(Times paywall) Britain spends billions on flawed F‑35s
< or how Britain "wings it" again* and wastes £12 billion on dangerous kit from the USA* >
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/britain-spends-billions-on-flawed-fighter-jets-qrtj95kvh
The full scale of problems facing the F-35 Lightning II:
• The “stealth” jet cannot transmit data to British ships or older planes without revealing its position to the enemy. 
< 
NO, actually this could kill many UK service personnel >
• Broadband on Britain’s principal aircraft carrier is four times weaker than that for an average UK household, severely hampering the jet’s abilities.
• A test pilot had to land in almost total darkness after night vision failed in the plane’s £309,000 helmet.
• Its £12 billion software system is vulnerable to cyberattack and Britain will not be able to test its security independently.
• The defence department in charge of computer networks essential to the plane’s operation must find savings of £400 million this year.
• Falls in the value of the pound against the dollar have exposed British taxpayers to more than £1 billion in extra costs.
....
The US-led F-35 programme has ballooned into the most expensive weapons project in history.
Britain, which has pledged to spend more than £12 billion on the new jets and aircraft carriers by 2021, is to buy 138 F-35s.
The first tranche of 48 will be the B variant — the same type that the US had to ground last month because of software glitches.
The first squadron will arrive at RAF Marham next August and will be deployed on HMS Queen Elizabeth, the first of two new carriers, from 2020.
Insiders fear that a failure to invest in military communication will diminish one of the plane’s key selling points:
its ability to share data from advanced sensors with older aircraft and the carrier.
HMS Queen Elizabeth has a broadband connection of only eight megabits, four times weaker than that for an average British household.
With such low bandwidth, the F-35 will not be able to send data on enemy threats back to ground forces while in flight. 
.....
General Sir Richard Barrons, who was in charge of the military’s information networks until last year:
“You need enough capacity to communicate with all of the other platforms: ships, aircraft and headquarters.
[The Queen Elizabeth] may look impressive as a ship but technologically it’s stuck ten years ago.” < already ?? >
....
He said it was “utterly pathetic” that Britain had prioritised “metal and platforms” over “warfare in the information age”.
....
Yet defence staff have failed to buy a critical system enabling the plane to “talk to” other aircraft while maintaining stealth capability.
< cost savings, of course. Someone maybe got a promotion out of this ? >
....
To communicate, it has to switch to an unsecured wavelength called Link 16, which could give away its position to an enemy 
< facepalm >
....
“The F-35 can transmit in Link 16, but that is quite easy for adversaries to detect.”
Upgrading satellite broadband across the RAF and navy, and buying technology to enable the F-35 to communicate securely, would cost up to £1 billion,
Sir Richard said.
Without this, Britain may as well “have recycled some old Harrier jets and put them on the carrier, because you would just have a fighter.” < and saved £12 billion >
The F-35 is still in development, but the number of faults identified by independent experts has worried many. “It is unbelievably abnormal to have this level of problems in every aspect,”
Pierre Sprey, a US aviation expert, said.
“Manoeuvrability is appallingly bad.
It has terrific problems trying to fly fast at low altitude.
It overheats and when you detect the overheating you have to open the bomb bay doors to cool the missiles that are inside
The logistic computers are a horrible mess and it is crippling the ability to be able to move the aeroplanes from one airfield to another.”
The F-35-B version bought by Britain appears to cost about £153 million each [instead of the £77-100 million published]
.....
Such figures are estimates as the full contract terms are not public.
“No one outside of the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin knows what the F-35 actually costs, and even then the Pentagon can’t really say,”
The MoD said that it was committed to the F-35, which was “on time, within costs and offers the best capability for our armed forces”.
It said all the issues with the plane were under “active management” and that as issues are found, solutions are developed.