Holland's Biggest Opposition Party Doesn't Want JSF

Posted on: May. 2nd, 2006 || Source: nu.nl | E-mail Article | Print Article

Holland's Biggest Opposition Party Doesn't Want JSF

The Netherlands' biggest opposition party, the PvdA Labour party, opposes buying the F-35 joint strike fighter and will cancel agreements that have been made, when it wins the parliamentary elections early next year.

On the 29th of March, the party already requested an official investigation into the program's delays and budget overruns.
The Netherlands, and other participating countries have yet to sign a memorandum of understanding, and opposition to the expensive fighter is mounting in those countries as well.

Britain and Australia have repeatedly complained about the US not sharing technical information. Australia also has older aircraft it needs to replace, but the JSF program is almost two years behind scedule.

Besides the UK and Australia, Norway is having serious doubts about the program too and recently received some interesting offers by both the Swedish, for it's JAS-39 Gripen, and the Eurofighter consortium.

The Netherlands is a thier 2 contributer to the JSF program and has invested 800 millions dollars into the program so far. It plans to replace it's F-16 fighters with 42 to 85 Joint Strike Fighters by the year 2012. The most recent data shows the aircraft will cost the Dutch 44,8 million dollars apiece, while in 1996 it was estimated to cost around $31.5 million.

--original article issued in Dutch only, translation by Air-Attack.com--

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