I often wonder if rather than spending vast sums of money on one aeroplane, would they be better off building a fleet of simpler aircraft like a modern Spitfire as a mobile missile platform. I mean, do they really need to use a £150 million plane to take out a guy on a moped?
I bet you could build hundreds of such aircraft for the cost of one modern jet, fit them with small heat seeking missiles big enough to take out a Land Cruiser, guns for strafing purposes and away you go. Simple to fly, cheap and easy to train people as well. Job jobbed!
Tally Ho!
Guys on mopeds aren't really the issue. Yes you could have several cheaper fighters for the same cost as a single F35 - the desert in Arizona is full of A-10s that could be had for relative peanuts. But, on day one of a conflict against anyone with a half decent air defence network (Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, France
) an A-10 wouldn't last very long at all on it's own.
The US have a multitude of different airborne platforms ranging from cheap A-10's through F-16, F15, F18 to the very expensive stealth F-22 and F35. The Fighters can be used as Bombers in most cases, but range and payload are limited. If they need more range/payload then B-52, B1 and the mega expensive B-2 come into play.
The UK doesn't spent the money on defence that the US does, so we currently have Tornado and Typhoon to do everything. Typhoons are £80 million each. Tornados are old and due to be out of service next spring to be replaced with the new F-35's, which come in at £100 million ish. This is a very good tactical mix for a day one conflict, but expensive for dealing with mopeds and Toyotas.
So the question isn't really "do we want F-35", it's "do we want sovereign day one conflict capability". If the answer to that is yes, then F-35 is the best there is for the job given our budget and we would be letting down our service men/women if we didn't purchase it.
Also remember that about 15% of every F-35 built is UK sourced, so it's a valuable income source for foreign sales too. It's likely that around 3000 jets will eventually be built and $100million * 3000 * 15% is a shed load of money for the UK economy.