Denmark’s defence ministry have selected F-35 as the nation’s future combat aircraft, following an evaluation involving the F-18 Super Hornet and Typhoon.
The announcement was made at 10am today in Copenhagen by the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister.
It’s important to note today’s announcement is phase one of two. The next phase is an open debate in parliament, which should last approximately one month before Denmark officially approves its decision.
The Type Selection Evaluation report ranked the aircraft by various categories, shown below.
An executive summary of the Type Selection of Denmark’s New Fighter Aircraft can be found here.
The F-35 Joint Project Office said in a statement:
“We are honored Denmark is considering the F-35A to meet its national defense requirements. We understand the selection process for the New Fighter Program is still ongoing and the Joint Program Office will continue to provide the Danish Government with the data needed to make an informed decision that is in their country’s best interest.”
Lockheed Martin said:
“Lockheed Martin is pleased that Denmark has reaffirmed its commitment to the F-35 program with the down select of the F-35 in this fair and open competition. Denmark is a longtime partner of Lockheed Martin and we are proud of our strong record of supporting its national security requirements. The F-35 Lightning II will help ensure Denmark’s national security, and also positions Danish industry to capture long-term work throughout the life of the program. We remain committed to assist the U.S. government and F-35 Joint Program Office to support Denmark’s future fighter and other aircraft requirements.
Additionally, we will continue to work with Danish Industry on F-35 production throughout the life of the program. The projected industrial opportunities with the F-35 will bring long term economic benefits to Denmark for decades to come.”
This acquisition would replace Denmarks F-16AM/BMs.
All these nations deciding on buying the F35, when they have their pick of fighters and multirole aircraft, and there are still morons saying it’s a pup.
Don’t be silly, there’s at least five YouTube videos we should be sending to Denmark to convince them that they have no idea how to pick their own aircraft!
Grumble grumble Harrier, whine whine Yank crap, mumble mumble lost dogfight with F16
– Delete as appropriate
Don’t forget it can’t fly and will be scrapped.
…..and on the “Danish Defence Journal” page someone bangs out a ranty “why did the Government ever get rid of the far superior F-104 Starfighter” comment ….
Hahaha!!! Seriously?? Crikey, I think NATO have moved a long way up from the F104 nowadays. It’d be like trying to get the RAF to resurrect the Lightning.
Or was that sarcasm…?
Wait people are actually buying this aircraft?
Yes Clive…..
They got rid of the Lightning :-0
Ah well, I’m afraid I’m not very good at spotting sarcastic comments, unless they’re delivered in a particularly snarky tone of voice or are accompanied by ‘;-)’ symbols.
A great day for Borgen fans!
i quite like the f35..yes it has had problems but anything new from electrical goods to automotive also have problems and yes to those harrier fans yes it was a good aircraft but times have changed they are old and outdated and also ad a lot of issues when first designed and built…..
Look its very clear… 85% of Call of Duty players and 100% of Putin Bots say its crap and I know some guy who stack shelves at Lidl who says its crap. You know when your onto a winner when the Putin bots hate it so I suggest the MOD polls the Russians before any future purchase; if they think its crap then buy, buy, buy!!!
How many hornets do they have? / might be replacing?
Current inventory is 60 active + 11 for training according to Wikipedia…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Danish_Air_Force#Current_inventory
No idea what replacement plans are. Partial fleet replacement on a 1 for 1 basis? Full fleet replacement on a 1 for 1 replacement? Full fleet replacement with a lower number of F-35s? Don’t know.
Update. I just found an article on Janes that seems to have very different numbers to Wikipedia. The quote from that article is “In total Denmark proposes to buy 27 F-35s at a cost of around DKK20 billion (USD3.06 billion), according to the government announcement, to replace the 30 F-16s it currently operates.”
Janes’ article here: http://www.janes.com/article/60296/denmark-selects-f-35-for-fighter-programme
Another Wikipedia error I suppose.
Interesting how badly they rated Eurofighter against Super Hornet. The only category where they put EF ahead was in “Strategic”. Not sure what that category really means but maybe Denmark being in Europe and buying a European plane was considered a big strategic plus for EF that accounts for its good score there. If that was the issue it still wasn’t enough to push EF above JSF in the Strategic category though and JSF is probably at best only 10% European.
The Israeli airforce checked the 35 in depth.
They bought it. True, their cockpit is going to be different and so will their software, and they will maintain it by themselves, but it is a good aircraft and it is not built to win dogfights. For that they have the F-15I.
It is built for stealth with tons of brains.
After the bugs are cleaned out it will have no match in the skies and that includes the Russians and the Chinese.
Great decision of what is going to be a great aircraft.
i do hope our f-35s have a few surpises that others dont have
SPEAR Capability 3 (aka son-of-Brimstone) should be good. Probably not totally unique but we should get it first: http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/uk-complex-weapons/spear-capability-3/
Also, maybe not what you had in mind, but one thing I will be interested in is how much more “sovereign” our F35s might be vs other countries i.e. how self sufficient we are to service and repair them and maybe even do local enhancements. This is clearly something the Israelis are giving a lot of attention to.
I sometimes worry that we didn’t get enough benefit from being the sole Tier 1 partner with the USA. I know there was a big fight early on about us getting eyes on the source code and we threatened to pull out of the project if we didn’t. Who blinked on that one, us or the US? If we are the only nation outside the USA that has access to the source code then that’s unique and potentially very useful/reassuring. Also I hope we have as much in-country facility for servicing etc. as possible.
I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t get the final assembly facility for Europe (it’s in Italy). I have a suspicion that engine servicing might be elsewhere in Europe too.