F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft

1) Lockheed Martin’s in their introduction to new joint strike fighter F35 said, “No fighter in the history of military aviation comes close to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter”

2) Experienced aerospace industry leader have combined their engineering and aviation expertise to build this new aircraft. Lockheed Martin as prime contractor together with Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Pratt & Whitney and the GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team has combined their expertise to develop F35, 5th generation fighter and co-financed by Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.

3) What’s new in this F35 fighter?

* stealth capability that is integrated throughout the aircraft with embedded antennas, aligned edges and special coatings and materials.

* meets multiple service requirements with a single-engine supersonic multirole fighter.

* conducts air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions simultaneously.

* carries a comprehensive sensor package that integrates vast amounts of battle space information with network centric capability including space communication.

* Conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) for the Air Force.

* Carrier variant (CV) for the Navy.

* Short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL).

* Off-board sensors and radar-evading.

* Reduce F-35 life-cycle costs while maintaining high aircraft readiness rates.

* Ability to monitor and report its own health automatically.

4) Pricing is affordable for the countries which have financial capability, the F-35A conventional take-off and landing version is projected to cost about US$68 million a piece, F-35B short take-off, vertical landing model, designed for the Marines, would run about US$85 million to US$88 million and the F-35C aircraft carrier variant for the Navy at US$90 million to US$92 million. First delivery scheduled to begin in 2010 and end of its projected service life scheduled in 2065

5) The United States currently plans to buy a total of 2,443 F-35 models - including 1,763 for the US Air Force and 680 for the Marine Corps and Navy together with the projected cost to reach US$299 billion. Singaporean and Israelis has shown interest in possibly buying up to 100 of F-35 aircraft. Japan soon will request pricing and availability information. Hundreds of others may be sold overseas especially to Europe countries.

6) Does Singapore have financial capability to procure the F-35?

6.1. Singapore one of the world's most prosperous countries with strong international trading links and with per capita GDP equal to that of the leading nations of Western Europe definitely do have the capability to procure the F-35.

6.2. Singapore’s GDP (purchasing power parity), $228.1 billion with the real growth rate 7.7% for the year 2007, shows Singapore have the financial capability to plan the procurement for the new fighter aircraft by phase for coming decade. Singapore economy are growing with their export value positive for the year 2007, $450.6 billion compared with their import $396 billion. With the economy in right track the Singapore military strategist are ready to plan the procurement as part of their forward defense strategy. Although the Singaporean do have some other limitations especially to store their air craft domestically but it was not a big issues since Singapore government have bought the large storage area in overseas to store all their military equipments. Even military analyzers believe, US Navy fighter carriers do carry Singapore fighter jet but no one can confirm this information so far. Getting a pilot is not an issue too; they can use the existing and their contract pilot from overseas especially from their defense advisory countries.

7) Will Singaporean intention to procure F-35, trigger his neighbours to spend more on military expenditure?