Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
Introduction
The US Department of Defense (DOD) is responsible for a global array of security responsibilities at a time of acute national budgetary constraints, war-weary public opinion, and emerging national security challenges from sources as diverse as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. During Fiscal Year (FY) 2018, (October 1, 2017–September 30, 2018), DOD’s budget is projected to be $692.1 billion with $5.973 billion for the multiple variants of the Lightning II F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The JSF’s importance in future DOD military aviation planning was reflected in a February 24, 2014, proposed congressional budget submission advocating eliminating the A-10 fleet and replacing it with the JSF by the early 2020s.
Militaries purchasing weapons systems must plan for the obsolescence of existing weapons, their eventual replacement, and the need to develop weapons systems capable of countering and defeating comparable weapons systems of current and potential adversaries in order to maintain competitive military advantages over these adversaries. This has been particularly true for jet fighter planes. Around approximately 1993, the United States and allied militaries began looking at replacing the F-18 and F-111 jet fighter programs. The vehicle they came up with was the F-35 JSF and system development began in October 2001. Joint is defined by the US military as activities, operations, and organizations in which two or more military departments participate. JSF is a multinational acquisition aspiring to develop and field next-generation fighter aircraft for the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, and eight international partners. It is a single-seat, single-engine aircraft incorporating low-observable stealth technologies, defense avionics, advance sensor fusion, internal and external weapons, and advanced prognostic maintenance capabilities.
JSF’s primary US contractors are Lockheed Martin for the aircraft and Pratt & Whitney for the engine. It is intended to be produced in three variants: replace the Air Force’s F-16 Falcon, A-10 Thunderbolt; and complement the F-22A Raptor. JSF will also replace the Marine Corps F-18 Hornet and AV-8 Harrier aircraft, while providing the Navy with a multirole strike stealth aircraft to supplement the F-18 Super Hornet.
During its existence the aircraft has experienced repeated delays and cost overruns. Targeted overall program costs began at $233 billion in October 2001, increased to $278.5 billion by March 2007, $395.7 billion in March 2012, nearly $400 billion in April 2015, falling to $379 billion through December 2015, and increasing to $406.48 billion by July 2017 according to US Government Accountability Office (GAO) and DOD reports. Annual funding costs are projected to average $12 billion annually through 2037 according to GAO and this same organization projects long-term JSF operational and support costs to surpass $1 trillion. These cost overruns and other factors have repeatedly pushed back the deployment of this aircraft and further delays are likely given the budget constraints facing the United States and its allies for the foreseeable future, although these budgetary restrictions may be lessened if the Trump Administration’s proposed defense spending increases of $54 billion materialize.
In addition, these countries’ military forces are also undergoing intense debate on structuring themselves and their operational capabilities in view of the Asia-Pacific region’s increasing strategic importance as demonstrated by China’s growing military power and North Korean rhetorical belligerence in light of its nascent nuclear and ballistic missile arsenals. These countries are also having to contend with resurgent Russian military power in areas such as the Arctic, Mideast, and Ukraine; the continuing threat of the Islamic State (Daesh); and the potential dangers of Iranian military power despite the nuclear agreement reached between Tehran and the P 5+1 countries including the United States although the United States withdrew from this pact on May 8, 2018. The United States and its allies are also debating the future viability of traditional combat aircraft programs due to the emergence of drone aircraft, precision-guided munitions, cyberwarfare, and human-machine interaction in using military technology for combat operations.
The work strives to provide a history of the JSF from a comparative multinational perspective transcending a US-centric approach to the JSF. It will emphasize governmental procurement practices, defense industry lobbying, legislative oversight, and governmental and military attitudes and experiences from selected participating countries. It makes heavy use of primary source government and military documents and some social media activity from multiple countries to illustrate the complexities of military acquisition and procurement and multinational consortial defense purchasing. The widespread public availability of materials on national military weapons systems purchases is also a theme of this analysis. It also stresses the role of legislators and parliamentarians, the perspectives of defense industry contractors and military personnel, and the objectives of national militaries and defense ministries. Understanding these variegated perspectives is critical in determining whether the JSF is necessary for becoming the primary military fighter plane against current and potentially emerging national security threats facing the United States and its allies from countries such as China and Russia and whether drone aircraft would be more effective against such threats.
This work examines the history of this program in the United States and in selected allied countries including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. It makes heavy uses of government and military documents including materials produced by congressional and parliamentary oversight committees and auditing agencies such as GAO, Australian National Audit Office, Britain’s National Audit Office, and Canada’s Auditor General. It will address the interdisciplinary intersection of areas such as defense acquisition, defense contracting, and national security policymaking, and strategic planning in a variety of countries seeking to find ways of addressing emerging military security challenges using emerging aerospace technologies and the high economic costs of attempting to meet these challenges.
Global Defense Procurement and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter opens by providing a history of jet fighters from their emergence during World War II until the present. Particular emphasis is placed on how jet fighters are classified by numerical generations encompassing first to fifth generations with detailed descriptions of the technical capabilities of fighters representing these generations from the United States and allied countries and competitor nations including China and the Russian Federation/Soviet Union. This introductory chapter also discusses how the increasing financial costs and technological sophistication of jet fighter technology are limiting the number of countries and individual aerospace companies who can affordably produce these aircraft to meet their military customers’ warfighting requirements. The next chapter examines military aviation trends facing the United States and its allies including the threats posed by adversarial countries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. It addresses the role of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in military operations; Chinese and Russian efforts and capabilities to limit the retaliatory capacity of US and allied militaries; discusses potential military operational scenarios and targets in which the United States and its allies may use the JSF to conduct military operations; and documents how the US aging jet fighter fleet is weakening its military capacity against these emerging threats and prompting the need for new multi-mission military aircraft such as the JSF.
Additional chapters describe the historical development and evolution, controversy, success, and failures experienced by the JSF in the United States and other countries. Since this is a global program with international economic, military, and political implications, particular emphasis is placed on how countries besides the United States have addressed the JSF in their governmental policymaking. While not all countries allied with the United States have adopted the JSF as a warfighting tool, it has been considered or adopted by many including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Turkey. In addition to detailed coverage of discussions of whether the military capability of the JSF is affordable and essential for individual countries’ national security requirements, this treatise also emphasizes the widespread economic impact of the JSF in these countries by listing where contractor or subcontractor facilities are located in these countries and how this incentivizes the desire of the aerospace industry in these countries and their elected representatives to participate in this program. The role of political contributions in the United States by aerospace industry companies and labor unions is also stressed including listing selected political contributions made to congressional representatives by these organizations during the 2015–2016 congressional election cycle.
The conclusion emphasizes the close relationship between military spending and the aerospace industry; stresses the need for JSF critics to present economically and militarily credible alternatives to emerging US and allied jet fighter fleets beyond maintaining existing combat aircraft; and stresses the vital importance of the United States and its allies maintaining operational military superiority against adversaries like China and Russia who are determined to utilize emerging aerospace technological advances to promote their geopolitically revisionist international security aspirations. This chapter also analyzes critical weaknesses in the belief that machine-operated aircraft can meet emerging military requirements; documents the positive reaction pilots from the United States and other countries have concerning the JSF’s capabilities and flight performance; acknowledges JSF program managerial performance and financial problems which have occurred with many other weapons systems; references Israel’s successful use of the JSF in May 2018 operations against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Lebanon; and stresses the United States’ need to strengthen domestic scientific and technological agility to address emerging national security threats due to the global proliferation of scientific and technological expertise. This can be partially accomplished by building and maintaining the JSF to address emerging Chinese and Russian threats and technological advances and threats posed by other national and transnational entities to the United States and allied strategic interests.
Log in with Google