Er, no. I am capable of respecting people whose opinions are not congruent with mine. You might try it.

FBW – I don’t see any R&D in there. Logistics sustainment & support are in support of “government non-recurring engineering”, which sounds like “support for integrating the aircraft and ancillary equipment and getting it all working”. Operations costs can’t legally be charged to procurement accounts, and nor can R&D.

Again, some of these things might change in absolute terms as the program matures, and might change in relative terms as the rates increase, but so far they have not.

I don’t know what Rafale contract you’re talking about, so you’ll need to provide a few facts there also.

The contracts listed by Briganti are all formally attached to procurement of specific LRIP lots. There is no R&D or upgrade work involved (or anything else in the R-1 budget). If you can find similarly specific numbers for Rafale, go ahead.

Sprey/Wheeler are not “all F-35 critics” – they just get quoted a lot because of the peculiar conventions of U.S. media.

Loo – I’m sure you would also condemn F-35 supporters who constantly cite a projected URFC for airplanes delivered in 2019 (a cost for which nobody can actually buy an airplane) as if it was some real and comprehensive figure.

Let’s correct a few misapprehensions around here.

First of all, Steinitz is Minister of Intelligence, so I think we can safely assume that his clearances are higher than those of Aviation Week’s journos. He is also no dummy and a combat-wounded veteran.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Steinitz

We don’t know what points he was using AvWeek to support, but it is a reasonable assumption that he was doing so to provide unclass corroboration.

Second, anyone who spouts guff about how armed forces are always right about their choices and then blabbers sentimental tosh about their being the people “who send men and women in harm’s way” needs to read history. It was the professionals who wanted XB-70, TSR2, P1154, Future Combat System and a fleet of DDG-1000s, to name but a few.

Steinitz’s belief appears to be that the F-35 is eating too much money for what it is worth, both with regard to developing direct countermeasures and Israel’s other needs (such as billions for a counter-tunnel system and the continuing demands of missile defense). Making such strategic choices is above the AF level.

Third, it matters not a flying fig how many gigs of F-35 data you have. If you have not sought and received access to high-level information on alternatives you are still incapable of making an informed choice. Canada did not do this at all before 2010.

Bager – Do you have a source for that?

What has actually happened is that every LRIP batch so far has had multiple contracts attached to it for both P&W and LM. It’s extremely difficult to sort out how these relate to the announced contract price or to the numbers in the procurement budget.

I thought that all the advanced simulation and modelling meant that real-world testing was now validation. Or maybe I was listening to some crazy drunk rambling.

The actual reasons include: TBTF programs with no competition can take as long as they like. Risk is studiously avoided in test programs (partly because there isn’t a Cold War on). The customer has gotten smarter about buying untested systems (think of how many -1 Navy airplanes or A-model AF aircraft had long careers. Not that many). In some cases, not-very-good designs.

The “keeping teams of .gov bean counters employed” canard is an excuse for poor industry performance. “Government bean counters” in the form of the FMV pretty well run things in Sweden, and do a good job.

It has been a rough few weeks for our crowd of hyperventilating critics…

Seriously, who out there predicted that the jet would not make it on board? Nobody, of course, but the fans consider it victory when an utterly fundamental test point is completed a mere four years behind the 12/07 schedule, and a record-shattering period of time after program start and first flight.