Belgium reportedly picks F-35 to replace F-16 fleet

Indeed, not the first time the French have messed up a bid by trying to work around the system. They screwed up the chance to sell Rafale to Morroco for similar reasons.

You have missed the story of the Belgian ground crew firing an F16 cannon by mistake and destroying another F16 in the process… Baffling but true.

A question is are they serious about forming an EU army, which would distract from NATO IMO. In which case more commonality of kit would be important; not that it isn’t in NATO either.

(Chris H) expat – I think I was replaying at the same time as you but I believe my comments below also answer your comments as well. I think Typhoon is now dead. Long live Tempest.

(Chris H) – D’UH! Placed the ‘5th Gen manufacturing knowledge’ in the wrong list – should have been with the LM connection. Apologies.

Time to increase spending on Tempest and get a demonstrator in the air as soon as possible, 2035 is a long way off with plenty of possible conflicts on the horizon.

Testing the airframe using currently available parts from Typhoon might be possible?

We really are the worst and most naughty of all European states aren’t we? 🙂

It just makes you wonder when you hear about all this guff that we are so dependent on the EU and we can’t do anything on our own how so many of us can be so deluded. It makes you wonder how much we have lost. Imagine if all those jobs had been here. It really upsets and angers me.

Yet the French always go their own way.

I’m with Chris on this. All Gen 4 /4.5 fighters are The “Flying” Dead. They just don’t know it yet. With rapidly increasing world tensions, all the major tier one militaries are pushing to develop and field not just Gen 5 aircraft but pushing ahead much more quickly on the Gen 6. The U.S. certainly is.

My position is, it may seem contrary to what I just posted above, the Gen 4.5 aircraft can still complement the Gen 5 and should be bought in greater numbers to save money and to fill capabilities not requiring the Gen 5’s. The buys on Gen 5 should be pulled back to also save money and to model the force on the projected numbers needed in a mixed Gen 5 / 6 fleet.

All out development and fielding of the Gen 6 should be absolute priority with the goal of entering service in the late 2020’s / very early 2030s. By this time, the Gen 4.5 will not be effective platforms in any first tier peer on peer conflict and can be sold to countries not requiring such a high level of capability. production of all Gen 4.5 aircraft should cease by the early 2020’s to free resources and facilities for retooling and training for Gen 6 production. Gen 5 manufacturing will keep the lines “hot”. JMHO

Hope this post made sense…

Cheers!

The Italians are good partners.

Davey. If you read his comments over many, many months as I have you can see he has serious issues with the UK. Always putting down and highlighting deficiencies.

I don’t put Pkcasimir in the same park as other well known trolls on this site but he clearly has issues.

Can’t disagree with those impressive developments. It’s more about overall costs. Britain and Italy, with a few middle Eastern customers, are not going to buy enough aircraft to make it viable to invest sufficient resource to make tempest credible. How do I know because typhoon shows what will happen. Except this time round it’ll be 300 rather than 600 as no German, Spanish or Austrian buy. Not enough investment to max the tech to make it compete with the us offer and certainly not at a comparable price.

My last post was in reply to the individual who stated the UK has neither the know- how or funds to build tempest

David, You are Talking out your Bottom here, Chris H Is Owning you on this. He was after all, a Legend In his Time.

David Anthony Simpson, (Anthony D ? ) are you Serious ? no seriously old man, Are you ? Have you no Idea nor recollection of our once mighty superior Royal Navy ? , Sorry old man but I’m properly disillusioned by your latest non factual and somewhat Wide of the mark Comments here. Christ Bud, You really do post some silly stuff on here and a few other places too , maybe you ought to step away from your Laptop and let Chris H get on with running this site Eh ?

Agreed. I still think more balance is needed to create some mass.

The carriers are supposedly going to have a 50 year service life so perhaps there might be a chance we could do another Harrier and sell a VSTOL Tempest to the US? But that’s so far in the future who knows where we will be? 🙂

The French were never partners in the QE Programme. This keeps getting repeated but is wholly untrue. The French and British briefly investigated a joint carrier programme in the 90’s. Those discussions then came to naught. The UK then went on to launch CVF. Thales became the ‘Lead’ in the design, but this is Thales UK in Bristol and there are strict ‘Chinese Walls’ in place with all IP UK owned and controlled. The French later had a change of heart and paid the UK £100m, non-refundable, to study the design with the intention of building PA.2. The UK made it abundantly clear that they would not be making any design changes to accommodate the French. The French then realised they couldn’t afford to progress and left.
Thats all..

Didn’t Germany just sell a load of Leopard 2 7A’s to Qatar. I can’t stand the hypocrisy of it all. You either deal with hard line dictators or you don’t. Pretending to be outraged or care about human rights just because the media runs a bad new story doesn’t full anyone.
At least Trump is honest and says they safe guard 500,000 American jobs so I’m not going to do anything.

Well Japan has a stated aim to develop an new fighter to replace the F2

http://www.defenseworld.net/news/23482/Japan_to_Replace_F_2_Fighter_Aircraft_with_Locally_made_Jet#.W9Ca3UxFw2w

There’s no issue with partnerships, all part could also be produced domestically

Japan is currently going through what Europe did 50 years ago.

Japan was the cutting edge technology and manufacturing country of the world, but as it’s middle class expended, it couldn’t keep up with prices from other less advanced countries on manufacturing prices, and whilst it was good with electronics, it wasn’t so good not so good with coding, and so lost out to China and the US.

Japan has lost its cutting edge and it’s esomony is suffering for it. At the same time,.it sees China as this big threat and is effectively entering into a cold war with them. Great way to hide the underlying problems with the economy just like Europe did. Huge miltiary build up to look relevent on the world scene.

History tells us what will happen next, which is the reality that they can’t afford the military and it has to be cut to pay for welfare and other benefits that come with a declining manufacturing country and expending middle class. Especially in a country where land is insanely limited and so making manufacturing hugely expensive on top of wages.

Germany was really the only country that managed to avoid this bullet, since they effectively got ‘lucky’ with a huge surge of cheap labor from the east when it unified, in a period where every other European countries failed.

The US is surviving on the tech bubble, but I fear it will burst eventually, should we keep going down the current route of lack of interest in security and privacyx forcing people to think twice about using them

Good morning Chris,

As usual you make good points here, Japan does tend to stay close to the U.S. in terms of policy, weapons, and technology buys. The JSDF purchases U.S. weaponry most the time when imported technology is needed. Especially in naval and air systems. As you pointed out, the JMSDF is closely integrated with the USN (not just with 7th Fleet) and their combat suite procurement in particular reflects that.

To understand this, you have to take a look at the history of post-war Japan. Remember, the country was run by the U.S. Military until the early 50’s and it wasn’t until 1971 that the island of Okinawa was returned to sovereign Japanese control by the U.S. In fact the country’s current constitution was written by none other than General Douglas MacArthur and staff.

As the JSDF was founded and grew, it was only natural that the systems and weapons would be procured from or license built from the U.S. We were / are the only game in town in that respect. They certainly aren’t going to go with China (the two countries have despised each other for centuries – China has tried to invade it several times and one failed invasion destroyed by a hurricane spawned the Kamikaze (Divine Wind) myth). The Japanese in turn had their go in the 20th Century and behaved poorly to say the very least. Hence the anger at the country to this day by Chinese and Koreans.

Japan absolutely relies on the military alliance it has with the U.S. to ensure its safety and to backstop its military (as does Australia / New Zealand / Taiwan (a special case I won’t go into since it would take a book) / Singapore / etc) It only makes sense that you have compatible systems with your biggest buddy. In the Pacific, that big boy is the USN. The procurement of weapons systems and especially the combat suites needed to interoperate with the USN and USAF across the region reflect that.

Having said this, you need to actually put the U.S. out of the picture for a moment and take a real look at the stand alone capabilities and weaknesses of the JSDF and the JMSDF in particular since it’s most critical in maintaining control of Japanese waters and territory. It is widely acknowledged as either the the 3rd or 4th most powerful navy in the world depended on who is doing the analysis. In terms of sheer numbers, its escort force alone outnumbers the major combat units of almost all other individual countries.

That’s not counting its attack submarines and “Helicopter” destroyers which add another 3rd to the fleet in size. Another 48 combatants are being added in the next decade and they will surely add a CVA capability as well, they have no choice and they’re getting the Japanese public accustomed to it by floating the possibility of operating F35Bs off the Izumo class which were actually built with them in mind. The 10,000 ton + Atago and Maya classes are cruisers in reality and the Maya class is being built to serve as the AW commanders for upcoming JMSDF carrier groups. The service is already responsible for protecting its SLOCs out to 1000 nautical miles. To do this effectively in this day and age you need carriers. Period

It’s interesting to note that they are reportedly exploring acquiring a Wasp ( probably America) class LHA type to quickly upgrade their amphib capability in the face of their most pressing security need – which is over the southern islets being contested with the Chinese. All propaganda aside, those land features were unclaimed and uninhabited till Japan claimed them IAW international law in the late 19th Century – leaving a marker etc. China, as usual, believes that they can bully Japan into giving them up. Japan, however, is obviously not the P.I or Vietnam which can be overwhelmed by sheer Chinese muscle. The enmity between the two dictates that Japan will never back down over this.

In large part due to PRC actions Japan has begun to address the number 1 limiter of its armed forces – its constitution – which restricts the JSDF to “defensive” weaponry with short ranges and not designed for offensive actions – carriers for instance. PM Abe has been slowly chipping away at this by various means to “reinterpret” the constitution (much as the U.S. Supreme Court does on a daily basis) and recent weapons procurement of long range cruise and anti-ship missiles reflect that. The country retains a strong pacifist streak for obvious reasons but that is changing rapidly in the face of Chinese threats. Their public is much more supportive of operating normal armed forces unrestricted by the terms of the U.S. written constitution from another era as the region becomes more dangerous to Japanese interests and memories of WWII fade.

Japan is capable of producing pretty much any type of weapon but the cost of designing and building weaponry and aircraft solely for the use of the JSDF is prohibitive but was the case until recently when the country when fiscal reality took hold and it loosened its weapons export controls and began offering some overseas – the failed Soryu tender to the RAN is the best example. This same reason is why Japan buys either U.S. built or, usually, U.S. designed and license built systems. It just costs too much to do otherwise for the relatively limited number needed. You will continue to see a transition of the JSDF from a defensive only structure to a normal armed forces structure capable of both offensive and defensive operations. There is simply no other choice for the country in light of the PRC threat.

Sidebar: IRT to the 787, it’s interesting to see just how many countries are involved in building its major components. The UK among them. Not being familiar with the whole story of the wings, it’s a usual process to put out tenders for this type of thing, can I suggest perhaps the UK was just outbid by Mitsubishi?

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/20/a-wing-and-a-prayer-outso_n_811498.html

Finally (that’s what your thinking :D), going back to Japan’s reliance on the U.S. for protection. It is the realization that the U.S. is increasingly overstretched and capricious that is driving Japan to “stand on its own two feet” per say. The country realizes that as PRC power increases to meet parity with the U.S., it needs to take steps to ensure that in the case of a U.S. retrenchment towards its alliance (not going to happen, Japan, like the UK, is the cornerstone of U.S. allies in that region) it will have to take matters into its own hands to ensure its security.

That means one thing. A nuclear arsenal. It’s a little know fact that Japan as early as the late 1960s explored acquiring a nuclear capability. The idea was dropped in the face of stiff American opposition but the idea never went away. You must keep in mind that Japan has the world’s largest stockpile of plutonium not under the control of the IAEA. It has a proven space launch system in its H II series (and what is an SLS with a warhead on top vs a payload?) and it certainly has the technology to either very quickly build (or more likely assemble pre-made components) nuclear weapons. Most analysts in this area believe that this capability could be achieved within a year – 6 months in an emergency.

This would be China’s worst fear and ironically it is the PRC’s actions which are driving the Japanese to this conclusion – that they will need an independent nuclear force. This conventional buildup is merely a sidebar to this final outcome. Until then, the status quo of a Japan operating under the U.S. nuclear umbrella will continue until the country reaches the conclusion that the arrangement no longer guarantees its security. At that point they will go their own way. Japan – Like Britain is not continental Europe – is not Asia and the real reason why the U.S. guarantees Japanese security in this manner today is less a junior / senior partnership than an attempt to prevent Japan from loosing from lockstep with American hegemony and developing an independent path for the country – which will invariably include a large and independent nuclear force not under U.S. control…

Sorry in advance for any typos!

Cheers!