Re: Japan Military News Thread
Initial Operational capability for the F-35B is still on track for 2017. At that point they will begin placing them in regular service onboard the vessels. Short of something failry extreme, it will not take them 13 years from that point to replace the 137 Harriers. I expect it will be quite a few years earlier than that and that they will be replaced at an accelerating pace throughout that time frame.
We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out...but the price is dropping, the tests are proceeding, planes are being delivered and flying, and my own experience in dealing with these types of prgrams tells me they are very well on track, despite the numerous naysayers (in and out of the service by the way) who never wanted it to succeed in the first place.
And in the mean time, they continue to produce F-35s of all varities and turn them over to active squadrons in the services, including the US Marines.Well , according to the article , required modifications are neither trivial nor cheap . In fact , looks like just one ship of Wasp-class was modified so far and some may not be modified at all :
Initial Operational capability for the F-35B is still on track for 2017. At that point they will begin placing them in regular service onboard the vessels. Short of something failry extreme, it will not take them 13 years from that point to replace the 137 Harriers. I expect it will be quite a few years earlier than that and that they will be replaced at an accelerating pace throughout that time frame.
We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out...but the price is dropping, the tests are proceeding, planes are being delivered and flying, and my own experience in dealing with these types of prgrams tells me they are very well on track, despite the numerous naysayers (in and out of the service by the way) who never wanted it to succeed in the first place.