The Fat Amy follies continue apace.
We discussed this recently and it looks more and more likely that the hapless and increasingly Orwellian Starmer junta in the UK may be reneging on plans to buy more than the present complement of shoddy F35B aircraft they currently have.
They have started to weigh priorities to shift to a new joint fighter venture with Japan and Italy.
It will be as disastrous as the F35 and the stumbling efforts of the USAF to come up with a sixth-generation fighter aircraft.
I am amused they are all that concerned for having carrier-borne aircraft since both of their carriers are so unreliable, they dare not leave British territorial waters. The Royal Navy has a consistent problem with engineering casualties or breakdowns that are only exacerbated by employing an aircraft of questionable readiness.
The Global Air Combat Programme (GCAP) is now set to create yet another chaos avalanche of bad engineering and a failure of martial imagination tumbling through the treasuries of western aligned nations. Historians will have a hell of a good time documenting the absolute dumpster fire of Western military aviation in the 21st century.
The Labour government may force the MoD to decide between the F-35 and the future Tempest, the planned sixth-generation fighter that is part of the British-led Global Air Combat Programme (GCAP). The UK is working with Italy and Japan on the GCAP, which like the United States Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program calls for a system of systems that could include a manned fighter supported by multiple unmanned aerial systems (UAS) or drones.
The Starmer junta is reconsidering the deal and may not approve the further acquisition.
Original plans called for the UK to acquire 138 of the fifth-generation multirole fighters – which would include the air wings for its two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers – but to date, just 48 of the aircraft have been ordered, with 34 delivered. One of those was damaged beyond repair while operating from HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Mediterranean in 2021.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/uk-could-back-out-f-35-fighter-program-212474
This little gem stuck out at Parliament with a subtext I will tease out for you:
Speaking to the U.K. Parliament’s Defense Committee back in September 2020, Nick Childs, Senior Fellow for Naval Forces and Maritime Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said he considered a number “significantly higher” than 48 F-35Bs would be required to meet the ambition of 24 jets available for the baseline Carrier Strike mission. Taking into account training and other demands, a figure of 60-70 jets would be reasonable, Childs contended.
https://www.twz.com/air/united-kingdoms-f-35b-fleet-plans-under-threat-as-defense-cuts-loom
Mr. Childs is much more prescient than he let’s on because when you have a 30 percent and deteriorating operational readiness rate and acquire 100 F35Bs, you will be lucky to have 30 flyable aircraft.
Soon enough, the defense mandarins will finally recognize that the era of manned fighter aircraft is over but only after setting hundreds of billions of dollars on fire.
And I remind you, the British win all of their military victories in spite of their best efforts.
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me.
