The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz, said military leaders in Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy and other countries helping to develop the new fighter have told him they remain committed to buying the stealthy new fighter “as soon as their economic circumstances permit.”
“It should not be read as a diminished commitment to pursuing this capability over the longer term,” Schwartz told a hearing by the House Armed Services Committee on the fiscal 2013 budget request from the Air Force.
Canada is hosting a meeting of the international partners at its embassy in Washington on Friday to get an update about the program and what effect Washington’s plans to postpone orders for 179 F-35 jets for five years will have on the jet’s price.
Washington insists it still plans to buy 2,443 of the new planes at a cost of $382 billion over the next two decades.
Budget pressures have already prompted Italy to scale back its total planned purchase of radar-evading F-35s of 131 jets by about 30%, or 41 planes, saving about 5 billion euros.
Australia’s military this month said it would sign a contract for two F-35s in the third quarter this year, but was keeping its options open on previous plans to buy a further 12.
Britain, the biggest outside contributor to F-35 development, has said it will wait until 2015 to decide how many of the supersonic jets to buy. Meantime, cost increases resulting from the U.S. decision to cut near-term F-35 purchases and defer procurement do not appear to be affecting the U.K.’s budgeting for purchase of its aircraft.
“The resultant increases in aircraft costs are currently judged to be within the provision that the [Defense Ministry] has made in the current budget planning round and therefore will not impact upon the introduction into U.K. service in 2020,” the defense minister for equipment, Peter Luff, told Parliament this week.
Turkey last week said it still planned to buy 100 of the single-seat jets for $16 billion, with an initial order of two planes slated for delivery in 2015.
Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands are the other partners funding the development of three variants of the new fighter, which will replace over a dozen warplanes now in use.
The postponements and reductions will drive up the price tag per aircraft, Pentagon and Lockheed officials said this month, although it is not clear by exactly how much.
The partners are to finalize their procurement numbers at a formal meeting of the program’s Joint Executive Steering Board in Australia from March 14-15.
The Pentagon estimates that it will still cost about $1 trillion to operate a fleet of 2,443 F-35 fighters over the next 50 years, but is continuing to analyze how to drive down that staggering sum, according to U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, deputy Marine commandant for aviation.
Unless the estimates do come down substantially, the Pentagon may have to decide to buy fewer airplanes, reduce the number of anticipated flight hours, or skip adding some capabilities to the plane, Robling said, although he noted that decision point could still be five to 10 years off.
The Pentagon’s estimated cost to develop and buy the F-35 is around $382 billion, but that number could increase somewhat when the U.S. military reports the cost of its major acquisition programs to Congress next month. - with Robert Wall of Aviation Week in London.
Original Article
Source: aviation week
Author: Andrea Shalal-Esa
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