So what is the outcome of all those decisions?

RAF Typhoons with proper guns, being used.

70k pounds per year and 5k pounds per year? Or do you mean per hour?

And what is the cost of operating a Super Hornet per hour that you’ve seen? I’ve seen $18,900 per hour as the operating cost for a SH with Boeing official Chris Chadwick claiming $12200 per hour. The latter is a Boeing official claiming a figure that is a good deal less than other industry officials. Now, even if Chris Chadwick is correct, how is is a twin F-414 engined medium fighter more than 3 times as costly as a single F-414 engined fighter?

There is no end of story- its creative accounting and people are buying it lock, stock and barrel. I’d much rather believe an AF that has no skin in the game for showing a low cost of operating a fighter as opposed to a manufacturer whose primary advantage is lower operating costs, since program acquisition costs (as seen in the latest Swiss program) are almost as high as that of the much heavier fighters. They are most likely counting the true costs of operating the Gripen fleet including possibly costly spares, as opposed to just flying a one-off jet and counting its fuel/oil consumption for marketing purposes.

Per hour.

Its entirely dependent on what you count, the 5K are direct operating costs per hour, that means fuel costs and minimal suport. The 70K its literaly everything, the cost to develop and acquire the aircraft, upgrades, the entire maintenace chain, fuel, the wages from the pilots to the laundry ladies, the rebuilding of two entire airbases, simulators, etc, etc, all this divided by the number of hours flown till that time. In the end we find two vastly diferent numbers wich are “correct”, it all depends on what you include in the count.
Bager1968 nailed it “To honestly compare operating costs, all parts of the calculation must use exactly the same measures and formulae”.

Cheers

I wouldn’t be so definitive about that.

In a pure air-to-air fighter, yes, 99 times out of a hundred you are right.

However, how many aircraft these days “don’t have a pound for air to ground”?

When faced with multiple threats and you have multiple systems to combat those threats with your principle mission being hitting a ground target rather than airborne – having a second highly trained team-mate in another seat halves your workload – the RIO/WO can focus on the ground, the pilot on the air (or visa-versa as the situation demands it).

Completely agree with you (and Phaid) there, mate.
My “No” was specificaly at this particular expression “Isn’t it also often the case” and in my head i was thinking in the ATA scenario.

We got it all wrong all along , it is not the swiss citizens that should have the ability to vote the financing of the gripen , that ought to have been the swedish citizens…..

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL
Quite right!

And if Graham Warwick is right (he usually is) the costs to complete the development of the “E/F” amount to a bit more than 300 million Us$, that goes for a “grand total” slightly south of 400 million Us$.
Let me get this straight, the Sweden, between 2008 and 2017 will spend less than 400 million Us$ to go from “C/D” to the “E/F”? Thats “pocket change” in the military aerospace sector.

http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a3d2557f5-66ed-4a41-97cc-6b1195564464

And this is absolutely scandalous, outrageous! How dare they?!!!!

L’Etat suédois garantit que
 le Gripen répondra aux fonctionnalités et prestations
spécifiées.
 le Gripen sera efficace au niveau opérationnel.
 des développements ultérieurs ne seront nécessaires que
pour répondre à de nouvelles exigences opérationnelles.
 les pris sont fixes.
 le Gripen sera livré conformément au calendrier établi.

that’s not enough!:D other side was much more impressive

Well, not by much, there´s no intercontinental ballistic missile in there… 😀

Norwegian MoD confirms that the F-35 will be significantly more expensive to fly than the F-16, however costs will be kept managable by relying more on simulators:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adressa.no%2Fnyheter%2Fokonomi%2Farticle3302251.ece

So the planes will fly 8000 hours per year (1000-2000 hours less per year than the F-16), and cost 915 – 1075 million NOK per year compared to 540 – 700 million per year today (all in 2012 NOK). It will be interesting to see if these estimates hold.

Are we speaking of the same MOD that very recently issued a massive report in wich stated very clearly and repeatedly that the F-35A was cheaper to acquire and operate than an evolved Gripen?!

Goodness Christ, were is the Adress of the Norwegian MOD? Mr Tom De Vries wants to send the JSF/LM “Cheerleader”” custom made suit by DHL…

at the moment, Bulgaria has a more threatening air force than Portugal

P_Shadow was right, you do have an unresolved love affair with Portugal! Any Portuguese girlfriend dumped you?

And no, at the moment the Portuguese Air Force is more capable of fulfiling the traditional roles of an air force than its Bulgarian equivalent.
Things like Link 16, AIM-120C5, JDAM´s, etc, more flying hours/year per pilot and much more recent flying hardware (F-16 MLU tape 4 and 5, P3C Cup, C295, EH101, etc) do have some impact.