Italy's F-35 program is in trouble

(Italy's aircraft carrier Cavour, in its natural state)

According to what JSF News has found, the Italian aircraft carrier Cavour has only performed 2 missions in the last 5 years. Both of them humanitarian and largely paid for with public funds for want of defense dollars.

(UPDATE: from reader-- "As far as Cavour missions I can think of two since October of last year:leading exercise Brilliant Mariner 13
http://www.aco.nato.int/saceur2013/blog/protectors-on-the-deck.aspx
- currently underway, the Cavour left on 13 November and is making a full circumnavigation of Africa. )

(original source: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2014/03/14/f35-napolitano-prepara-il-colpo-di-mano-per-mettere-il-bavaglio-al-parlamento/913475/ )

Italy is currently in bad budget times. They have a choice of funding combat aircraft that actually works  (the Typhoon), or funding that and trying to pay for aircraft that don't work: the F-35.

Originally Italy wanted to buy 131 F-35s. A mix of the conventional landing and take-off F-35A and the short take-off and vertical landing F-35B for their carrier.

Over time, that F-35 requirement fell down to 90.

It may be reduced to 45.

If they ever get the jet in flight ops for the Cavour, you end up with 10-16 aircraft on a cruise. That is assuming all of the ship's facilities can handle it, such as deck reinforcement, sound and vibration mitigation and many other things.

To date, no one has demonstrated how to change the $27M-each F-35B jet engine aboard ship.

When all this stacks up: big budget problems, Italian politics, the good capability of the Typhoon, Italian politics, massive weakness in F-35 ability, Italian politics and Italian politics, you can see that Italy, Italian Defense and defense industry, may never see a working F-35 in service.

Unfortunately, the country of origin for the word "Ponzi" is Italy.

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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie


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