Finally Some Positive News on JSF

25 Dec 11

Some Christmas Cheer for Australian Manufacturers of Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Components.

Japan has placed an order for four JSF's to be delivered in 2012 with an additional order of 40 aircraft for 2014, with a total of 200 over the life cycle of it's military aircraft replacement program.

Analysts believe a similar order from South Korean to be on the drawing board.

The Australian Defence Force whitepaper has advocated the purchase of 100 JSF's in it's military aircraft replacement cycle.

The JSF project has been troubled for sometime because of a lack of orders, principally following the GFC and European economic crisis, which has seen government's spending priorities turn toward economic stimulus, and social priorities.

Some of Australia's advanced manufacturers, manufacture components for the Lockheed Martin produced aircraft so this can only be good news for Australian manufacturing, albeit too late for Melbourne based Production Parts that was forced to close earlier in 2011 because of the anticipated amount of JSF work, that the company had invested heavily in technology for, just did had not eventuate at the time.

Analysts believe that the Japanese order, and possibly another from South Korea, will keep the JSF production the line operating at a capacity that is expected to reach four planes a month by mid-2012, potentially lowering costs through the increased scale of production.