ELPThe avionics are certainly an advancement, and you could argue the incorporation of RCS reducing features are as well, but the airframe…was Boeing’s wind tunnel and computer simulation equipment broke down that day or something?
Probably somebody that helps cobble together airliners helped out. :diablo:
ELPHere’s a very interesting document regarding figher aircraft prices:
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/dae/articles/communiques/FighterCostFinalJuly06.pdf
Regarding the F-22A, they seem to be slightly off somewhere. The last four Raptors bought (173-176) cost $506.6 million, implying a current procurement price per airframe of around $126.7 million, as opposed to the $156.9 million quoted in the document above. Anyway, if the $112.5 million unit cost for the F-35 the above document comes up with is accurate, then I have to reiterate the intelligence behind eliminating JSF in favor of a lot more Raptors.
I got the budget numbers for those four Raptors from here:
http://government.ihs.com/news-06Q2/dod-acquisition-report-changes.jsp
The real amusing part of their figuring is that the Rafale is the clear-cut winner, having a unit cost of around $62 million for a C model. That’s about half of what the EF-2000 runs per unit. Again, if such numbers are to be believed (these guys are obviously smarter on the financial side than I am, but it helps to look at this objectively), exporting the Raptor makes sense, when you compare the $126.7 unit cost taken from the 4 jet buy and compare it with their $118.6 million unit price for the EF-2000 as paid by the RAF. $8 million per jet extra for a Raptor? I’ll take that any day of the week over an EF-2000 on the export market.
One does have to wonder though, if the Rafale truly is the cheapest per-unit aircraft (beating even Gripen), how in the hell has it failed to win an export order?
There might be an additional billion added to the cost of existing (not future production airframes ). Alcoa who made a certain internal structure, didn’t QC it correctly in manufacturing. The fix will be about a billion on the current airframes that, that vendor is supposed to eat the cost. However USAF has in fact wrote up some budget planning to help pay for that very fix. :confused: You tell me. :confused:
ELPSomeone tell me how a wheezing jet that has trouble breaking mach 1 at lower alts ( SH ) is an advancement in combat fighters.
ELPYou keep saying this over and over but a couple of the SH pilots on Airwarriors say it’s not that big of a deal. I don’t think it is either. When the time comes, I think the SH will be able to get the job done.
Get which job done? Certainly not cutting off a big SU or refusing engagement if the SH needs to refuse. Those facts speak for themselves. We need to air domination, hopefully the F-22 will do it. It won’t be done by carrier air.
ELPJ-UCAS was too much of a threat to some JSF mission sets, so it went away.
ELPOkay frank sure….whatever you want to believe…..
I’d like you to come back to me with some official U.S. Navy reports about Super Hornets in Iraq and let me know just how pathetic they were and how they always had to have a tanker, etc.
I’m not going to get into this stupid debate again because it’s a moot point. You can complain and make fun of (not that it matters what you or anyone else thinks…), and just generally whine about the Tomcat going away, but it’s what has happened.
Get over it.
Yeah Iraq…. real front line air force they faced there didn’t they? Jets a good striker. Facts speak for themselves. F-18E/F can not cut off and intercept anything that wants to refuse engagment. While the reverse is not true. An F-18E/F can not refuse engagement from a Big SU, F-15, etc… or most fast movers. If the SH is winchester on weps going home, it’s all over but the whine of the rescue beacons.
ELP[QUOTE=PhantomII]We could better spend our money on war winning/needed items instead of bleeding our force white on one gold plated turkey comes to mind.
We have a high-end fighter in the F-22 and a low-end fighter in the F-35….how is this different from the F-15/F-16 approach? Or did you disagree with that one too?
Completely different era.
You say we’re putting all our chances on one airplane and that makes little sense to me because if you take away the F-35 then the USAF will have to rely on just the F-22 (after F-15 and F-16 fleets are retired).
Funny how someone that keeps up on munitions doesn’t get it. After F-22 and B-2 and a few other things ( like JAASM etc ) get done, Large enemy SAMs and enemy fighters are killed. After that killing is done, then legacy jets like F-16, 18 etc can drop cheap PGMs all day long and nothing can reach up to 30~40k. Game over. F-16s and F-18s are still in production. If the B-52 can be used till 2040, so can legacy fighters. I don’t need a JSF. Especially since the money wasted on that can go into R&D and give the USN a real no peer group F-22 like performance jet sometime in the future. Making big of the STOVL JSF is just more money wasted. Kill the B too. The USAF alone has numerious war winning things that need money put to them. Numerous. So sorry. I am not willing to sell out the USAF on one Buick of Stealth jet that doesn’t bring enough to the fight for what we will waste on it. We don’t have the dollars. Not any where near what we used to, to buy all kinds of things. We need tankers, E-10, EB-52, proper B-1 upgrades, numerous logistics and people programs that we will just do without because of our unwise spending. JSF is a dumb, dumb idea for us. Cancelling J-UCAS was just retarded.
[QUOTE]
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ELP$15 billion for the whole Aussie JSF program adds up to a lot of risk on an airframe that has less than one percent of flight testing done. Not smart. However if you go by tradition* of their defense purchases, this falls right in line. Most of their purchasing lately is high risk. Screwed up helo mods. Then the Tiger not meeting all the flight test goals. Litening pod for the F-18 not fully tested then that screw up. Then the warning receiver upgrades getting screwed up at about $200 million in risk. After a while a few hundred million here or there adds up to real money for the tax base of a population around 20 million or so. 😮 Add a few other events like the submarine thing etc…. They need to get a handle on the risk in purchasing things. That is an absolute. Lots of big ticket purchases going on in the past few years. All kinds of things. For now they need to be looking at aircraft with known performance. F-18E/F, F-22 are in production and would make a good team. Unlikely but Euroflighter has knowns. JSF has a lot of unknowns. ( a skittery congress that can delay production at the drop of a hat etc )…. JSF shouldn’t be looked at until there are safe flight test metrics that satisfy the customer.
Time: The current bag of aircraft in the RAAF need to be replaced. Twice it has been proven that upgrades for their F-18s will get screwed up. F-111 is a maintenance pig that can’t do first line A2A. Purchase some kind of airframe now and introduce JSF later when it is low risk. Of course the sales pukes will say that costs money too. Well, again I point to the $15 Billion package they are looking at for 100 untested airframes. It is asking way too much for the Aussie taxpayer if JSF goes sour and or bloats out more in cost.
Then look at the threat Indonesia is hardly in a power projection mode. Malaysia pilot quality is a mixed bag at best. Operational plan ability: ditto.
F-22 and F-18E/F offer the least amount of risk. F-22 for its contempt of engagement with JDAM-SDB, and C2ISR, and F-18E/F because the sensor/weapon kit is so damn good when the big threats are put down by it’s team mate.
*Remember also many many years ago, F-111 was ordered for RAAF when it was bleeding edge/unproven and had a few years delay when they refused delivery because the jet was screwed up. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$
ELPThe phrase: We could better spend our money on war winning/needed items instead of bleeding our force white on one gold plated turkey comes to mind.
ELPIt doesn’t put out 22k. The GAO mentioned this in one of their reports. It is sold as putting out 22k. And I would think on the test stand in a hush house it probably does. Just not when it is installed on the jet.
ELPI do not entirely agree on that, yes the v-22 costs a lot, and there a lot of problems now, just like the days of the early jet fighter era, but if the figures from the manufactures are right, there are no helicopters that come close if we talk about cruise speed/ effective cargo load/ range. So what I is think we have to think that this is not just a helicopter with better performance but a new kind of asset, that is going to change the air assault concept. 🙂
How it was sold and marketed to congress was worth some laughing. Clever salesmanship backed up with little or no hard fact. That x amount of V-22s are more efficient than x amount of heavy lift helos. Sounds good when you look at the printed range. But step back and look at mission up times for a whole squadron of V-22s in one day of surge work of carrying men and material to the beach…. even while in common helicopter range. A very large unknown is up time.
-First either way you are going to attrit airframes in ops. Do you want to lose a 75 million dollar V-22 while doing this or a much cheaper twin rotor like the 46 or large single rotor Super Stallion? So the big … REAL unknown is sortie rate / production / work done in a high ops tempo day / week etc. This will be real fun to see as it is going to Iraq in 2007. It’s getting pushed into the real world now and not some super scripted test event. …. Armor is a no go for it because of weight concerns. Even putting guns on it takes away performance, enough to show concern. So any trashfire this thing takes will finish it. Most MANPAD evasion for helos means driving a few feet off of the deck from point A to point B almost all the time. This reduces, by a large margine, a MADPAD guy locking you up before you disappear. Any transition from a higher altitude into the hover means some lucky guy is going to get him one with a MANPAD, So I really want to see how they are going to drive everywhere with this on the deck. I am sure it can be done, but it is going to be interesting to see the demands that kind of flying all the time, puts on the airframe.
Some other things of interest…( Note it isn’t going to be deployed in hot and high alt enviorons that will tell you if it can lift at high altitude locations like Afcrapistan… hmmmm ). Where we also don’t know how this gold plated turkey will behave in a brown out. We do know for a fact that it failed the para-rescue skillset because it put down so much downwash in hover that it couldn’t pick up a PJ in the water. So all in all I will wait with great interest on this.
Note the link I provided earlier mentioned some super genious giving the idea of putting comercial off the shelf Garmins on thise things. You can’t do that. Off the shelf GPS receivers have no guts inside that counter check if it is being jammed/spoofed. Mil spec GPS receivers are different for a very very good reason.
ELPThe F-18G will be real friendly with USAF tankers with all that drag.
Reason why for SEAD work, USAF wanted J-UCAS ( buddy jamming etc ) and EB-52. F-18G ( and EA-6 ) don’t bring anything to the fight for them except another mouth to feed, wasting tanker assets better used on something else. Including for the F-18E/F with AESA, when the AESA matures (software etc), could very well put the G out of a job. We don’t know yet, but it is very possible that a future, well set up AESA on F-18E/F could negate threat emmissions that pop up vs. having an annoying noise maker like the G, bothering your NCW plan.
ELPRe: the engine improvement that is being thought about….. As the current engines only really pump out 17K on the jet in burner ( not 22k listed in it’s paper figure fantasy )…. I seriously wonder what you would have to put into the jet short of re-doing the intakes… :diablo:
ELPOne thing is for sure…it’s going to be real interesting to look at the USAF in 15 years time and compare it to what we think it should have looked like.
Let me do the math on that. That would mean…. 7 more changes to the uniform???? 😀 🙂
ELPGood thread to start SOC. I have no illusions though. Unfortunately unless something really bad happens, JSF is a go. Note that the flying disaster V-22 killed a couple bushels of people and it is still going.
But lets go with the fantasy. First for USAF, other REAL war winning items could be bought. Things we really need. Tankers, E-10, EB-52, A faster path for getting C-5 upgrades into the field with the new engine and cockpit. A real timely C-130 roadmap, instead of the now, C-130J pork that can, worst case scenerio, go into really low rate production. Get flying hours back up, of course that isn’t just JSF that is hurting that but the ill advised adventures we are on in afcrapistan and iraq that is pushing half a trillion now. Various vendors push on the above needed things and get the famous- “talk to us after Iraq…” words. :rolleyes: USAF could do a whole bunch of other things to keep our most important weapon system stable: Our highly skilled people. Our ill advised spending above is hurting that too. All kinds of war winning back shop programs that the amateur airplane hobbiest never hears about that keeps the USAF running, are going to seed. All under the cloak of: “We are getting much smaller and a few JSF and F-22 is the be all end all of USAF”. So anyway it isn’t just JSF that is screwing up budgets on needed things ( and I only mentioned a few ), it is the bleeding ulcer of Iraq and Afcrapistan. Add to that, pet pork like V-22 and C-17 additional buys that end up in emergency suplimental spending :rolleyes: . Our congress is owned by industry. Period, …dot.
Navy… Well they goofed that up themselves didn’t they? However as a strike platform the AESA F-18E/F is scary-good. Funds wasted on V-22 and JSF should be farmed into a no-peer stealth jet of F-22-like performance to put on the carrier deck. 10-12 jet squadron per carrier.
USMC- Jump jets are a waste. USMC would be better with F-18E/F. It brings something to the fight. Not 1 GBU-12, 1 drop tank, and 1 Litening pod ( Harrier ).
Our allies: Screw them. Anyone wanting their small amount of money back: Form a line.
Tech: Go to the USAF webpage. SDB being line deployed to F-15Es at Lakenheath. Real fliers said pretty much what I know: SDB on long shots gets through and most SAM systems ain’t going to stop it.
F-22 with SDB and GBU-32/35 and GBU-38 JDAM and the mail gets through the first few nights of a war. Once a path is cleared for B-2 etc…… and some other players. I don’t need no stinkin Buick-of-Stealth JSF.
USAF with:
F-22
B-2 and some other players helping the first few nights of the war ( JASSM, USN etc ) and once the enemy fighters and large SAMs are down. Legacy F-15E, F-16, F-18E/F, B-1, B-52, will kill off anything left. I can touch you, but you can’t touch me, especially when I am killing anything of value at 30~40k ft in near any weather with cheap, sub 4 meter PGMs after the big threats are history. After the two big threats mentioned are down, a stealth jet doesn’t bring anything of use to the fight. J-UCAS should be fielded. Both for land and sea.
F-15( I like the K), F-16 and F-18E/F are still in production. There is a place for legacy and stealth to work together. At the end of the day = less dollars.
However it is of no matter. My congress is Own3d as the kids say. If it is expensive it must be good, all the time, everyday. We as taxpayers are screwed.
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