Rest here:Updated Dec. 5 at 8:04 am ET with comment from the UK MoD
BELFAST — In a rare joint appearance before lawmakers, top United Kingdom defense industry officials this week disclosed troubling issues affecting some of the Royal Air Force’s most expensive aircraft programs.
At the Defence Committee hearing Tuesday, a top Lockheed Martin executive, for instance, suggested the British government was purposefully delaying delivery of 47 F-35B aircraft, though it wasn’t immediately clear why. Separately, supplier issues have forced Boeing to delay E-7 Wedgetail Mk1 Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft deliveries from 2023 to 2024. That means the RAF faces a three-year fixed wing airborne early warning capability gap.
The Airbus A400M Atlas transport aircraft also suffered from a number of technical problems in 2022, which Airbus UK director of military affairs Sir Kevin Leeson referred to as a “regrettable collection of discoveries.” Those problems have been overcome, the company said, but on the same day a government watchdog revealed the MoD had ditched a plan to purchase extra A400Ms because it couldn’t afford them.
Taken together, the problems of the three aircraft acquisitions show how the RAF continues to struggle with generating new frontline capabilities in a timely manner and against a backdrop of menacing Russian and Chinese threats. Should issues with the E-7 in particular fester, the public will grow to wonder how well the British air force would be able to see an attack coming.
On combat air matters, the decision to slow the pace of F-35 deliveries was revealed by Paul Livingston, chief executive of Lockheed Martin UK.
“Just to be clear it’s not our deliveries that are slipping, it’s when the MoD are choosing to take their options in those [current] production lots,” he said. “That has been a change.”
Livingston offered no explanation about why the MoD made the decision, but “affordability” has since been clarified as the cause.
“We remain committed to procuring 138 F-35 aircraft” said a UK MoD spokesperson. “Tranche 1 remains on track to deliver 48 F35Bs by 2025, where an adjustment to deliveries was made in 2020. This was due to affordability when set against investment in other capability priorities across the equipment programme.”
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Breaking Defense understands that the second tranche F-35B order of 27 additional aircraft is expected to be completed in 2033. Should those deliveries first start in 2026, after tranche 1 deliveries end in 2025, an average delivery rate of less than four aircraft a year would follow.
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Those financial pressures have for some time led to analysts questioning if an original commitment to procure 138 of the fifth generation fighters will be honored. In his testimony, Livingston referred to the first batch of 48 fighters to be delivered.
“At the moment the UK has taken the decision to take its near-term purchases and spread them out further. That is part of the 48 already on contract, so those delivery dates have gone. We were expecting eight, eight and nine [UK aircraft] in the next three [production] lots, but it is nowhere near that,” he said.
A spokesperson for Lockheed Martin confirmed in a Dec. 1 statement to Breaking Defense that a total of 30 F-35B aircraft have so far been delivered to the UK with a further seven due for delivery in 2023. The remaining 11 will follow in 2024 and 2025, according to the spokesperson. The spokesperson did not share a specific delivery schedule for 2024 and 2025, but a breakdown of six and five aircraft per year would fit with Livingston’s assertion that the rate of delivery is being slowed down.
“As those lots get negotiated with less fees per lot, that may alter the price of the [F-35]B,” Livingston said of a second tranche UK order. “I can’t say to what extent it will alter the price because it will depend on volume and [orders from] other [F-35]B customers.”
Livingston also revealed that the MoD and Lockheed Martin UK have already made a “handshake agreement” on the follow on F-35 order, with the two parties specifically discussing production lots 15, 16 and 17 so far.
Despite the fact that London has faced severe financial problems with its F-35 procurement because of increases in US foreign exchange rates and rising costs for weapons integration, Livingston said that the recurring flyaway unit cost for the B variant had gone down by 51 percent since the start of the program and now stands at 39 percent less than the first UK delivery in 2012.
“The program cost is reducing not spiraling” he said.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/12/uk- ... -programs/
