Anyway, I will not write more about this. As you rightly point out it seems that some people don't "get" the professional angle. I would like to add however that others on this forum (some of them professionals and even moderators) apparantly don't "get" the political angle. Oh well.
V
Let me make this clear, I don't have a problem with the debate - I do have some difficulty with what appears to be a trend on the decision disenfranchised to blame professional decisions made by people on the assessment teams (and that includes the warfighting community who have to use these things) as somewhat not having the technical expertise or technical objectivity to get it right just because hey have not picked a specific platform.
again, my experience with platform assessment in procurement at a number of levels has never been subject to political intervention - and I would suspect that any sniff of political direction to a member of the armed services or defence establishment would see it appear in the press.
Unless every JSF partner to date has somehow managed to be influenced by some political sleight of hand - and correspondingly every Gripen purchase has not - then that would be extraordinary.
Of course politics will have an input, but there are a myriad of reasons why the warfighters opinions, or the technical experts assessments will have greater weight.
As an example, for reasons of political opportunism the F-22 became a political football in australia, the outgoing govt rejected it on advice from the RAAF, the opposition party argued robustly for the F-22 and accused the govt of playing with warfighters lives etc.... funnily enough, when the opposition then came into power, they got the same message from the warfighters - ie we do not want or need the F-22 for our capability matrix. They were then given a more detailed briefing and came out in support of the JSF but still managing to work out how to get a free kick against the prev govts decisions.
In any Govt procurement decision I find it the height of arrogance where people will argue against a team of technical experts who do have access to the classifed assessment material - whereas public commentary is based entirely on released unclassified material - and there is a vast difference, esp when it gets down to ewarfare and sig management issues.
ie, the assessment is done on hard supportable data that is benched against the same procurement/technical requirements provided to all vendors, so that it's an even judgement of like for like capability sets. The opposing politics is based on colour and movement - and dare I say it, unremitting self interest. They do NOT get access to the rated material information because they do not have the clearances. Anyone with a modicum interest in politics has seen that they are just not that good at maintaining secrecy of material provisions when it suits their political needs - but they don't ever get into the nitty gritty because they also know that they could end up in jail for breeching security provisions. So they skate along the edges and cause havoc from the perimeter.
Me - I'l put my faith in the assessment and procurement teams (as they always include the warfighters) over politically driven comment any day of the week. A polluted decision will trigger an opportunity for review - and at that stage the Norwegian opposition (like every other democracy) would nominate especially cleared individuals to review some of the more discrete and sensitive material.
BTW, in all assessment processes, the entire process is subject to review by the stakeholders (the owning airforce) to ensure that the assessment stays on track - and its at regular benchmark periods. So at any stage the "owning airforce" can push the process back on track and make an assessment about whether its been done properly. Most politicians wouldn't even be remotely aware of these restrictions and operational guidelines.
So, I'm more than happy to see quality debate - but when I see commentary that seems oblivious to the external and internal checks and balances, then I see it as ill informed, or deliberately mischievous.
In this case, I also see a strong injection of wounded national pride by some.
I'd also point out that these kinds of posts are discussed by all the Mods when they get "heated". One of us might pull the trigger, but all of us buy the bullets and load them if we pass "strong" comment.
