Eurofighter is still an option as firms back JSF exit strategy
Norwegian aerospace and defence contractors have created a Joint Strike Fighter exit strategy. Over the past six months, several of them have signed contracts totalling almost NKr100 million ($14.3 million) with the Eurofighter consortium for work on the Typhoon programme.
The contractors hope these deals have sent a clear signal to their government and to Lockheed Martin that the Norwegian Future Fighter Aircraft programme is definitely a two-horse race.
In November, Lockheed Martin JSF executive vice-president Tom Burbage met industrial teams from Canada, Denmark and Norway as part of a tour of Level 3 countries unhappy about the scale of work filtering down to them.
Significantly, the first stop was Oslo. Dissatisfaction with the JSF international programme in this northernmost NATO country runs high. There is also widespread awareness that when Norway negotiated its agreement to join JSF, it insisted on including an option that would allow it to exit the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase early.
That exit clause, although ill-defined in terms of any penalty, is something many in Norwegian industry are asking their government to invoke. It is also a potential embarrassment that Lockheed Martin and the US government are keen to avoid.
Norwegian defence industry organisation NFL says the value of contracts awarded so far from the JSF team is "insignificant", with only seven contracts awarded to companies such as Corena Norge, KDA, Metronor and VAN.
"The government has committed NKr100 million a year just to be a part of the development phase of this aircraft, and so far it's looking like a bad investment," says Haakon Sandbraaten, defence adviser at the NFL.
Even the cost to industry itself, in air fares, salaries, and documentation, is not insubstantial, he adds.
In contrast, the amount invested in Eurofighter work, funded under a private-public partnership, has been c20 million ($23.5 million). The contracts awarded by the Eurofighter Consortium to Ericsson Norge, Thales Norway and Triad are in areas considered by the Norwegian defence ministry to be highly strategic, including radar development and systems integration.
Significant potential"These represent significant potential and thus interest the companies," says Sandbraaten. Eurofighter has also placed flaperon and rudder work with the country's largest aerospace company, Kongsberg.
Norway is expected to decide whether to replace its ageing fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16s around 2008, and the defence ministry is closely following the Eurofighter Typhoon and F-35 programmes.
The F-16 is Norway's fighter mainstay. Around 58, out of an original procurement of 78 and three later orders, are operationally available. The numbers of replacement aircraft are likely to be fewer says defence ministry assistant director general Christian Tybring-Gjedde.
The ministry says the specifications of the second and third tranche of Eurofighter development, including the air-to-ground capability still under development, will be available by the time parliament will be asked to make a selection in 2008.
"The two aircraft do indeed have differences, but are still of equal capability and adequate for Norwegian needs," says Forsker Stian Betten of the Norwegian defence research establishment.
Even in a country where support for NATO membership runs at 75% and military independence is supported by virtually all sections of society, there is concern over rising defence budgets, and the ministry is looking for ways to offset its NKr7.4 billion procurement budget with savings on its NKr22 billion operational costs, so life-cycle costs could also be a deciding factor, says Leif Lindbäck, Norway's director- general national armaments.
Perhaps the most important issue to affect the Norwegian decision, however, is interoperability. To illustrate this, the defence ministry points to a recent joint Danish-Dutch-Norwegian F-16 squadron operating from Kyrgyzstan in a ground support role during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan last year.
"Being a small nation, and given that the cost of modern weapons is rising dramatically, we have to look at the flexibility to swap manpower and equipment with other nations in joint operations, and for that we need very similar, if not identical aircraft," Lindbäck says.
Norway has identified "like-minded nations in the North Sea basin" with whom it is likely to conduct joint operations in the future. These include Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
Lindbäck says that although no specific interoperability arrangements exist with these nations, the fact that all except Germany are in the JSF SDD phase means that the F-35 is the de facto favourite for any competition.
However, he says it would be surprising if the Norwegian parliament gave its approval in 2008 to a programme that had not given Norwegian industry a fair share of work.
Although the best-value principle was accepted when the country joined SDD, Lindbäck says Norwegian industry has been hindered in its attempts to gain workshare. "We identified around 30 companies that could be interested in work for the programme. They were then put forward for global project authorisation [GPA].
"We experienced week after week of delay, and by the time the companies all received their GPA, six months later, all of the RFPs [requests for proposals] had been issued - so they couldn't bid." With 85% of all contracts already awarded, the list of attractive projects is diminishing, he adds.
As a consequence of these initial problems Steinar Jøssund, NFL's manager, says that the body is in favour of Eurofighter procurement "for the time being at least".
However, the group is confident that under the strategic best value exemptions, JSF contracts to Norwegian industry could follow next year, bolstered by a new co-operation arrangement with Canadian and Danish industry.
"We need to give industry a sense of success," says Jøssund.
Source: Flight International
