You hear a lot of “the Global Combat Air Programme’s going to cost just as much and take as long as the F-35 has, so why bother?” Based on the work I did for TRILLION DOLLAR TRAINWRECK (now available from the Big South American River place), here are 10 areas where GCAP (or any other new project) can do much better than F-35 without little or no effort.

• Bill Sweetman

1. Get the avionics right

17 years after Saab started talking about partitioning mission systems from vehicle management on what was then Gripen NG, the verdict is in: that’s how it’s done on the B-21 and Rafale F4. The F-35 and F-22 system, where everything is peripheral to a big central computer, are like home computing in the 90s, when installing a scanner or a new program almost invariably caused something else to stop working. The process of fixing that is “regression testing” and it is slow, painful, and costly.

2. No STOVL scars

It’s not surprising that the F-35 gets called Fat Amy. The operating empty weight is about the same as the Buccaneer, the weapon bay is close to the same size, and the F-35 is 12 feet shorter. That’s because of a hard limit unwittingly set by the STOVL requirement and the designers of an earlier supersonic STOVL fighter, the Hawker Siddeley P.1154.

The story is too unbelievable to not be true. The dimensions of the long-cancelled P.1154 were used to size the elevator on the Invincible class, in anticipation of a follow-on to the Sea Harrier; JSF was originally intended to fly from the Invincibles until the RN got new carriers, and by the time this plan was abandoned it was too late to change the JSF designs.

STOVL also meant a single engine, and the JSF programme’s prejudice against a separate lift system meant it was a big and heavy one. (There is a square-cube principle in engines – smaller engines tend to have higher thrust/weight ratios.) In the F-35 it is installed so far forward, to put the lift vector from the main engine in the right place, that the weapon bays are splayed outwards, and all the system runs are wrapped around the big, hot engine tunnel like a nest of snakes.

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Even two F414s – a 1990s engine with 1980s technology – would weigh less, cost less, and produce more power than the 6500-pound F135, and a twin layout logically allows system runs and weapon bays to be grouped on the centerline.

And nothing does quite as little for good area ruling and transonic acceleration as stuffing something twice the size of a tun barrel of ale right behind the cockpit.

3: No carrier scars

It was the Navy’s requirements for carrier approach speed and controllability that drove a conventional quad-tail layout for the JSF. Without that limit, or the need for a folding wing, team GCAP has gone for a big transonic near-delta wing, reminiscent of the original Boeing JSF or the never-built F-16U.

4. Otherwise sensible requirements

Like any “supersonic” fighter except the MiG-25/31 or the YF-12, GCAP will do most of its work in the high subsonic realm; and the value of high-energy maneuverability is likely to decline in the long-term. Hence, again, the delta and a relatively thick section – which will accommodate an absolute bleep-ton of JP.

5: Design to play well with others

Design to play well with others, including unmanned systems and in-service fighters. U.S. Team Stealth resembles Capt. “Aarfy” Aardvark’s fraternity in Catch-22: “We used to ostracize everybody, even each other.” The F-22 and F-35 datalinks are secure but highly classified and too different to talk to one another. That. Is. Not. Good.

One easy role for collaborative unmanned systems is as magazine extenders. That may mean that GCAP doesn’t have to accommodate as many internal weapons itself.

6. No pet rocks

U.S. Air Force Research Lab loved all the Joint Integrated Subsystem Technology widgets that ended up with electrohydraulic actuators the size of lawnmower engines and their own cooling circuits. Other tech communities were all over the HUD-less cockpit. They and other things infiltrated the JSF requirement and have been nothing but trouble.

7. Security, not insanity

The U.S. can afford (or thinks it can afford) to operate the bulk of its air force under Special Access Program rules, with positive vetting for thousands of people.

Four years before Switzerland is due to get F-35s, U.S. security organizations are discovering to their shock that it is a small country that operates on a high trust level, and that the first planned base at Meiringen is crossed by a public road, and is overlooked at a short distance by a small hotel that until recently was owned by a Chinese family, until the Swiss responded to U.S. pressure, raided the place, and in the time-honored Swiss manner found enough irregularities to send them packing.

One piece of Sherlock Holmes-level evidence that the Chinese were suspicious: they showed inadequate interest in Swiss traditional cuisine. Errm, 90% of Chinese-ethnic people are lactose intolerant, and have you ever done a serious Swiss fondue session?

Keep things secret, yes, but there’s also a need to operate efficiently.

8. Related: sovereignty

A million years ago, British defense minister Paul Drayson (below) said the country might quit JSF if it didn’t get access to source code that would allow it to update mission data files and integrate new weapons on its own. In 2009, the U.S. made it abundantly clear

that wasn’t going to happen. UK MDFs are now updated in a U.S.-owned vault at Eglin AFB, and the integration of Meteor and Spear 3 (which, quite coincidentally I am sure, compete with weapons made by Lockheed Martin and RTX) is six years away. As it has been for a decade or so.

A more open policy has already brought Japan into GCAP (I thought that might happen and knew about two other people who did) and will foster success in the long run.

9. Resilience must be built into the programme.

There are going to be problems, but at some point, someone with authority and resources must be ultimately accountable for the schedule and the budget, and that accountability must flow down. A lot of what went bad with JSF (and many other programs) was a result of minimizing problems, and adopting over-optimistic plans to fix them. Another all-too-frequent problem:  people keep quiet about the fact that their part of the project is running late, in the hope that someone else will be later.

Duct tape buys time for a permanent fix. Don’t mistake it for one.

Have a back-up to everything until you have confidence it will work. In this case, Typhoon plus unmanned systems. My principle is always that any strategy needs a Plan B, and Plan B should be better than “so we retreat as far as Smolensk, where we all starve to death in a snowbank.”

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes launches in North America

10. Don’t tell lies

It’s tempting to do it when you’re on top of the world and looking at monopoly status, but when you’re in deep mulligatawny and you need friends, you’ll regret it.