Norway's gamble

Not especially smart on F-35 program problems, Norway's State Secretary throws one out there for the sheep:

Ingrebrigtsen, however, downplays any concerns. "If you don’t want any problems, you should never buy an air fighter," he said, adding that this is a new project that is breaking barriers — and with that comes a critical eye among skeptics.

Norway, Defence-wide has problems making ends meet. Unit-readiness is a problem across the board.

Yet, they are willing to throw good money after bad in order to play in the greatest Defence Ponzi Scheme of all time.

$11B for 50-some jets.

That could buy and sustain a lot of Gripens; something that actually works and doesn't cost $35,500 per flying hour.

Norway blames U.S. politicians for F-35 problems

Norway has some interesting F-16 replacement challenges.

Their military is struggling to make ends meet with current budgets.

In nearly all operational communities.

Hollow force.

Their rigged decision to go with the F-35 as an F-16 replacement stated that it was the lowest cost solution. Interesting as the Gripen has an operating cost between $5000-$7000 (USD) per hour.

They bought the F-35 Thana-Marketing scheme.

All of it.

Now they say there is room for doubt. Although they do it by blaming U.S. politicians and do not mention that the F-35 program is riddled with engineering problems and has poor project management.

"...the politicians in the United States must stay strong on the programme."

This is right out of the Lockheed Martin play-book: blame the politician. It isn't our fault.

F-35 cheerleaders in the U.S. and Canada have played this card. LM's Tom Burbage played it in front of Australian politicians recently claiming the majority blame with the F-35 program is politicians not handing over the money for mistake-jets on schedule.

As for the drag-chutes Norway needs, they appear in Block 4.

Allegedly.

In other news, Inside Defense (subscription) is reporting that low-rate-production-batch 4 (LRIP-4) for the F-35 will go over cost by $534M.

...a 12.5 percent increase propelled by an estimated $289 million in additional costs to correct deficiencies uncovered during F-35 flight testing, according to the Defense Department.

Not too may years ago, bluster in the F-35 program claimed that modelling and simulation created a new way of doing aircraft development. Where, flight test was only there to verify what they already knew.

An LM-paid marketeer (Loren Thompson) from The Lexington Institute even stated that one of the major problems with the program was the DOD performing unnecessary tests.

Given the lack of F-35 program maturity, I don't think that claim by the faith-based community is valid.

Norway and the F-35--speed or delay?

Interesting with all the happy language about Norway and the F-35.

Norway has reinforced their statements about the F-35 in a new Defence White Paper. Although I wonder how one can speed up procurement much when they are stretching out the time-frame to 2024.

A look at the JSF partner nation memorandum of understanding from 2009 (not long after Norway stated their commitment to the F-35 as an F-16 replacement) shows a significant schedule slip.

Note also that Norway is interested in Block 4 which supposedly will have a drag chute. The early mistake-jet training aircraft won't be of much use.

It will be interesting to see what what kind of money ends up being involved.