The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin Corp, its largest supplier, sought on Friday to shoot down criticism of their $299 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the costliest planned US arms buy ever.
Published reports that Russian-built Sukhoi fighter jets thrashed the F-35 in simulated dogfights last month are "just flat false," Air Force Major General Charles Davis, the Pentagon official in charge of the programme, said in a teleconference hastily called by Lockheed to rebut negative publicity at a critical juncture for the programme.
Development of the family of radar-evading, multi-role, single engine F-35 fighters was co-financed by Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway. Each of these countries is within a couple of months to a couple of years of making F-35 procurement decisions, and some people with unspecified "agendas" may be manoeuvring, Davis said.
F-35 competitors include Saab's Gripen, the Dassault Rafale, MiG-35 and Sukhoi Su-35, and the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium of British, German, Italian and Spanish companies. The West Australian newspaper reported earlier this month that F-35s had been "clubbed like baby seals" by simulated Sukhois at war games in Hawaii last month.
Tom Burbage, general manager of the F-35 program for Lockheed Martin, said in the teleconference, "We've been able to put the issue in Australia to bed." He said Australia's prime minister had been among those troubled by the report. Davis countered that the exercise at issue, Pacific Vision 2008, did not even address air-to-air combat effectiveness, dealing instead with logistics issues around the Pacific Rim.
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