{"id":184837,"date":"2012-01-07T19:39:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-08T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/07\/the-euro-crisis-starts-to-hit-defense-contractors\/"},"modified":"2012-01-07T19:39:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T00:39:00","slug":"the-euro-crisis-starts-to-hit-defense-contractors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/01\/07\/the-euro-crisis-starts-to-hit-defense-contractors\/","title":{"rendered":"The Euro Crisis Starts to Hit Defense Contractors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aviationweek.com\/publication\/awst\/loggedin\/AvnowStoryDisplay.do?fromChannel=awst&amp;pubKey=awst&amp;channel=awst&amp;issueDate=2012-01-09&amp;story=xml\/awst_xml\/2012\/01\/09\/AW_01_09_2012_p22-411336.xml&amp;headline=F-35+Under+Fire+In+Italy\">Italy is having 2<sup>nd<\/sup> thoughts about its JSF purchase<\/a>\ud83d\ude41<i>paid subscription required<\/i>)<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>The Italian government is ushering in a new round of defense cuts in which, for the first time, the fate of Rome\u2019s participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will be seriously threatened.<\/p>\n<p>The newly launched defense review not only has sweeping implications for Italy\u2019s defense ambitions but also rings in a further belt-tightening in Europe among countries that are just beginning to come to grips with the scale of their budget and debt problems. Spain, where a new conservative government is grappling with greater-than-anticipated economic troubles, may follow with budget reductions. France is also expected to scale back defense spending after presidential elections in May.<\/p>\n<p>In Italy, much of the work on the military review remains to be completed. Nevertheless, a sharp reduction in the number of F-35s Italy will buy is virtually certain, military officials say. At least a third of the 131 fighters slated for procurement will likely fall under the budget ax, with some minority parties arguing for an outright program termination.<\/p>\n<p>Rome is one of the largest international buyers of the F-35\u2014after the U.K. drastically cut its procurement objective in its 2010 spending review. Italy plans to spend \u20ac13 billion ($16.7 billion) to buy and sustain both the F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing and the F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing versions, though it has not ordered any aircraft yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I wonder how people are going to start feeling about the austerity fairy fixing everything now that it&#8217;s defense spending on the block.<\/p>\n<p>The folks who endorse austerity always seem to think that it&#8217;s just things like healthcare and the social safety net that need to be cut, and that somehow, the bloated derfense procurement programs all over the world will somehow continue apace.<\/p>\n<p>I think not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It looks like Italy is having 2nd thoughts about its JSF purchase\ud83d\ude41paid subscription required) The Italian government is ushering in a new round of defense cuts in which, for the first time, the fate of Rome\u2019s participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program will be seriously threatened. The newly launched defense review not only &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1038,1008,984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-budget","category-defense-procurement","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}