On June 11 the very first production-standard F-35B - a new vertical-takeoff "jump jet" fighter built by number-one U.S. defence firm Lockheed Martin - took off for its successful maiden flight. "Relaxed," is how test pilot Graham Tomlinson described the brief sortie.
The test flight marks a major step forward for one of history's most expensive - and, for manufacturers, potentially most lucrative - weapons program. The F-35B is one of three broadly similar fighters being developed by a U.S.-led partnership of 11 nations. Lockheed Martin might build as many as 3,100 F-35s costing more than $300 billion.
Some analysts predict the F-35 will dominate the $15-billion-a-year fighter market for decades, overshadowing rival fighter designs from established aerospace firms in the U.S. and Europe - and from one upstart alliance of Russia and India and junior partner Brazil. But problems deep inside the F-35 program might open the way for the competing designs. The implications are particularly weighty for the Indo-Russian team, whose new fighter could, under the right circumstances, really shake up the world's combat aircraft market.
But in the fighter business, the barriers to entry are unusually high. The design expertise is stretched thin and political considerations often trump flight performance and even price. Most importantly, fighter development is pricey: the American F-22 program, predecessor of the F-35, has cost some $60 billion for just 200 airplanes. Talk is cheap, but airplanes are expensive - and so far the Indian-Russian plan is mostly talk.
Still, increasing Indian confidence in research and development, plus Russia's economic resurgence on the back of high oil prices means the Indo-Russian "PAK-FA" fighter (that's a Russian acronym for "Advanced Tactical Frontline Fighter") just might be capable of exploiting recently deepening chinks in the F-35's armor. If so, Russia and India might reap benefits beyond the revenue for its aerospace industries. Fighters have a way of forging and reinforcing political and military alliances that are about much more than mere airplanes.
One thing's for sure: PAK-FA's potential for success is directly linked to F-35's potential for failure.

F-35's Flaws
The F-35 variant that made its first flight in June - the B model - is designed to take off and land vertically, making it suitable for flying off of small amphibious assault ships. The U.S. Marine Corps, the Royal Air Force and several European air forces want the F-35B to replace old Harrier jump jets.
But the flight involved only "conventional" takeoff and landing - nothing vertical about it. The F-35B's sophisticated second engine that provides the vertical capability still isn't ready for testing. The delay is only the latest setback in the 11-nation F-35 program.
It was launched in 1999 with the goal of building around 3,000 F-35s for U.S. forces alone, plus hundreds for allies, but rising costs (due to design changes and raw materials shortages) have forced the customers to slice their orders by a quarter. A shorter production run saves some late costs, but divides the fixed development expense into fewer units, thus further increasing the "unit cost" to around $100 million. One solution to the price jump has been to slow down development. Entry into service has been pushed back to 2012, two years later than originally planned.
The core F-35 customers - the U.S., the U.K. and Israel, especially - haven't really wavered on their commitment to the jet, but in light of cost and schedule problems, some potential customers - and indeed some F-35 partners - have started looking elsewhere. Denmark and Norway, despite investing more than $100 million apiece in the F-35, both have considered a version of the Swedish Gripen. South Korea and Japan have mulled developing their own new fighters. Even Australia, a long-time buyer of U.S. jets, hedged its F-35 aspirations with a last-minute buy of an older fighter design, albeit another American one: the F/A-18F from Boeing.
To be sure, the most likely airplanes to benefit from the F-35's problems are European models that are just now entering service, or should in a few years. These include the Typhoon built by the Eurofighter consortium of the U.K., Germany, Italy and Span; the Gripen and the French Rafale. But India's and Russia's PAK-FA could score big, too.
Partnering on the PAK-FA
Russia has been trying to design a new fighter for nearly 20 years. The country's current in-production fighter, the heavyweight Su-30, is based on an airplane that debuted in the early 1980s. It's still an impressive performer and an export success - China and India are the major foreign customers - but no design lasts forever. Plans for successor fighters from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s fell afoul of the post-Soviet economic chaos. But even today's booming Russian energy economy probably can't support a brand new fighter design effort all on its own.
Enter India. Despite recently purchasing and license-building Su-30s and approaching a decision on a new 126-aircraft fighter buy (contenders include a new version of the old MiG-29, an evolved F-16 from Lockheed Martin plus Typhoon and Rafale), India still needs more fighters to fill out its 32 frontline squadrons. Rather than join the F-35 program, New Delhi last year inked a deal with Russia to co-develop PAK-FA. Russian firm Sukhoi is the lead design agency, with India providing heavy financial support and design advice. The agreement is part of a larger military-technical relationship involving 200 programs with a combined value of some $20 billion through 2010.
The aircraft, which Sukhoi refers to as the T-50, is intended to duplicate the F-35's radar-evading performance. First flight of the Russian version is slated for 2009. But since no prototype has been unveiled as of June 2008, that date seems unlikely. The Indian version, slightly modified from the T-50 baseline, is supposed to fly in 2012 and enter widespread service around 2015. Russian officials say PAK-FA will cost just $80 million apiece, around 20 percent cheaper than the F-35.
If PAK-FA ever does take flight, it could signal a major shift in the global fighter market, for it might, in theory, offer a high-performance aircraft to countries that for political or financial reasons are unlikely to seek, or be granted, F-35s or contemporary European aircraft. For years, the developing world has made do with older Russian and Chinese fighter types. When Venezuela, flush with oil money, went shopping for new fighters a few years ago, the Su-30 was the most modern thing available.
India has a tradition of straddling the East-West divide, and the country's involvement in PAK-FA continues this trend. But it's entirely possible that New Delhi will balance the pro-Russian sentiment inherent in PAK-FA involvement with a pro-American decision on the 126-fighter buy, in which the F-16 is considered a serious contender.
Fighter Politics
Still, PAK-FA could cement emerging alliances of countries sceptical of U.S. and European hegemony, much in the way that Western fighter programs have reinforced NATO and other U.S.-led alliances. The early version of the F-16 were co-produced by The Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey and South Korea, exported to dozens of other nations and is the centrepiece of a pooled fighter fleet operated by the Dutch, Danish and Norwegian air forces. This fighter "commonality" facilitated both international training events and coalition air campaigns over Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The F-35 will take that a step further, according to Richard Aboulafia from Teal Group, a consultancy.
"U.S. fighter export success should have a halo effect for other systems," he wrote in 2005. "U.S. fighter clients are more likely to ally their defence industries with U.S. companies. They are likely to stick with U.S. training, doctrine, sensor data and other U.S. weapons systems. By operating U.S. airplanes, their militaries are more likely to be interoperable with U.S. command, control, and communication systems. U.S.-built export fighters help build a case for multinational and U.S.-operated surveillance aircraft fleets, such as AWACS and Joint-STARS. Indeed, the F-35 was designed to take maximum advantage of all available external data. Given this, the F-35 can almost be regarded as an industrial policy."
PAK-FA might function in the same way, boosting the Indian and Russian arms industries and effectively challenging the West's near-monopoly on large-scale, international air warfare. Brazil's decision in April to help fund PAK-FA development is an early sign of the latter effect. With Brazil on board, PAK-FA's stated $20-billion development price tag is divided evenly between the three partners. (Some analysts believe the true eventual cost will be much higher, but in any event PAK-FA is likely to cost less than the F-35.)
Russian participation in a Western fighter program is a political impossibility, but India, considering its alliance with Russia, the U.S. and Europe, had a choice. That India decided to pursue the PAK-FA with Russia instead of casting its lot with the F-35 signals New Delhi's intention to keep the U.S. at some distance, friendly but wary.

A Grain of Salt
But all this hinges on the PAK-FA actually getting off the drawing board. Several Russian fighter programs have faltered since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Russia has fared just as badly in commercial aviation projects. It's telling that some Russian authorities continue to insist that PAK-FA will fly in 2009, while others have said it will be years later. Regardless, the design is as close as one year to a first flight, and no one in the press has glimpsed a single piece of hardware associated with PAK-FA - possibly because none exists, and the program, if it ever does come together, will do so years late.
India's track record on indigenous weapons development is no better. The Arjun tank has spent more than 20 years in development and is now obsolete before even entering full-rate production. Due to a lack of capacity in domestic shipyards, the Indian Navy continues to rely on old Russian designs and second-hand ships from the U.S. India's home-grown Light Combat Aircraft still lacks an engine after decades of design work. The Indian Dhruv helicopter has been plagued by crashes. Granted, India isn't really designing PAK-FA, just paying for it, so maybe New Delhi's poor track record on shepherding high-tech projects is less relevant to PAK-FA than it might be for a purely indigenous airplane.
PAK-FA could signal a turnaround for both India and Russia as aerospace powers, on two conditions: the F-35 continues to have serious problems, while PAK-FA dodges any of its own.

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