Fighter project blow as Britain slashes its order

25 Oct 2010

Source  The Age
Deep cuts to defence spending announced this week by the British government could affect Australian plans to spend billions of dollars on high-tech fighter planes. British Prime Minister David Cameron said this week that the savage austerity cuts would include drastically slashing the number of Joint Strike Fighters to be purchased from the US.
Although he did not specify how many fighters would be cut from the original commitment of 138, experts have predicted Britain could end up buying as few as 40 or even 12.

Australia has said it will buy up to 100 of the conventional aircraft-carrier variant at a cost of $16 billion. The first batch of 14 fighters is due for delivery by the end of 2016, but the project has been bedevilled by cost blow-outs and schedule overruns. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Andrew Davies said the British cuts were not a disaster for Canberra but would cause some consternation.

'It would certainly have less impact on us than if someone had cancelled the conventional take-off and landing version,' Dr Davies said. 'Having said that, it's not great news, as the research and development costs have to be amortised over a smaller fleet.

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