'Replica' Becomes Vital UK Bargaining Chip In F-35 Development

It's the latest in fighter technology. It's fast, it's sleek and it's invisible to radar.

And It's British

The British Ministry of Defense (MOD) and BAE Systems spent four years and more than £20 million (approx. $38 million) on the project, which culminated in the successful testing of a full-scale model in 1999.

Codenamed "Replica," was part of a long-standing government strategy to ensure Britain's strong hand when it comes to negotiating collaboration agreements with the US on highly-sensitive defense programs.

The existence of the program, revealed in this week's issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology, will have played a large part in helping the MOD secure a lead role for British companies on the US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

One British defense analyst said: "The UK's rationale has been to look to partner with the US on major defence programmes because alone it could not achieve anywhere near the scale of cost savings. But to open the door, the British have to be able to say: 'We can do this anyway so if you don't want to give us access to your technology we'll do it ourselves.'"

The F-35, which will use some stealth technology to reduce its radar profile, is the biggest single British military aircraft project in history. The MOD is buying up to 150 of the jump-jet version of the aircraft but, depending on the success of the F-35, as many as 3,000 could be built.

Holding Back?

Because agreements between the UK and the US, defense agreements with the US, which gives it access to more sensitive Pentagon technology than any other country, the MOD had to withhold its own research into stealth technology from parallel work it was conducting with European countries on the next-generation combat aircraft.

Replica was never designed to fly, but it incorporated a lot of features of a real stealth aircraft, including an internal weapons bay. Much of the airframe was made of carbon-fiber composite tiles, unlike the aluminium in most aircraft.

FMI: www.mod.uk