The price has continued to fall from batch to batch/Lot to Lot, as Sintra has shown. His contention is that neither the contractor or the US DOD has shown prowess in estimating the cost over the years, and that is a FAIR statement. The point still remains that the COST has COME down with successive lot’s and LMA has not yet begun to produce the F-35 at its Full rate of production as planned (Around 80 per year ?). Currently the industry, and the DOD are negotiating at a price for LRIP Lot 6,7 Iirc , lets wait till those negotiations are done to see how much the price has come down from Lot 4,5 …The program chief was quite adamant that the contractors have to show a clear TREND in lowering costs in order to avoid the death spiral which will occur if the cost is not coming down significantly leading the services and partners to significantly trim their requirements to adjust for the greater cost..The industry has also increased its risk and will be taking around 50% of the cost increase upto a certain figure and 100% beyond that so they have plenty of incentive to get things into shape…I think we must wait for the development testing to finish, the product to be 100% tested and ready and the production at its most efficient to decide what the price is going to be in 2025 and beyond..So far we can only see TRENDS from LRIP lot to lot…and the bigger picture is tough to form with any sort of clarity (As even the DOD and LMA have failed at accurately predicting that..)

Bring

Yes, that was my point. I´ve just would like to add that when i see the head of the JSF program stating that in order to avoid a death spiral the contractors must bring the “Flyaway Unit Cost” (without non recurring costs) to a “manageable” !) 2013 ~90 milion $ a piece to what amounts to be the tactical LO of the USAF, the backbone of the west´s most capable (by far) air force, bell´s start ringing in my head. That number is in the upperscales of Strike Eagle/Typhoon country, it means sqd´s slashed left and right.

It doesn’t. It is just a marketing brochure number.

No its not. Those numbers are not from Eurofighter/Euroradar/Selex/Eads, they were taken from Toan, a forum colegue member here.
Toan numbers have been flying all over the internet for years, he has made calculations based on whats publicly available (not much) on the range of modern radars and if i remember corretly those charts on the E-Captor and the AN/APG-81 were made around 2007…
There´s absolutely no information on the public domain about the capabilities of 2015(16?) CAPTOR E “Radar 1”, much less on the 2017(20?) “Radar 3”.

1. Bigger, more powerful AESA radar
2. R77 vs AMRAAM
3. More fuel and endurance
4. Better supercruise
5. TVC
6. Cheaper cost means you can always buy more and send out more. No one ever says war is fair.

1 – Irbis is a PESA, not an AESA
2 – There´s this thing called the MBDA Meteor…
3 – True, albeit the fuel fraction is almost identical, being much bigger the Sukhoi aircraft does indeed have more range and endurance
4 – On the Typhoon… I can produce an independent air force evaluation (the 2009 Swiss) that states that the twin hole (the heavier and draggier version) Phoon flies at mach 1.4 without post combustion, you cant provide one single official source stating that any variant of the Flanker series can do the same. Actually i dont remember one official source stating that the SU-35 can actually supercruise
5 – Pretty much irrelevant
6 – True on acquision costs, now how much cost to operate a 17 ton beast with 29 tons of thrust for thirty years?

e.

In a few years the F-35 will be operational, and its price will have fallen to a similar level as a 4th generation jet, though with far greater capabilities of course. :diablo:

Yes, price similar to a 4th generation, that will happen… with divine intervention.

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At current levels 2-2.5 times less would mean that a competing aircraft would need to cost between 50-60 million a pop flyaway with full avionics and engine…The 180 million price tag is not FLYAWAY and includes spares, extra engines, support and integrating costs, training, simulator etc etc etc …

And there´s were the JSF problem lay´s… the US Navy and USAF budgets are public.

But first there´s something that must be made clear, there are two Unit Fly Away Costs, the “non recurring UFAC”, and the normal “UFAC”, this second one, the one used by the Pentagon accountants includes the non recurring costs, the first one doesnt, and that was the one being described in that video…

The “Flyaway Unit Cost” by the 2013 USAF Budget for a 2013 F-35A is precisely 153.114 $ million, if we take out the non recurring costs the “Flyaway Unit Cost” goes down to 118.143 $ million, the number that the video describes.

Numbers here:
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120210-115.pdf

Now lets do the exact same exercise for the Navy´s Super Hornet.

The “Flyaway Unit Cost” by the 2013 US Navy Budget for a 2013 F/A-18EF is precisely 65.275 $ million, if we take out the non recurring costs the “Flyaway Unit Cost” goes down to 50.479 $ million…

Numbers here:
http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/FMB/13pres/APN_BA1-4_BOOK.pdf

The numbers are correct, i dont believe that no one here will challenge them.

So, yes, in 2013, in a straight “apples to apples” comparison one 2013 super hornet is 2X to 2.5X cheaper than one F-35A.

We cant make a direct comparison with the European aircrafts because their acountability doesnt use the “Flyaway Unit Cost”, thats a Pentagon “thingy”, in other words we wont find a French Senat document describing a “Flyaway”.

But we can make an educated estimation.
Numbers from the French Senat (2011) here (thanks to TMor) :

http://www.senat.fr/rap/a12-150-8/a12-150-81.pdf

Total programme cost :
€44.2B

Unit costs (without development) :
Rafale C : €66.2M (for 118 aircraft) ;
Rafale B : €71.2M (for 110 aircraft) ;
Rafale M : €76.1M (for 58 aircraft).

So, while the numbers are not direct comparisons its a fair assumption that one Rafale built in 2013 is a lot less expensive than one F-35A built this year.

Then someone is going to say, “the F-35A cost will get down because of increase in numbers built and inprovements in the production (learning curve)”, and yes, thats correct. But how much those costs will go down is anyone´s guess, both the JSF Office and LM have failed miserably in predicting costs, more tellingly, even the USAF, while being a lot more conservative in their assumptions, has failed miserably in predicting how much will cost one F-35A a few years down the road. Dont believe me?

The USAF Budgets for the last two decades right here:
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/budget/index.asp

Lets see, in 2008 (five years ago) the USAF was predicting that the “Flyaway Unit Cost” (the normal one) in “then year $” for one 2013 F-35A was going to be 83.933 $ million, in 2010 that same 2013 Dave A was going to be 114.502 $ million, it ended up in 153.114 $ million.
They have failed their predictions every single year.

Cheers

DC3 X SU35S
FoKker DR I X SU35S
HMS Dreadnouth X SU35S
Iceberg X SU35S
Napoleon X SU35A
Darth Vader X SU35S

Indeed.

I personally don’t believe the F-15SE has it all its own way. Despite what is said here politics will play a part so in a way the recent news stories concerned the DPRK plays a little into uncle sam’s hands given the show of support.

A part?!
After this (entirely idiotic) North Korean show off, the only way that Typhoon could have a chance was if the only american offer was the AT-6, and even then…
I am not critising, by the contrary, if i was the South Korean Defense Minister i would have signed an order for 60 american fighters (Boeing/LM, who cares…) three weeks ago.

USSR out of poverty has become a leading world power. And perhaps because of such “draconian measures” to remain independent.

:confused:
Russia is (arguably) a “leading world power” since (at least) Ivan The Terrible…