Let’s take this a stage further. Would it be possible not just to shoot a general or a program manager, but rather, the whole program? The challenges appear overwhelming huge. In the United States, the leadership of the USAF and the USMC see no clear alternative to simply continuing to pour whatever money they must into the program. (The Navy is an exception, and I’ll get to that below.) But the US has a further problem: the airplane is not just joint, it’s international. Like the International Space Station, the JSF is still stumbling along in part because it’s too international to deorbit.
Those partner countries that have signed up for the program do have alternatives, and that points to the list of parties with a commercial or political interest in termination. Even Lockheed Martin, though, should think long and hard about how its competitors might work this issue. Boeing could stand the most to gain, and has a particular interest in killing the F-35C, the tailhook version which competes for the Navy’s funding with the F/A-18E/F—an airplane for which the Navy has shown increased affection of late. Close behind though would stand Saab, Dassault, and EADS (as the one shareholder in Eurofighter GmbH with little interest in the JSF program). These three European companies have an interest in killing the F-35A, the conventional land-based version, as Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Turkey, and Australia would all open up as marketing targets (Belgium and even Portugal might eventually make that list as well). Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, and Alenia are perhaps of split opinions, in that all are major subcontractors to Lockheed Martin for the F-35, but that each has interests in the X-47B or Eurofighter programs, which would stand to gain from the F-35’s loss. In short, most of the combat aircraft industry would arguably like to kill this thing, and the rest is at best dispassionate.
By: Brant
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