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Joint Strike Fighter takes off |
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The US defence industry has pinned its hopes on the JSF programme, The joint strike fighter (JSF) is the new equivalent to the lightweight fighter of the early 1970s, the low-cost element in a planned hi-lo mix of expensive air superiority and cheap tactical fighters for the USAF and US Navy. The Lockheed F-22 has been selected as the USAF’s advanced technical fighter (ATF), while the Lockheed Martin X-35 and Boeing X-32 battle it out to be selected as the JSF. Although it is being touted as an alternative to the Eurofighter and Rafale, the JSF will be a much less capable aircraft, optimised for an air-to-ground role, with performance characteristics very much like those of the F-16. Not even Boeing or Lockheed-Martin have tried to claim their JSF contenders will be viable F-15 replacements. They are not sophisticated BVR interceptors like the latest European fighters that are rivals to the F-22, and in many ways the JSF should be regarded as a latter-day A-7 Corsair, a superb fighter-bomber and attack aircraft, but not a true fighter at all. The JSF was intended to be affordable and, where necessary, capability is being traded to maintain the low unit production cost of $28m (adjusted for inflation) or $35m for the naval version. The USAF is thought unwilling to acquire the aircraft without also acquiring the F-22. It has expressed a willingness to sacrifice the larger JSF programme if necessary to safeguard the F-22 that it views as a higher priority. The JSF cannot perform the F-22’s missions but promises to be cheap partly because the F-22 exists. The JSF will take advantage of hardware and software developed and paid for under the F-22 programme. The JSF will not have to perform the F-22’s long-range BVR intercept role and so does not need the same high-cost advanced sensors, weapons and systems. The JSF requirement assumes the aircraft will be operating in airspace cleared of enemy fighters by the F-22. The JSF pilot will rely on getting his situational awareness from off-board sensors – F-22s in the area! |
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| This view of the JSF is not one US industry is keen to circulate. The F-22 is too expensive and too advanced for export, except perhaps to a tiny handful of allies, and so the JSF is the only new fighter aircraft programme for US industry to gain export orders, it has no real equivalent to the mid-price, high-capability BVR fighters such as Eurofighter, and yet most potential customers require this level of air-to-air capability. The perception that JSF is a fighter bomber that cannot deal with this level of threat endangers its export chances. Suggestions that the JSF programme promises to produce a latter-day F-16 but definitely not a latter-day F-15, is potentially dangerous. The official position seems to be that Eurofighter and Rafale threaten to give their operators parity with the F-15, and the implication is this level of threat JSF can handle. While this probably isn’t true, it is an argument that has had the might of the US DoD, Boeing and Lockheed Martin behind it, and has convinced some potential customers. The US Navy, for example, has cancelled the Naval ATF with which it was going to replace the F-14 in the fleet air defence role. It now seems the F/A-18E/F and JSF will be the only tactical fighters deployed aboard US Navy aircraft carriers. One can only hope that a strike package of JSFs and F/A-18E/Fs, with no cover from USAF F-22s, never has to penetrate airspace defended by Eurofighter Typhoons.
It would be easy to over-exaggerate the low cost/low capability character of the JSF, because the likely size of the programme, tremendous advances in lean manufacturing and spin-offs from the F-22 programme will help contribute to a low unit cost without any detrimental effect on capability. There is little doubt that the JSF will represent very good value for money out of the box and it must be remembered that having acquired a low-cost platform from what could be a huge programme, some operators may then dramatically upgrade the aircraft in service, adding some of the avionics, weapons and capabilities it currently lacks. Having bought the JSF in large numbers on price, upgrading it to meet a new assessment of the threat might well represent the best way forward for some operators. An Anglo-American programme to produce an advanced short take off/vertical landing (ASTOVL) aircraft was launched in 1987, with a requirement for a stealthy, supersonic, F/A-18-sized STOVL multi-role fighter/fighter-bomber with a range of 450nm and a 6000lb warload. Various companies submitted different proposals to meet the loose ASTOVL requirement, but the programme foundered because of funding and technical difficulties. For many years the only possible US customer for the ASTOVL aircraft was the US Marine Corps. The US Navy wanted the F/A-18E/F and the AX, while the USAF’s F-16 replacement, the MRF (multi-role fighter) was to be stealthy above all else, and STOVL capability was felt to be an irrelevance.
Political and strategic changes in the early 1990s forced a greater concentration on costs and value for money, and separate USAF MRF and USN A/F-X programmes were cancelled in 1993, giving way to a common joint advanced strike technology (JAST) programme. The Pentagon’s JAST and DARPA’s CALF were merged to form the basis of what became the JSF, capable of deep-strike missions but cheap enough to be a genuine F-16 replacement, with a STOVL version for the USMC (600 aircraft) and RN, and a longer-range CTOL version for the USAF (to replace 2000 F-16s) and a related variant for the US Navy (300 aircraft) that was persuaded to swallow its previous insistence on twin engines. The programme office decided to fly and competitively evaluate prototypes of two of the three contending designs. These three were Boeing’s design, Lockheed’s aircraft and a joint effort by McDonnell Douglas. Northrop-Grumman and BAe – the latter being viewed as a dream team because it encompassed BAe and McDonnell Douglas’s STOVL expertise, Grumman’s all-weather and carrier know-how and Northrop’s stealth experience. JAST officially became JSF in mid-1996, and the programme office selected the Boeing and Lockheed designs for evaluation. The dream team design was not chosen because it was similar to Lockheed’s design, but more risky, whereas Boeing marked a very different approach. Boeing and Lockheed were awarded contracts to produce two concept demonstration aircraft (CDA), Boeing taking the X-32A and Lockheed’s becoming the X-35. The aircraft will be tasked with proving the competing design concepts, and demonstrating STOVL and low-speed carrier-landing characteristics. The winning team will be the one promising the best balance between capability and cost, not simply on the basis of performance and capability. Boeing and Lockheed JSF prototypes are in final assembly, and should fly this year. No match for euro fighters The JSF promises to be a vitally important industrial programme but the emphasis placed on meeting absolute and inflexible costs may reduce the resulting aircraft’s capabilities to a point at which it will be unable to match competing European fighters, while changing requirements may undermine customer commitment to the programme. Some American commentators have made much of the prospect that whichever company loses the JSF competition will be out of the fighter business, perhaps forever. There is already a real possibility that the JSF will not match the latest European fighters on capability or price. If this happens, the JSF could still be abandoned altogether meaning the entire US aircraft industry could find itself locked out of the fighter business for years to come. © |
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Clockwise from upper left: Concept illustrations of the Lockheed Martin joint strike fighter variants for the USAF, US Navy, UK Royal Navy and US Marine Corps. |
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