"Italy may Ditch the F-35 Coot" Topic

Due to spiraling costs of the F-35, and the need for their country to save money, and use it for other purposes, Italy may cancel their reduced number of "Coot" fighters.

link

"The troubled F-35 is seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over early cost estimates…".

Originally, they had planned to purchase 131 aircraft, but then scaled that back to 90, due to the escalating costs of the ill-fated program.

""Even in Washington they know the F-35 is a fighter that cannot fight, but in Italy we're still trying to buy it," Nichi Vendola, head of SEL, told Reuters, referring to the technical problems that have dogged the jet".

With their economic issues it would seem a no brainer.

Don' t worry about those i***ts of the 5 star movement .

They won' t do anything…

It will work like every other complex DOD project. Numbers cut while costs rise and the services keep adding new bells and whistles. Eventually it enters production and costs drop as numbers rise because the replacement program goes in the tank coming in even more expensive and slower to deployment than the one before. The F-16 was called lawn dart with so many crashes from early fly by wire problems and the F-15 was a hangar queen with an awful downtime record. Eventually the F-35 will be the nostalgic program when everyone demands the next horribly troubled program be dropped in favor of buying more F-35's.

The programs that may never work out are the F-22 pilot killer with production stopped no cure may be worked out for oxygen failures and the LCS which will always be too small, too fragile and too under armed and will likely be quietly sold to allies once production ends.

McKinstry is right on here. The number of articles about the Osprey definitely come to mind, but now it is a workhorse for several branches of the military. Same thing with the F-18 when it rolled out with naysayers asking why they needed it when the F-14 was so superior. I'm pretty confident that it will work as advertised, but not every country is going to be able to afford them.

Osprey is only in service with USMC and USAF Special Operations Command.

USN and USAR are not getting Ospreys.

As for F-35, it's main problem is skyrocketing costs.

but not every country is going to be able to afford them

This is a huge blow for US military presence and exports.

In the past the USAF offered a variety of combat aircraft to allow saturation of the market:

F-5E/F – poorer airforces with limited capability
F-16 – light to medium capability aircraft with great affordability.
F/A-18 – medium capability aircraft for operators requiring dual engines.
F-15 – top of the line aircraft for wealthy airforces or countries with high level demands (e.g Israel).

The F-35 is basically an F/A-18 level aircraft, albeit with an F-15 level price.

The F-35 also has a lot more high level security compponents that will be difficult to export to some users unlike say a downgraded F-16 (e.g. Iraq).

Hence the US is going to lose a massive amount of market share. This includes smaller markets in Africa (some F-5 sales), South America (F-5 and F-16) but also larger markets in Middle East (Saudi Arabia is already banned from F-35) and Asia (countries such as Indonesia which could afford F-5 and F-16 but nothing higher level unless they brought Russian).

Impact of this is:
1. Less return on investment in terms of high value defence exports. Obvious impact on terms of trade
2. Less control over other countries defence
3. Less control over defence sales – currently any sale of 2nd hand US equipment has to get US approcal.

"Hence the US is going to lose a massive amount of market share. "

indeed. The Swedes with Gripen could do quite well out of this. Gripen would seem to fit the Italian air force requirement quite well. Of course its no good for the Navy – although there has bene some work done on a CV capable Gripen the Cavour hasn't been designed to cope with non-STOVL aircraft.

The problems are around development costs, not that actual cost of building the aircraft. Seems to me we and the developer should absorb most if not all of the costs.

The F-35 functions in more roles than the F-18, or it is supposed too. Hence the spiraling costs of development.
If I were Italy, I would rather have an F-22 but my understanding is that it won't function on an aircraft carrier? Not sure why or if they need the capability (Italy) but I would lean more towards the F-22 if at all possible. The F-22 is a true game changer.

Does Italy still operate carriers? Do they need the multi-role capability of the F-35 which is rapidly approaching the costs of the F-22?

The navalized Rafale might fit the Italian carrier requirement. Plus, it's a much more beautiful bird than the ugly duckling Lightning II.

I wish we'd just purchase either Eurofighters, or Gripens.

Both are excellent designs.

For the navy, and marines, they could go with some aged Viggens, though I suspect all those have been scapped. Seems like a perfect design for them, for the 21st Century, with proven, superb STOL performance, a hefty weapons load, and datalink from the 1960s, to fight in the "modern" era.

I suspect the F-35's cost will exceed those of the F-22, when it's finally rolled out, for far less capability, at an exhorbitant price, given historical precedents.

I don't think the US will export F-22s (even if they were still making them), so that's not really an option for anyone.

F-22 is out of production.

It was also restricted in terms of export.

Finally F-22 has extremely limited A2G capabilities and isn't even cleared to use the vast majority of muntions in NATO arsenal.

Hence it's no good for Italy.

Italy should stick with it's Eurofighters and then buy some more Tranche 3 full multirole birds for it's Tornado/AMX replacement.

The problem with the F-35 is a problem some companies have. Its quite common. You ask the CEO what should we focus on? He says "Focus on Everything". It is a strategy that never works and the F-35 became the project that had to be the best fit for everything. There are 3 models of the thing that do incredibly different things. Anyone could have predicted this disaster. Unless they are dumb enough to be elected, it seems.