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UK Demands Sourcecode for Strike Fighters
An anonymous reader writes ""The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets"
Lord Drayson, minister for defense procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning."
With all that code, they don't want to buy this plane and then find out that it'll cost them a SIGNIFICANT amount of money later down the road to integrate a new weapons system or sensor onto the aircraft. The US can't 'turn off the software', the software doesn't have a 'Windows Activation'-style system to tell it whether it can run the aircraft or not!
I don't think that the UK has ordered any JSF yet. What they did is pay part of the development costs, in return for the promise of a share of the industrial pie when the plane enters production. Their high level of financial participation was also supposed to buy them some input in the specification and some sharing of classified technologies, but the Americans largely didn't carry out that part of the deal, which has provoked transatlantic tension lately.
The JSF is supposed to equip the RNs future carrier ships around around 2015. However as a response to the US Congress looking at cancelation of plans for a Rolls-Royce engine equiped version of the JSF, the British have hinted that they could very well start developing a naval version of the Eurofighter Typhoon, or even consider the already operationnal naval version of the French Rafale.
The best explanation I've read is that they cannot adapt their weapons for use on the JSF w/o Lockheed/US Govt help. It has nothing to do with the US being able to *turn off* their JSF's.
I've also read that the French giving the Brits more than they were asking for with the design of their new carriers notes a possible side deal, that being them buying French Rafale's. If this is the case, the JSF issue has already been decided, and what we're seeing here is simply public posturing. Never seen a politician do that before :-)
Wrong, Australia was burnt with both the F/A-18 Hornet and F-111.
A Big Deal: Australia's air combat capability:
Countries generally want to be self-sufficient, or at least don't want to be trapped into being dependant on others.
Also important is that instead of the government allowing native defense contractors to take on upgrade projects, we are forced into using (expensive) US ones. So that expense goes into a black-hole, it doesn't stimulate our own economy or develop our own aviation industry.
This is not comparable to desktop software at all.
The issue is very valid. The question is twofold - Is the US willing to fully share ALL of our military technology with any other country during a period of relative peace (even as strong an ally as the UK), and what price are we willing to pay to keep our most advanced military capabilities to ourselves? Security vs. the budget. A military expert will say that it's stupid to spill all your secrets to ANYONE because mere knowledge of a capability is enough to allow an adversary (or potential adversary) to begin defeating that capability. A budget planner will say that without sharing the technology with partners who will share the program costs, we can't afford to build the hardware so those capabilities would remain purely theoretical (worthless).
Maybe it's better to do the basic research ourselves but not go that final step to building the hardware until we actually need to use it. This seems to happen a lot, holding back expensive upgrades and hardware purchases until a conflict kicks off, then funding/fielding the new stuff immediately as the budget expands when a conflict arises. But the JSF is such a massive project, it may not be possible to back-burner the program as a US-only effort. That means we may have to compromise some very unique capabilities in order to be able to actually field them ourselves. Tough choice.
Can't blame the JSF partners for playing hardball though... The JSF is almost entirely software driven as almost every single system is operated via a touch-screen interface instead of traditional switches, so not having the source code means that when something breaks, fixing it is somewhat more problematic than replacing a defective hardware switch. If you don't have the code, you have a really expensive flying Xbox that could quit working without warning and can't possibly be repaired.
You can't even replace busted hardware without the required software, because the hardware is all operated and tested via software. You can't just flip a switch to test the radar, because the switch is controlled by the computer which (should) report system status and troubleshooting data if it quits working.
A sensible approach would be to distribute an export version of the software, but I'm pretty sure that the original contract did not include parallel-but-equal lines of code development. To duplicate a multi-million-line codebase at this stage in the program would be cost prohibitive. You'd think they would have thought of this before... Like 15 years ago...
I wouldn't be so quick to say the russians are not producing good product, one example is the slotback radar in the Mig 29 - it is easily as good as anything built in recent times by any other country. (I'm an ex ELINT weenie so I can speak with some knowledge on the subject)
The Russians are as good as anyone else. This whole stealth thing is rendered fairly useless by using multiple ground receivers in ones radar system anyway.
When Finland bought F/A-18's from USA they were the top-of-the-line planes back then (and they are very, very good even today). Now, fighter-aircraft have a system which transmits data between the plane and the ground and integrates the plane in to the greater whole, and the Hornet is no exception. One of the first things we did was to rip the US-designed system out, and replaced it with a Finnish design, for the sole reason that the US system was just plain inferior.
Europe and their Eurofighter Typhoon? Like it or not, that is a VERY capable aircraft. F-22 might be a bit better, but F-22 also costs a lot more. And according to the only pilot that has actually flown both, they are neck and neck. He does say that F-22 has supercruise, but The Typhoon has it as well.
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Defenseindustrydaily.com had a pretty good article on the situation with the UK involvement on the JSF B variant and how it ties into their carrier project. The real driving force behind the Rafael deal is the French military. The short version is that since Dassault hasn't been able to find any export customers for the Rafael, the incremental cost has been driven up. As such, they want to find another customer in order to keep the production lines open longer. (Plus it means additional commonality between their carriers)
I don't see the RAAF or Royal Navy choosing the Rafael, it's half a generation behind the JSF and it also means having to add catapult and arrestor gear to their next gen flatop.
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
If you have to criticize the French, you should at least pick a different subject. Here is the beginning of the Wikipedia article -- and I can confirm most of it, since the cooperation described was well known in France at the time:
/.
French president François Mitterrand gave full support to the UK in the Falklands war. As a large part of Argentina's military equipment was French-made, French support was crucial. France provided aircraft, identical to the ones it supplied to Argentina, for British pilots to train against. France provided intelligence to help sabotage the Exocet missiles it sold to Argentina. In her memoirs Margaret Thatcher says of Mitterrand that "I never forgot the debt we owed him for his personal support...throughout the Falklands crisis". Sir John Nott, who was Secretary of State for Defence during the conflict later acknowledged: "In so many ways Mitterrand and the French were our greatest allies".
Sad to see traditional knee-jerk anti-french feelings are alive and well on
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Well, yes:
"One advantage of having flown the Eurofighter, General Jumper said, is that it allows him to get first-hand knowledge of technology U.S. allies use and to see how America's handiwork stacks up. He said he believes the two aircraft are running neck-and-neck, but America must always be vigilant to ensure it stays on the cutting edge of aviation technology."
So he clearly disputes your claim of "they are not neck and neck". What you are doing is that you are looking at some paper-specs. He has actually flown both. Have you flown either of them? No? Then what makes you the expert on this field?
I don't see any indication of "F-22 is better than Typhoon" in that quite. I see him saying that they are two different planes with different design-goals, so comparing them is difficult.
Two F-15's tried to ambush Typhoon during joint exercises. The Typhoon outmanouvered them both and shot them down. Of course, it wasn't 5:1 engagement, but it was an engagement where the F-15's started from behind the Typhoon, and the Typhoon-pilot didn't even know that they were planning to ambush him.
Of course you can find individual mareas where F-22 is better than the Typhoon, and vice versa. Typhoon has superior man-machine interface and the AA-missile being developed for it is clearly superior (faster, longer range, more agile) to the AMRAAM that is used in the F-22.
What is this, a pissing-match? I quoted a pilot that has flown both. And he said that they are "neck and neck" (of course there are differences, since they have different design-goals). Then some Random slashdotter pulls some specs and claims "no, he's wrong. Just look at the specs!". While F-22 is usually placed before the Typhoon in AA-effectiveness, it should also be noted that F-22 costs over twice as much as the Typhoon does (F-22: $152M, Typhoon: $74M)
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Weapons are by no means that standardized. Britain, France, Germany and some other NATO countries still develop their own missiles, and also various electronic and intelligence-gathering equipment, which is equally important.
The USA doesn't really like NATO weapons programs unless it can supply the weapons itself; its attitude is fundamentally protectionist and contains a lot of "NIH" syndrome. It has, for example, pulled out of the development of the ASRAAM missile and substituted its own AIM-9X.
For the UK, not having the source code might not only mean that it cannot integrate its own weapons, but also that it cannot sell its products to other JSF users. For example, ASRAAM has been sold to Australia for use on the F-18E. If JSF is a closed system, the USA could lock out any such competition and force buyers to purchase everything from US suppliers.
If that sounds paranoid... US officials have occasionally admitted that one of the goals of the JSF programme, at least it multinational aspect, is to drive other suppliers of combat aircraft out of business and ensure for the USA a monopoly on the supply of advanced defence equipment.
Of course one of the other reasons is to make foreigners pay some of the bills for US weapons development. The system is charming: participating nations have to pay a large fee upfront for allowing their industry to compete for JSF contracts. Then they are sold downrated equipment that is not as capable as the F-35 as operated by the USAF, USN and USMC (if it ever gets that far). One of the reasons the UK wants the source code, I assume, is that it wants to ensure that its aircraft will not be downgraded too much. (Nobody would take Washington's word for it... not any more.)
For the UK, JSF will be a bad deal. If the two planned RN large carriers are indeed completed, there is no real reason left to buy the F-35, and the British government may indeed be looking for a way to cancel its commitment to JSF.