Britain's next-generation fighter program Tempest risks repeating all the mistakes of the country's previous defense projects and becoming an engineering disaster.
This opinion was expressed by military commentator Lewis Page in an article for The Telegraph.
The author writes that the British government is preparing a new defense spending plan that provides for significant cuts due to a lack of funding. Against this background, he believes that the country should abandon the most expensive and least effective programs. One such program, he cites, is the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) – a joint project between Great Britain, Italy and Japan to develop the Tempest fighter.
The publication recalls that Great Britain has previously developed combat aircraft in international consortia - Tornado, jointly with Germany and Italy, and more recently Eurofighter Typhoon, jointly with Germany, Italy and Spain. According to Page, both projects were accompanied by delays, cost overruns and technical problems.
The author describes in detail the history of the “Tornado“ and “Typhoon“ fighters, as well as the strategic flaws in the very concept of their use. Constant improvements and error corrections have led to the fact that the United Kingdom spends huge amounts of money on the operation of very imperfect aircraft, while at the same time having better alternatives.
Page calls the whole story with “Tornado“ and “Typhoon“ “a disaster that is still unfolding“. He notes that an hour of flight time for “Typhoon“, a fourth-generation aircraft, costs £45,000-48,000, while the US F-35A, a fifth-generation aircraft, costs between £25,000 and £31,000 per hour of flight. If the UK had replaced its Typhoons as soon as possible, the US F-35 would have saved £9 billion over their entire service life.
Page believes that the main reason for the Typhoon's extremely high cost is the fact that the aircraft was developed in collaboration with other countries, which complicates both development and maintenance.
“First, we built a plane called the Tornado, in collaboration with Italy and Germany, which led to a costly and prolonged disaster. Then we developed a plane called the Typhoon in collaboration with Italy and other countries. This led to an even more costly and prolonged disaster. Now the UK is preparing to start multinational cooperation again, building a plane called the Tempest with Italy and Japan. What do we think the result will be?“, writes the columnist.