As i suspected. Come August 2018, and almost no inked Lot 11 contracts has been SIGNED.
The talk about handshake, intended or future expected buy don’t mean crap.
I just find the future prospect on how many F-35 that will get produced, very much hot air.
How was the prospect on EF and Rafale early days contra current day?
People with a right mind know these LM figures are super inflated.

Let me address the ongoing challanges for F-35 here in Norway;
We decided it was a great idea to switch to a one Airbase Solution((all eggs in one basket), in order to SAVE SPENDING.
Come 2018 the Ørlandet air base initial upgrade cost was around NOK4,5 Billion.. a super inflated figure just to get the Airbase structure through and approved. Now the cost is 10-12 Billion. Pending different budgets.. the F-35 and our goverment plans us highly flameble in the medua here and very non transparent. Our MoD is not willing to go public it its budgets.
What is clear is the F-35 program we signed years ago have risen in cost.. mountain of fundung in a black hole..
So our F-35 program cost has exploded, while i have to endure the LM cost, $90 mill flyaway.. wixh in reality isn’t a real cost picture at all.

My dear chap, there’s just two entities to blame, the Norwegian Government and the Norwegian MOD…
LM didn’t force the MOD to write that “magnificent” 2008 report did it?
Read again a pair of months ago and looking at it a full decade after its… something to behold.

Considering the amount of British tax payer money still going into Airbus and the recent interference by Tom Ender’s in British political matters my opinion would be that Airbus can carry on on their own. That comment by Mr Ender’s was a cynical way of accessing more British tax payer money nothing else. Airbus were late on A400M and the Typhoon was a pain to get into flight. I don’t know what tranche they are in UK service now.

Better to work with SAAB, JAPAN, Boeing.

Facepalm, massive facepalm

Fifteen thousand direct jobs in the UK, twenty five sites, biggest commercial aerospace company in the UK, four thousand different company suppliers in GB, 8 billion pounds of value added contribution to the UK GDP… Like Hallo noticed Airbus is a net contributor (and a decently sized one) to the UK budget.

Planes have been re-engine with British engines because America stopped sales to undesirable countries of American engine planes.
It has happened, and will no doubt happen again.

It happened?
I can remember the F4K receiving the Spey´s but that was a RN/RAF plane only and Rolls Royce did a fine bid and convinced Vought to drop the TF-30 for the Spey in the USAF A-7D, but i dont remember any “Planes” being re-engined “with British engines because America stopped sales to undesirable countries of American engine planes”, can you provide one case?

For your scenario to work, Britain would have to buy back assets from Leonardo.

Or Leonardo would simply obey under the threat of nationalization of assets.

Excuse me, I’m not a native speaker, so I said notable instead of “worth noting”.

Your english is actually better than mine (Portuguese chap here).

And a successful project in my mind means: completed and operative in about the scheduled times, produced in about the numbers that they are supposed to and with not too much cost increase in relation to what was originally forecasted. Export numbers is just something you cannot foresee during development.

Then we can drop the three projects that i´ve mentioned, all of them either got delayed or got some substantial cost overruns. Wich is a common theme across the entire military aerospace industry across the world.
The number of projects that i can remember for the last four decades that were on time and budget can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

So, according to the top of your head, actual Vauxhall are british cars.

Vauxhall cars are designed by Opel in Germany then built in England (with massive imputs from other Opel factories across Europe) and then get a Vauxhall name plate, the exact oposite happens with the “Leonardo” avionics (with the exception of the IRST)in the Gripen, they are designed in Great Britain, built in Great Britain with Swedish input and components and instead of getting a “Selex/Gec Marconi” label, they get a Leonardo one.

Looks like Forpost-M UAV is not just armed but completely made in Russia with Russian parts

Attack of drones :The military is preparing to adopt the first domestic drone drone

Domestic?!
The Forpost is a licensed copy of the Israeli IAI Searcher II, the chaps upgraded the thing and called it “domestic”.

I usually see quite a few of them … in the Spanish Air Force colours.

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Budget fighter? Really? Whose budget are you referring to, since most countries that may look for a budget fighter will find the Gripen E to be a damn expensive jet.

Answer this question- will it be a sub $80 million fighter, flyaway price?

Define “fly away price”. Most of the chaps around here don’t have a clue of what that actually means. First it’s a metric used by the Pentagon, no one else uses it, then there are two definitions of the “fly away unit cost”, the one that only covers recurring costs and the one that also covers non recurring costs.
If you are talking about the “recurring” one I would be nothing short of amazed if it surpasses the 60 million us$.

I don’t see Italy making a reliable partner at all. Excluding Greece, Italy is the king of debt in the EU. They face many, many years of financial and political uncertainty. Sweden would be a good partner. Their aerospace industry has considerable technical skill and they can certainly squeeze funds throughout the development cycle.

The Italian defense budget is almost four times bigger than the Swedish one. No matter how troubled their financial troubles get, in the foreseable future Italy will always be able to have a lot more defense R&D funds than Sweden.

I also think the UK can get a considerable amount of support from the Anglosphere. It is not at all guaranteed that Australia, Canada, and NZ will pour their whole future into the F-35.

The Anglosphere?
NZ does not have a fast jet fleet, the RAAF is a Dave suporter through and through, the RCAF must have a replacement for their classic Hornets a full decade before some form of a Tempest fighter gets anything remotely like an IOC.
When was the last time that New Zealand, Canada or Australia fielded a British combat aircraft?
(Answering myself, the good old Camberra flew with the RAAF colours till 1982)