Lockheed Martin's vision for the F-35 Joint Strike fighter (JSF) may stress performance, but at Paris, programme general manager Tom Burbage begs to differ: "It's about affordability; it's not about stealth or weapons capability at all cost."
Burbage, executive vice-president, JSF programme integration, insists that industrial participation is being allocated by open competition, and that there is "no pressure" to go after particular companies.
He dismisses reported Norwegian and Turkish dissatisfaction with the extent of local participation by blaming Norwegian uncompetitiveness. "We're unapologetic about not going for traditional offset and workshare arrangements," he says.
It has been widely reported that Norway is unhappy with the number and value of contracts that have filtered down to Norwegian businesses after the country paid $143 million to join the US-led consortium in June 2002.
In April 2004, Marit Nybakk, chairwoman of the Norwegian parliament's defence committee, publicly criticised arrangements, saying: "We have paid a lot of money to be part of the Joint Strike Fighter project but so far it has not yielded much."
A few weeks later, in June 2004, Dutch deputy defence minister Cees van der Knaap told his US opposite number Michael Wynne that the Netherlands would refuse to pay "one extra cent" for the development of the JSF, having already committed $800 million to the development of the aircraft. In return, the Dutch government expected local industry to receive significant orders to produce some components.
In addition to dissatisfaction with industrial participation, some JSF partners have been concerned by rapid rises in development costs, and by the increase in estimated unit price to $46 million, a far cry from the prices originally quoted for what was intended to be a cheap, affordable fighter.
There are even rumblings of discontent in the UK, whose unique status as a Level 1 JSF partner gave it input into the aircraft's design and definition, and which guarantees a massive industrial share in the programme.
Source: Flight Daily News
