I'll start off with a point that Richard raised, and that is the reality that aerospace threats today are a system of threats. In other words, we have to get out of this mindset that somehow dogfights and individual capabilities of the airframe we're talking about is what is going to give us security as we engage with the enemies we will be engaging with in the future.
We need to have the ability to converse with all sensor capabilities. In other words, if the fighter can actually see the enemy that it is trying to take out, in today's warfare environment it's probably too late. You're probably already dead at that point in time, given what missile technology, surveillance and sensors are now doing.
In other words, it's all about having that domain awareness. That's the strength that the F-35 brings to the fight, and this is why people like the Finns are going for the F-35 rather than the traditional Griffins or the Swedes' materiel that they go to. You have to know that in terms of the ability to win in an aerospace fight, you need to be able to anticipate what your enemy is doing, and that means you also have to have missiles that can reach that range—we start talking about a system—and you need to be able to keep your aircraft airborne. One of the things we haven't talked about is the fact that modern-day air-fighting requires tankers to a degree that we always forget about; it's the unglamorous part of air power that we need for the procurement system.
Once again, when we look at the Danes and at the Finns, what they both started with in their processes was not so much “what's the airframe?”, because, to be frank, the Finns wanted to stay with the Swedes—they like that relationship—but that they recognized the growing aerospace threat the Russians are bringing with their hypersonics, with their fifth-generation fighter capabilities that they bring to the battle, so they in fact had to have a system that was based on the pure protection of Finland and Denmark.
You get that solved—that you are in fact responding to a threat—and that speeds the system and focuses the mind incredibly. We don't seem to see indications of the political interference once that decision is made. Now, of course, what we see is that there is even more urgency for them to acquire this capability.