600 channels or modes, each in the decision chain over single-digit minutes leading to the use of lethal force.

That should only take about 15 years to validate.

So this stuff about “parameters” cannot be explained further, but must be right because it is the sworn testimony of a senior officer?

Oh ****, seriously. I have seen enough total rubbish spouted by senior serving officers in my time (either because they were in full jamming mode or repeating something that was outside their technical detail zone) to regard that argument as less than convincing.

The statement remains as it was: on its face, so vague as to be meaningless.

The fundamental problem with most of those early claims is that the airspeed indication systems were not designed, much less calibrated, for transonic phenomena, so nobody can ever know for sure.

Seriously, Spud – You can read the GAO reports through 2006-08. You can see that the projected unit costs were rising before the production program was stretched out. The USAF drop from 110 to 80 a year was a response to increases in cost beyond the 2002 daydreams, not the cause of them.

In any case, that would have some effect on cost, but not as vast as some people think, because it was 15 per cent or less of the projected total rate. Boeing and Airbus, over the years, have ridden out such fluctuations without the unit cost going through the roof.

And as for the partners being well informed… Did they know, as Carter and Steidle have said, and as the collapse of the 2008 schedule has confirmed, that the program was facing production and management issues that were not being addressed? And if so, why was that message kept from the partner taxpayers?

J24 –

There is no cancellation fee because the Canadians have not ordered any aircraft. Japan and Israel will get subcontracting deals, carved out of what the original MoU partners thought they were going to get (but again there was no contractual guarantee of such).

The USG is indeed partially to blame for the situation. Production should have been suspended in 2008-10 when the project was making no progress whatsoever. That would at least have reduced the speed of the train, which looks increasingly like the Old 97.

Don’t know about EJ200 but it is documented fact that the F135 costs much more (projected at max rate) than a pair of F414s.

If LM’s management proposed launching production of 100 aircraft a year on private funding, the directors and shareholders would drag them physically out of their C-suite offices into the parking lot, hose them with Uzi fire and string them up like stoats on the security fence.

Sintra – You are correct that the JSF is not dead in Canada. However, it looks as if the original process by which the Harper government attempted to buy the aircraft is very much dead.

“2. Propellants are always being improved.”

O rly? It seems that ATK has its hands full making the basic AMRAAM propellant perform to spec. And aside from the Sovs’ expensive venture into ADN I have not heard of anything markedly better or more energetic than what we have.

And thrusters? Adds a little more risk to the equation, don’t you think?

The important point about the “1763” number for the USAF concerns how the US buys hardware – which is year-by-year, with four-year procurements being permitted once development is complete.

One result is that the total number planned does not affect the price of each procurement, whether single-year or MYP. It’s all priced as if the buy in question might be the last (as has often happened). Consequently, the bogey to track in terms of JSF costs is what rate the USAF gets to, and when. The current plan is to go from 48 to 60 in the late teens and 80 in the early 2020s.

Another result is that anyone can say what they want about the total number, because most of the buy will be ordered after 2025, even under the current program of record. Those decisions will be taken by AF leaders who are now Lt Cols and Majors and by Congressmen who are now putting in time in state legislatures and school boards, for a world that could look like as much like today as today looks like 1999. Perspective, folks.

The F-35 can “win” a competition under a combination of the following circumstances:

– Guaranteed price and IOC are not mandatory (at least for the F-35)
– The requirement is written around F-35 (eg, it demands stealth or “no-light, all-round SA”)

The Japanese “competition” was a good example, where the F-35 was selected to replace F-4EJs that will be retired long before the F-35 is anywhere close to delivering initial-service-level capability.

No other customer has conducted anything even that close to a competition. Indeed, the Canadian government has run foul of its democratic process (aka “sheeple” in JSF-speak) precisely because of its machinations to avoid a selection process based on rules and data.

Spud – While you are insulting people, please pay attention to facts. Block 2 has no external weapons capability. Nor does Block 3I. So far, publicly, Block 3F does, but it has no firm IOC date for the US, so I do not know how it can be part of a firm-price offer to Korea. If the Korean initial delivery standard is 3I, then external weapons will be an extra to be added later.