Suggestions by president-elect Donald Trump that the United States may review or cut its F-35 joint strike fighter procurement have caused experts to warn it could cause cost blowouts in Australia’s plans to buy the jet.
But the defence industry minister, Christopher Pyne, has said that Australia’s commitment to buy the fighter jet stands despite Trump’s criticism of its cost.
On Monday, Trump scolded military jet manufacturer Lockheed Martin for the F-35’s “out of control” costs and said “billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th”.
The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
The United States air force plans to buy 1,763 F-35 jets; the $379bn program to develop and builder the fighter is the Pentagon’s largest weapon’s project.
In 2014 Australia committed to buy an additional 58 joint strike fighters at a cost of more than $12bn, taking our total commitment to 72 jets. The jets will be delivered from 2018 to 2023 at a cost per fighter expected to come down to US$90m.
Speaking from London, Pyne said the government was “very confident” the joint strike fighter is the right jet for Australia, the US and the “rest of the world”.
“Whether it has been efficiently managed from the United States’ point of view in terms of their cost and delays and so on is really a matter for them and for president-elect Trump’s opinion,” he said.
Pyne said it was “perfectly fine” for Trump to have the opinion the F35’s costs were out of control but Australia was very committed to the project as a partner nation and as the Asia-Pacific hub for the jet.
“It is a long way down the track and obviously a great deal of money has been invested in it.”
The US Studies Centre research director, James Brown, told Sky News that Trump’s tweet was “very contradictory” with promises to restore defence spending before the election.
Brown said it was “overly optimistic” for Pyne to suggest Australia’s procurement of F-35s was not affected by Trump’s commentary.
“The joint strike fighter, without the US, does not exist: the US is buying the greatest number ... if Donald Trump were to cancel that project after January 20 that would leave Australia pretty exposed.”
Brown said if the US downsized its order, that would increase the cost per jet for Australia. He said Australia’s defence strategy had been built around the F-35 and it would be “quite a disruption” to move away from it to buy other models, such as the Super Hornet.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute director of defence and strategy, Andrew Davies, told Guardian Australia that Trump’s comments may amount to “sabre-rattling” to drive a harder bargain with Lockheed Martin and other big defence contractors.
“They couldn’t afford to cut the entire program – the US air force don’t have an alternative in production,” he said.
But he warned if the US cut its order in years Australia is still buying the jet then economies of scale will be reduced and Australia will pay more.
Davies has suggested the US air force’s decision in 2016 to delay acquisition of 45 jets over five years could result in Australia paying between US$150m and 200m for the 30 aircraft it will buy in 2018–21.
Davies added that Australia benefited from being a partner country because its component makers can bid for work contributing to the jet. That is currently worth about $400m to Australian industry, but could rise to billions of dollars if there were an increase in orders for the F-35.
The joint strike fighter project, launched in 2001, has been dogged by huge cost overruns and technical problems that blew out its budget by nearly 70%.
Britain slashed its orders and the decision of the Howard government in 2002 to buy the jet fighter has been heavily criticised as hasty and ill-judged as cost increases, delays and doubts about its capability have mounted.
Problems with the fighter jet have included issues with the radar software and increased risk of neck injury to lower-weight pilots when they ejected from the aircraft. The planes can not be equipped with a operational gun until at least 2019 because software is not available to support it.
Davies said that Trump’s criticism of the F-35 “would’ve been very fair about five years ago” but the program was in better shape today.
He cited increased production of the jets, prices stabilising and coming down, and his assessment that its software problems were “not completely solved but under control”.
