn steamroller over the three Eurocanards. Surely it has been delayed by F-35 early troubles and Lockheed assasine development costs, but this time is now over, and the steamroller is now unstoppable. 1000 airframe is merely 1/3rd of the planned final production run.
Grippen E was the first casualty, then Typhoon, and while Rafale still resists, that domino will fall like the other two.
France is actually lucky Rafale broke its no-sale curse in 2015 with Egypt and got a (still going) window of opportunity between F-16 Block 70 and F-35. That window however is presently closing faster and faster.
 
Last edited:
The F-35's path to becoming ubiquitous in European Air Forces was already set in the 1990s and 2000s, when Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden etc failed to start development of their own 5th generation fighters (either as part of a multi-national consortium, or individually).

As such, the F-35 was the only viable option available. All those buyers driving down the price through economies of scale also helped.
 
The fact that F-35 is the only 5th gen and the only STOVL on the market, combined with the large buys that the US organizations were always going to make, kinda made this situation inevitable. Maybe if the flyaway cost of F-35 had remained high it would be different, but costs are relatively competitive with 4.5/4+ aircraft.
 
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
The F-35's path to becoming ubiquitous in European Air Forces was already set in the 1990s and 2000s, when Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden etc failed to start development of their own 5th generation fighters (either as part of a multi-national consortium, or individually).

As such, the F-35 was the only viable option available.
Click to expand...

Disagree on the timing. Aside from the UK and Italy, the first European customers were just US-aligned countries replacing their F-16 fleets with the latest US product. The odds of a European fighter making inroads were always low.

(Same goes outside NATO - the first customers Israel, Australia, Japan, South Korea etc were always going to replace their US fighter fleets with another US product).

The UK and Italy were the true surprises, but then again they also put themselves in a corner with Eurofighter’s failures and the need for a STOVL aircraft for their carriers.

Lately all new F-35 customers have continued to be strongly US aligned, although some may have been genuinely shopping and might have been interested in a more competitive European product (hard to tell with Finland, Switzerland, Germany etc).

From a timing perspective this 2nd group of European customers were looking for 2026-2030 deliveries, so the argument could be made that the window to start on a European competitor closed around 2010-2015. Korea’s Boromae seems to have a better sense of timing, even if maybe 5 years late to the party.
 
Last edited:
The timing issue is key, but it's not simply European fighter projects vs F-35. It was meant to be European fighter projects taking on F-35 with half a decade to a decade of sales behind them.

The end of the Cold War took the pressure off the European fighter projects, and their respective governments decided to cash-in on the peace dividends (or were forced to in the case of Germany, which had Reunification to pay for), as did the potential customer nations. So flight trial duration shifted right from lower investment, plus the early PIO accidents (YF-22, Gripen x2) made everyone slow down the flight-test process while they did a complete sanity check of their code. It's why there was 14 months between Eurofighter's first flights for DA1 and DA2 and first flight for DA3 (and another year to DA6, the first twin seater). The removal of pressure also enabled political stunts like Volker Ruhe's 'genius' idea that Eurofighter should suddenly be a single-engined aircraft with APG-65. That cost Eurofighter a minimum of a year, if not two or more. Idiot.

And meanwhile some of the early replacement competitions simple evaporated - the Norwegian F-5 replacement for instance, others made some progress, then faded away when financial pressures elsewhere were free to drain the defence budget, which was no longer locked on a 4% of GDP target, the Greek Eurofighter buy for instance.

And suddenly rather than having a five to ten year lead on F-35, the European projects were running headlong into competition with it.

How would the Eurofighter vs F-35 competitions have run if Eurofighter was already in Norwegian service and being delivered to the Greeks, with 800-900 orders when the F-35 finally reached a saleable standard?
 
Last edited:
Forest Green said:
Indeed, the B is too limited in internal carriage, it's like half an F-35 really.
Click to expand...
It matters only when air force in question has weapons to make use of it.
In case of UK, there are literally none.
DWG said:
How would the Eurofighter vs F-35 competitions have run if Eurofighter was already in Norwegian service and being delivered to the Greeks, with 800-900 orders when the F-35 finally reached a saleable standard?
Click to expand...
Offtop:

While not necessarily a 100% rule, it's worth taking a look at F-35 European customer list. (UK/Italy - B model, Switzerland, and recently Germany - nuclear bomber, - are omitted: exception b/c logic of procurement was very different).
Czechia - Poland - Finland - Denmark - Norway - Netherlands - Belgium - Greece.

Intentional or not, those are all the countries - victims of the fall of the European security system in the 1930s, i.e. countries that would rather not rely on traditional European security providers.
The match is certainly not perfect(but better without B model), but explainable - and correlation is quite present.

In this sense, btw - it's the B model that is the most successful product subtype, ironically. A eats the captive market around the world.
It's the STOVL version that expands it in multiple nations around the world.
 
Last edited:
Elysium said:
I kinda feel sad that the European fighter market cannot be cornered by European made fighters. Especially considering that any such decision is as much a question of buying the best hardware, as is supporting the domestic aerospace capabilities. It's so sad to see that most European nation have no vested interest in manufacturing European jets.
Click to expand...
Part of the problem is that developing a new fighter is now sufficiently expensive that you need a US-sized economy to pull it off unaided.

And Europe still sees themselves as "German" or "French" or "Italian" instead of "European", which makes it a lot harder to work together to make "European" projects happen.


DWG said:
How would the Eurofighter vs F-35 competitions have run if Eurofighter was already in Norwegian service and being delivered to the Greeks, with 800-900 orders when the F-35 finally reached a saleable standard?
Click to expand...
I'd bet doing a hell of a lot better in sales than now.


Ainen said:
While not necessarily a 100% rule, it's worth taking a look at F-35 European customer list. (UK/Italy - B model, Switzerland, and recently Germany - nuclear bomber, - are omitted: exception b/c logic of procurement was very different).
Czechia - Poland - Finland - Denmark - Norway - Netherlands - Belgium - Greece.

Intentional or not, those are all the countries - victims of the fall of the European security system in the 1930s, i.e. countries that would rather not rely on traditional European security providers.
The match is certainly not perfect(but better without B model), but explainable - and correlation is quite present.
Click to expand...
And a couple of those would rather be glowing radioactive craters than Russian client/slave states again.
 
Scott Kenny said:
And a couple of those would rather be glowing radioactive craters than Russian client/slave states again.
Click to expand...
Still same logic, victims of the break-down of the European security system. Saint-Petersburg/Moscow are two of the capitals responsible for the mess back then.

To be fair, now we see a new wave of F-35A clients (Germany, Romania - i.e. former Axis nations) aimed specifically at a "new" Russian threat rather than the historical one.
 
H_K said:
The UK and Italy were the true surprises
Click to expand...

Italy with the A variant perhaps. But given the UK was in F-35 from day 1, and in its predecessor programme, precisely to replace a joint UK/US product (AV-8B/GR.5/7/9) and was key to the requirements that it was to meet, it wasn't a surprise in the slightest. The only real surprise would be the UK purchasing the A variant...which isn't going to happen.

Ainen said:
In this sense, btw - it's the B model that is the most successful product subtype, ironically. A eats the captive market around the world.
It's the STOVL version that expands it in multiple nations around the world.
Click to expand...

Is it really though? The B variant is replacing AV-8B/GR.5/7/9 in all countries who have purchased and made it operational to date (USMC, RAF/FAA and Regia Marina/ItAF). . Japan and Singapore are new customers for STOVL for sure, but are heavy users of US platforms as are South Korea (who have yet to place an F-35B order and might never do so if the CVX programme never goes ahead). But at the same time the F-35B hasn't brought former Harrier users of India and Thailand back into the fold....and has yet to get the Spanish to sign on the dotted line...

At the moment the number of F-35B users and numbers of aircraft will be less than there were Harrier operators and aircraft at its peak...
 
timmymagic said:
Italy with the A variant perhaps. But given the UK was in F-35 from day 1, and in its predecessor programme, precisely to replace a joint UK/US product (AV-8B/GR.5/7/9) and was key to the requirements that it was to meet, it wasn't a surprise in the slightest. The only real surprise would be the UK purchasing the A variant...which isn't going to happen.
Click to expand...

What I meant was that it was still somewhat surprising that the UK put all its eggs in the F-35.

It would have been just as conceivable for the UK (and Italy) to buy the STOVL F-35B only for their carriers. They could then have worked with the other Eurofighter nations to develop a European Tornado replacement (either an advanced Eurofighter variant or a stealthy 5gen strike fighter… basically a manned FOAS which the UK did seem to consider for a short while).
 
FOAS was just too expensive for the UK alone, I would have thought that there could have been some kind of arangement to develop the FOAS into a European 5th gen program but it was not to be. Another example of what might have been.
 
Ainen said:
In this sense, btw - it's the B model that is the most successful product subtype, ironically. A eats the captive market around the world.
It's the STOVL version that expands it in multiple nations around the world.
Click to expand...
B is largely captive market sales, but captive market in either AV-8B users, or CVL/whatever they're calling it to pretend its not a CVL users. Taiwan would be the big market shift there, everyone else would have been buying AV-8B if that was on offer rather than F-35B
 
timmymagic said:
Is it really though? The B variant is replacing AV-8B/GR.5/7/9 in all countries who have purchased and made it operational to date (USMC, RAF/FAA and Regia Marina/ItAF). . Japan and Singapore are new customers for STOVL for sure, but are heavy users of US platforms as are South Korea (who have yet to place an F-35B order and might never do so if the CVX programme never goes ahead). But at the same time the F-35B hasn't brought former Harrier users of India and Thailand back into the fold....and has yet to get the Spanish to sign on the dotted line...

At the moment the number of F-35B users and numbers of aircraft will be less than there were Harrier operators and aircraft at its peak...
Click to expand...
But Harrier wasn't a single product, certainly not a singular US product. The largest "lost" customer (India) wasn't a user of the US subtype.
Now the primary money flow is directed toward the US - from everywhere.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom