On price alone, the international partners dont give a dam what the final number of f-35's are built for the usa or how much over-run there is in testing, it has no effect on their price.
Its about reinforcing that CAS is a capability - not platform centric
except the smaller assets don't have loiter advantages, there have been basing issues, carrier air has also not been able to assist due to range issues etc....
I think we are essentially agreeing with each other.
A commendable and very cerebral post.
I think so..
Because people like the Bill Sweetman and JWCook's of the world make poorly thought through and flippant "you can just bolt that stuff onto any jet but then you'll have the kit AND the airframe performance" type comments which are just rubbish, but they're easily digestible for the general populace and hence believed...I think so..
I wasn't arguing that heavies were superior at CAS, just that the capability was no longer platform centric anymore
in respective scenarios, any given platform will demonstrate superiority, but if they're wired up and into the operating picture, then they enable those assets way beyond what they could do on a single task construct.
For all the naysayers on JSF I struggle to see what they don't comprehend about the system warfare element and how and what this plane brings to the battle/tactical picture as a systems enabler in its own right is quite significant.
the changes to the COP picture alone are huge....
I don't think many people are disputing the F35 will be an excellent aircraft, the electronics will clearly be the best on the battlefield (although of course, the F22's could have been upgraded instead). Some of the issues are:
I guess I disagree here straight away. The F-22 is an architectural orphan, it was never built along a COTS distributed architecture construct, and the Block 1's are worse. The cost to bring them up to a JSF distributed/COTS architecture for number of frames would have been not just once across the fleet, but a minimum of twice across the Block releases. Integration is a killer. A few of us in here have direct experience of the pain that integration brings to weapons systems, let alone platforms
The F-22 was also not seen as a volume priority once the threat visibly changed - the USN went through similar analysis with ASW (in fact everyone delaminated their ASW capability once the Soviets collapsed) The air superiority element required for continental europe no longer existed - the advantages of force compression provided with european/NATO co-basing also became less of an nissue and is fundamentally irrelevant around containing china - the force structure and posture to deal with china is different - its not an air war construct, its a maritime constraint. If anything the US needed more subs, and if you look at the changes in the last few years, the Virginia build program has had more diligent attention paid to it
I've never agreed with single points of failure, credentialed engineers would also have the same view..
If anything at a minimum it serves to keep the vendors honest, there are just as many people involved militarily anjd politically who are unhappy with Boeing dominance as they are with Lockmart dominance...the emergent electronic and systems threats are far more complex though, as soon as you retro fit your assets you're remove inherent capability, when you build an asset your bulding in effect 45 years out. ie 10-15 years before IOC and at least 30 years on sustainment. You can't seriously build latent generation warfighting capabilities and expect it to be competitive in 10-20 years time. the threat and technology has advanced and you're left with sub-par capability. It makes no sense to build at parity technology levels
when you build a platform part of the process and validation is to build against vignettes and scenarios which test the requirement, in the long run, one would need to see what the USMC had in their vignettes - but you also need to recognise that the USMC have independant capability - and that they also in effect run their own carrier groups albeit ARG/ESG's. That means that the USN in effect has 20+ carrier task forces to field, thats significant redundancy of force and effect
Again, the frame is limited and was never designed around a distributed architecture and the flexibility that some COTS capability brings, as much as I support mixed fleets (for a variety of reasons) the sustainment and logistics costs rise dramatically - in the current economic climate, mixing the platforms would cost more. The $3bn per year that it costs to support a carrier group would go through the roof if sustaining a mixed air fleet, and the mission flexiblity would take some severe hits as instead of weapons space you're now carrying mixed fleet spares for 2 aircraft types. Fuel and weapons takes a hit
It all depends on how you define cost. The flyaway cost may be $65 million, but the actual cost including all the development, is now closer to $155 million per aircraft:
Rising F-35 costs not too shocking
http://real-agenda.com/2011/08/11/u-s-national-debt-at-214-trillion-not-14-trillion/
U.S. Defense Budget Cuts Could Save Trillions, And the U.S. Economy | Death and Taxes
No it isn't. It is very well defined as to what this cost it is: flyaway cost. Which includes the cost of integration of munitions. It doesn't include the cost of weapons expended and fuel burnt but what aircraft buy does?
Of course but it isn't rocket science. The big variable issue in sustainment cost is maintenance with lots of new projects promising all sorts of cuts to costs that they don't deliver on. Which usually isn't as bad as it sounds as the costs of maintenance for old aircraft tends to skyrocket, as in the case of the F-111. Aus DoD, the HM DoD and so on do this all the time and they keep coming back to F-35. I wonder why? Its either the Clown Club's grand conspiracy or the F-35 makes good sense.
This is totally wrong. The cost benefit of the Tiger vs the Apache was in claimed maintenance costs. Eurocopter claimed the Tiger would cost half as much to maintain. This has later been proven to be false and the Army is stuck with ISD delays with no long term payoff.
So you are saying defence knew how much the integration cost and what time frame would be for a different EO set up and factored that in from the start and give up the royalties from others to do the same.
:gun
None of this is true. As a level III partner Australia paid 1% of the programmed R&D cost (~$100m) with no obligation to pay more. There is no quarantining from the F-35B and F-35C, we could order these models without paying more to R&D if we wanted. Because of this partnership will also get any FMS purchases of F-35 program products and services wihtout the additional management loading cost. The US does not charge R&D for all FMS deal, they can't as its the law. You only have to pay for R&D if you contract a US company outside of a US DoD program. But in some cases, like 737 AEW&C, they will wear the R&D cost themselves as they want to profit from selling on the product.
The Tiger ARH has exactly the same EO set up as other Tiger HAD helicopters in French Army service. The cost of integrating the Hellfire weapon was a very small element of the program cost and schedule. The delay in the Tiger has been because the entire Tiger program (French and German) has been delayed.
It does have some integration and certification issues outside of the French/German requirements though - if it was just a "batteries not included" issue then people would be happier...
This is my understanding as well.... maybe the US should have OZ buy the jets for the USAF, USN and USMC then buy them back to save on the R&D costs
The cost estimates you are jumping on are far from set in stone. I suggest you have a read of the following balanced article:
Even for international partners where there are contracts, like in Canada, there has been huge debate as to what the price will be. The reality is we simply don't know yet what the flyaway cost will actually be. We also don't know what the total cost will be, or the total cost per unit. We also don't know how many units will be built, and what impact that will have on flyaway (it will impact even flyaway as more units will generate economies of scale) and total cost:
Read more: Moody’s Sees Half-a-Trillion or More in US Defense Budget Cuts | Defense & Security News at DefenseTalk
The F-35 doesn't have shorter range than the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18. The F-35 is designed to achieve a mixed strike, air to air mission with a radius of 600 NM. It is a bit below this (<10%) at current predictions and this radius includes 4,000 lbs of bombs and 500 lbs of ATA missiles and no external tanks for a full LO profile.
Just for clarification here, is that 4,500lb warload internal stores in the bays? I assume it is but I want to confirm because if what you say is true then that's a huge improvement in performance, especially when you consider what that implies for a package with external stores available.