Attempting to ride two planes

I really have no idea why Britain is funding both the Eurofighter Typhoon project with our European Buddies, as well as the F-35 Joint-Strike Fighter project with our cousins across the pond (the yanks). Why do we need two very similar next generation aircraft?

Anyhow, the Eurofighter project has been storming ahead with actual flying jets but the Joint-Strike Fighter project has almost broken down in acrimony, mostly because the yanks are not quite up to speed on the meaning of 'joint'.

Show me the effing code

The problem is that the yanks will not give the British the source code, so Britain will producing pretty little planes that will not be able to fly. Recently Lord Drayson, the Minister for Defence Procurement, was suggesting that if the brown stuff hits the fan, we could make more Eurofighters instead. To do this they would have to make a converted version of the Eurofighter that is able to be catapulted off a small aircraft carrier, some other countries in Europe are said to be interested in this option too.

You can read all about this in the transcript of the relevant select committee.

Incidentally, the Joint-Striker fighter uses a Unix-like operating system, often used in planes and battleships and so on, called LynxOS. This system claims to have Linux compatibility, which is allegedly one of the key selling points, as code developed on Linux should run directly on LynxOS. Read more about the use of LynxOS in the Joint-Strike Fighter at this article from LinuxDevices.com.

We do not actually want the F-35!

US military planes tend to be quite specialised, for example, the American's F-22, which is a hit-and-run specialist, stealthy moves up to an enemy plane for a quick backstab and then disappears before the enemy can get a return shot. (The thief character in role-playing games).

While on the other hand, the all purpose Swiss-army knife that is the Eurofighter is designed to be the workhorse of European Air forces that cannot afford to run the same multitude of planes as the Americans. The Eurofighter can do dogfighting, bombing, spying, scouting, wireless routing and Beowulf clustering.

The role of the Joint-Strike fighter seems to be a bit more nebulous. Not quite an American specialist or a European Jack of all trades. This begs a number of questions, firstly what is the F-35 actually for, and why can't we save the UK's share of the initial design costs, which come to over £2 billion, for something else? A few new major hospitals, a tax cut, social housing, abolish University Tuition fees and prescription charges. With the left over change we can make the catapult for the ship take-offs.

We should just all just save the money and concentrate on getting the Eurofighter right. Eurofighters are much cheaper and have a longer service life. We should take all our ideas from the JSF and funnel them into an evolving Eurofighter project. If the yanks won't share their "Linux compatible" set-up then we can use real Linux instead to provide an upgrade for the Eurofighter.

Some other European countries are expected to buy in to the F-35 with another £2 to £3 billion. So there is plenty of money to redirect to get our own plane up to spec AND spend on social spending. No-one loses.

Here is a nice photo of the Eurofighter flying over East Anglia.

[Update 2007, they have re-organised their site, here are the pictures.]