Aivan. Kun itsekin ostavat pää märkänä F-35:tta.
Niin B versiota tukialuksille. Olisiko tuhon tarkoitukseen edes muuta vaihtoehtoa?
Tuostakin tulee todennäköisesti pannukakku. Rahat ei riitä niin ei riitä.
Financial timesin juttu joulukuu 2017
"One of the UK’s most senior military chiefs has suggested that Britain may cut the number of F-35 combat jets it buys in the future as pressure grows on its defence budget.
Despite a commitment to buy 138 F-35B Lightning II fighter jets from the US manufacturer Lockheed Martin, Lieutenant General Mark Poffley, deputy chief of the UK defence staff, told MPs on Tuesday that he was “sympathetic” to the idea that the overall number could eventually fall.
That’s the reality of the world we are living in,” added Lt Gn Poffley."
Earlier Stephen Lovegrove, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, revealed that the cost of an initial tranche of 48 F-35s could rise from £9.1bn in 2025 to £13bn in 2048.
The MoD said the extra £4bn was to cover the “whole life costs” of the planes including support costs, training and maintenance.
https://www.google.fi/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/696be98e-cec8-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc
Tuollaisilla ylläpitokustannuksilla Suomi voi unohtaa nämä koneet. Sillä ei ole väliä vaikka A versio olisi vähä halvee operoida.
Ja kun on Matti briteillä kukkarossa niin niitä A versioitakaan ei tule joita on briteille myös arvailtu.
The UK has long publicly committed itself to buying 138 F-35Bs. We know that the UK intends to use around 63 aircraft in its operational fleet at any one time, leaving the rest in reserve. That gives you five usable squadrons, not counting the permanent R&D jets based in America, which will never leave that country.
Of those five squadrons, one will be the operational conversion unit (ie, the training squadron). That leaves four squadrons … see where this is going?
Working on the assumption that the MoD has decided it will have no more than those 63 aircraft to fly at any one point, a purchase of F-35As would eat into the number of aircraft available for working up the carrier air wing. To make an RAF F-35A unit viable you’d need about 20 or so aircraft, allowing for testbed jets in America, operational conversion aircraft, and the 12 actually needed by the frontline squadron.
That would leave the F-35B fleet short by two squadrons’ worth of aircraft. Suddenly, absent a massively unlikely cash injection to operate another two squadrons of F-35Bs, your neat and predictable four-squadron model drops to a two-squadron one. You also need lots more trained and skilled personnel to fly two separate fleets; the F-35B is the vertical takeoff model, optimised for short field (and carrier) flying, whereas the F-35A is a conventional land-based aircraft.
In short, then, buying F-35As would lead to increased costs and less eventual capability. Which raises the obvious question: why on Earth is the MoD repeatedly not ruling this out? ®
https://www.google.fi/amp/s/www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2017/12/05/uk_f35a_buy_still_on_cards/
Lopputulema tulee olemaan brittien alle 100 35B.
F35stä tulee amerikkalaisen lentokoneteollisuuden lahja Putinille. Niiden ostaminen ja ylläpitäminen tulee Euroopalle niin kalliiksi että kaikki muut sotilaalliset toiminnat tulee kärsimään.
Vähän kuin NH90 Suomelle mutta vaikutukset on 10000 kertaiset.
