Why Trump’s tweets on US arms industry are pure theatre
US president-elect has been critical of expensive projects such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but he has few options other than to continue buying from the same old firms
US President-elect Donald Trump is already starting to make his mark on national security and defence.
First, he nit-picked over the costs of building a new fleet of Air Force One planes and called for “greatly” building up the US nuclear arsenal.
More recently, he has complained that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) costs too much, instead requesting that Boeing, manufacturer of the rival F/A-18 fighter, “price out” a “comparable” fighter, based on the F/A-18.
The F/A-18 is a good fighter jet – for certain things. It’s good for flying off carriers and for strike missions, and it’s good for smaller countries that probably cannot afford a state-of-the-art fighter like the JSF. But it is also getting a bit long in the tooth: the latest F/A-18 – the E/F version – has been in production for 20 years.
Trump will need more than rhetoric to deal with North Korea and China
If the US military wants to maintain its technological edge against likely future competitors – China and Russia, in particular – then the F/A-18 is probably not the way to go. The F-35 is a “fifth-generation” combat aircraft, meaning it is very stealthy and that it possesses a sophisticated kit of very capable sensors, computers, and software to provide the pilot with a high degree of situational awareness, something called “sensor fusion”.