The US have absolutely no involvement nor do they have any ITAR claims, thats half the point of it.
Typhoon is hard to export because firstly expensive and secondly, Germany blocked a fair few sales and Airbus cocked up the Swiss one by sending a faulty Eurofighter (I don’t think they would’ve bought it anyway).
Even despite that they’ve still sold relatively well particularly for a non-US aircraft.
Which means building every system and component from the ground up, using only European (Japanese) weapon systems.
The cost will be enormous.
Typhoon was farmed out to the usual middle eastern partners and sold well. But its not being picked up now because its cost is prohibitive. The US can offer a brand new F-35A Gen 5 airframe for less than the Typhoon per unit (I’m aware of economies of scale)
History will tell us Britain and Italy cannot a ford to develop a Gen 6 airframe alone. Why produce something that will cost more than the off the shelf US offering
Really doubt F-35s win on price against Eurocanards if you count operating hour cost.
This was the tabloids deliberately being malicious and trying to stir something up.
Basically a defence minister was asked if it would be axed, he said he could not and would not comment before the defence review was released. The tabloids took this to be the headline “Tempest future uncertain”, when it was “i can’t comment until the review is finished”
Keeping in mind the defence review is going to say, we don’t have enough planes, we havent got enough ships for two carrier strike groups, we cant even have 2 carrier strike groups due to lack of F35B’s, the submarines cannot be repaired, the army has shortages on every front. Etc.
Tempest is way too important to be axed, if axed, we have to buy foreign permanently or start over again, we seriously betray the trust of Japan and Italy and we will never ever find a foreign partner to work with again.
The UK is actively trying to copy Japans defence strategy because only god knows how they can have a better military than the UK whilst spending more than $10Bn less annually for the last 40 years.
Afaik you also have problem to found crew for thoses carriers
That is literally the point though. The US screwed over both Japan and the UK and Italy. UK and Japan with priorly agreed upon source code, and Italy and UK again with the meteor and Brimstone integration on F35.
Not particularly, yes more expensive that if the US made tbe exact same plane but not astronomically so, also its not like the US will export NGAD…
Mitsubishi is huge and can manufacture just as cheaply as America, RR will reuse existing EJ200 lines for the new engine. The UK manufacturers the fuselage of every F-35 already. Avionics again have existing production lines.
Typhoon is free of ITAR afaik and thats between 4 European countries, 2 of which are in this other project and Japan has a higher GDP than Italy and Spain combined.
Thats why Japan is joining, the UK was going to do it anyway as we don’t want to buy American.
They never do, or the ram coating specialised maintenance, software updates they provide a blanket cost for the airframe
From what I hear pretty much all of GCAP sub-systems are largely off the shelf from British, Italian, and Japanese suppliers. Both BAE and Mitsubishi have experience constructing stealth aircraft, BAE from its own project’s, and Mitsubishi from producing F-35As.
They can both be crewed, just, but it would require people on leave to be pulled off early.
Some are completely new, for the demonstrator its off the shelf, for the final product, afaik it will all be newly developed, if perhaps based off of the older tech. Similarly to how the F35s radar is based on that of F22 but they are still fundamentally different systems.
The usual media Bs, got it.
Wait is Meteor not being integrated on F-35?
We know the US is more of a bully than an ally.
It makes sense to produce the airframe you need and if Tempest NGAD whatever its name is right now is that airframe then they should do it.
However we know how British military procurement has gone recently.
Japan moving away from the US is a shock especially with cooperation they have in the INDOPAC theatre. Both nations using the same airframe would be advantageous if an event with China ever occurred.
I’m sad France and Japan never do things together.
From training (some happen but ultra rare), or building stuff.
Renault-Nissan was a thing and… yeah
I was speaking more from a military point of view, but yes too.
We’re the second biggest consumer of manga, only behind Japan itself, and they don’t care ! :(
Waiting on the Block 4 software to release, which keeps getting delayed. It’s one of the bigger reasons for GCAP.
If you’re surprised by that you probably need to look a little more into Japanese procurement, they almost always have issues with the US limiting their ability to modify equipment if it hurts the US MIC’s bottom line
Looks at what came to be F-2 (japan got bullied in to building bigger F-16)
mildly off topic but my local manga shop has closed down ;-; now I gotta travel to wales or london for the next closet one, I think technically there’s one in Birmingham, but well, that’s Birmingham.
TBF the F-2 is arguably the better multi-role platform.
That is true, but the point is japan wanted to do something completly difrent and then got bullied by US to build F-2 as we know it today (they still done most of the work beacouse US refused a lot of technology transfer)
Yep.
Originally the UK was supposed to have the source code, its the digital “key” that unlocks the F-35 software (try and tamper without it and the code erases itself and you get left with a useless plane).
Lockheed/the US refused to share it with the UK, so we couldn’t integrate it ourselves, so the UK and Italy paid MBDA and Lockheed Martin to do it in America, this was due by 2015, MBDA got their bit done, Lockheed Martin have been delaying it for years, closest estimate is 2030.
Conveniantly it was suppised to be part of the Block 3 software enhancement, now its Block 4, which is the same one that AIM-260 will be part of… can’t have Europe stealing the US’ export orders now can we?
Australia is reportedly interested, the aircraft will be tailored with them in mind as well as the UK, Japan, Italy and likely Saudi Arabia also.
There are a couple of reasons in my opinion
The UK is trying to buddy up more with CANZUK which means a Pacific shift with thinks like AUKUS, the existing UK Indian ocean and Australian bases etc whereas France is still focused on the Mediterranean and NATO regions to a higher degree than the UK.
Finally in the nicest possible way, its because France/French companies are too defensive and don’t want to “share” development and manufacturing we saw how France left Eurofighter partially over CATOBAR which is perfectly fair but also the first issue was because they didnt want to use a blatantly superior RollsRoyce engine over the SNECMA/Safran engine developing 10kn less.
On Tempest the UK has said its willing to compromise, we will take a back seat in some places, and lead in others. This is about the UK and Japan and Italy sharing knowledge where the others lack it and selecting the best possible option for the best possible aircraft both in performance and cost.