Assembling and Supporting the Joint Strike Fighter in the UK: Issues and Costs

To this point, this analysis has assumed that the United Kingdom will be able to assemble and repair the JSF. There is little doubt that the United Kingdom has the necessary advanced manufacturing capabilities and technical skills. However, other factors affect the decision to locate a JSF FACO and/or MR&U capability in the United Kingdom. One of the most significant factors is the availability for export of critical military and proprietary technical information and tools to accomplish this task.¹ The United Kingdom can do the work. It is not certain that the United States will allow the work to be done there.

This chapter discusses the U.S. policies that control technology transfer to foreign nations and some of the JSF technologies required for FACO or MR&U that may be affected by those policies. We include a generic discussion of the U.S. policies on transfer of defence-related goods and technologies to foreign nations.

Because of the unclassified nature of this report, we did not address the exact nature of the specific technologies whose export will be controlled. In our research, we relied entirely on unclassified data, including those available in the open literature, received from U.S. government sources, and provided by Lockheed Martin. Based on these sources, we know that one of the classes of technology of particular concern is that relating to the stealth, or low-observable

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