Lockheed’s Joint Strike Fighter faces the same crisis of confidence that its F-22 did 14 years ago. Can the F-35 survive Groundhog day?
Whatever their other merits, good timing is not a particular feature of US stealth fighter programmes. Each time a decade’s worth of patient nurturing comes to blossom, there are suddenly historic budget freezes and seismic shifts in the global threat landscape, and that moment’s new-generation fighter is faced with drastic cuts or extermination.
Fourteen years ago, the scenario played out with the incremental erosion of a 10-year-old plan to buy 750 Lockheed F-22s. And so it was that a reduced order for 648 F-22s in 1991 became a 442-jet procurement in 1994. It is now a plan to buy 179 aircraft, now renamed the F/A-22, with the “A” resembling a kind of scar, a reminder of the US Air Force’s desperation even in 2002 to do anything to spare the programme from further cuts.
It seems this legacy is being relived with Lockheed’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, but is four years along into full-scale development. The replay began in September 2002, when the US Navy decided to reduce its JSF order by 400 aircraft, lowering the overall acquisition to about 2,600 aircraft. This month comes news of two additional developments. In one case, the Lexington Institute, a think-tank with close ties to Pentagon officials, claims there is a proposal to cancel the F-35A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) variant and merge the USAF’s order with the navy’s F-35C carrier variant and the US Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off and vertical landing version.
As extreme as that sounds, it is also reported that Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who as secretary of the navy was responsible for slashing his service’s JSF order three years ago, is eyeing a new round of cuts, having distributed a memo to staff saying he has ordered a review comparing the capabilities of the F/A-22 and the F-35 with future unmanned strike aircraft. This falls amid the backdrop of an emerging fiscal crisis in the US Department of Defense, which claims it is pumping $5 billion a month into financing combat operations just as a spike in procurement spending lies ahead.
Among other things, the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review is being used as an exercise to align spending priorities with the types of threats facing the military today and into the future. Given the limited role of airpower in a war against insurgents and terrorists, the USAF’s annual $14-15 billion outlay to buy stealthy fighter jets designed to face an altogether different threat may be a tempting target for short-term savings.
It would not be the first time this has happened, even recently. Army generals, in particular, may point to the worthy precedent set by their own aviation branch last year, which agreed to let go of a 20-year effort to produce a stealthy scout helicopter called the Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 Comanche. The aviation branch has used the $14.6 billion tied up in the Comanche accounts to recapitalise, trading a costly and troublesome stealth project for a one-time windfall to solve most of its other deficiencies.
Perhaps some defence officials have this in mind for the F-35A, and why not favour the
F-35C? History suggests that a navy fighter can be used by other services, but not the other way around, hence the dramatic difference between the legacies of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 and the General Dynamics F-111. In any event, scratching the F-35A completely is unlikely to succeed. The CTOL variant is the preferred option for many of the programme’s foreign partners, which presents a major political and economic obstacle to its cancellation. It is also not clear how much money could really be saved, considering the common development approach of the three variants, and, not least, a probably shocking contractual termination fee.
But there is one thing to say for calling out the firing squad. Aircraft programmes that escape the death sentence but get nibbled to pieces may end up as not worth all the trouble. Two major reasons for the F-35 programme’s existence are to produce in major quantities and to do so affordably. Neither tenet would be served by a series of production cuts over the next decade, if the F/A-22’s history is indeed to be relived. The time to debate the F-35A’s existential merits was 10 years ago. However, if the rules of the game have changed so much, so be it. But remember that sometimes a lucky break isn’t just good timing, but the result of wise planning.
Source: Flight International
