SintraThe italians had to modify their FREMM frigates, because they discovered only after having built them to be far too bow heavy.
? Could you point to a souce, please?
Never heard of it. I know that the first one, the Carlo Bergamini received a 3,6m hull extension while being built, and that design change was included on the rest of the class, but never heard of the ships being taken again to Fincantieri.
Cheers
SintraOther than things like BVR missiles, AAR capability and other weapons that can be added in the future to the FA-50, what is the advantage of the gripen c compared to the FA-50?
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
BVR capability, Ashm capability, an EW integrated suite, a vastly more capable sensor suite, etc, etc, etc…
You are downplaying the problems and COST of integrating new weapons, sensors and capabilities on a massive scale. Its not cheap to integrate new weapons, Great Britain forked out the best part of one billion pounds in order to have Meteor, Storm Shadow and Brimstone integrated into Typhoon, France had to forego eight Rafale airframes in order to fund an AESA antena and so on. Unless the ROKAF funds the integration of new weapons on the FA-50, there´s no chances of that particular airframe receiving whatever new hardware on the kind of budget that Philipines can fund, just integrating the AIM-120 and its datalink on the FA-50 and you would be looking to a bill of a pair of hundred million US$.
The weapons, pods, EW equipment, etc, that you´ve posted on post #6 are from a 2011 ppt and have not being contracted by anyone, right now the FA-50 is a AIM9/Maverick “only” capable light fighter, stick (and pay) a BVR, Ashm and an LDP capability and you are looking of a price tag of multiples of what the Philippines Air Force payed for their first batch, if (a mighty big “IF”) the ROKAF foots the bill for their own units then we can discuss its capabilities versus the Gripen (whatever version of it), untill then its an F-5E (non upgraded) equivalent.
SintraI really think the FC-1 and Gripen C does not give significant performance difference compared to the FA-50. Brand new F-16s are still available, but that is probably beyond what PAF can afford.
The Gripen C “does not give significant performance difference compared to the F/A—50”?!!
The F/A—50 is data linked, does mach 2 and fields the MBDA Meteor and the RBS15?
No?
SintraIt seems to be a problem of all western countries. Whats going wrong?
When did the French, the Italians, the Danes, the Koreans, the Japanese, the Dutch reported major structural problems with their ships this last decade and a half?
Cheers
SintraMy kneejerk response is that the USMC, Operation Corporate (Light Blue and small) and tactical WWII all seemed to work well (but like I say kneejerk not considered)
Tactical WWII is a good example (i suspect that you are specificaly mentioning the USAAF, am i correct?).
The indisputed capability “world champion” for more than half of it was the German Luftwaffe, an Air Force that concentrated all its tactical strike capability on himself (no JU-87/88 on the Wermacht) , by 1942 the RAF had learned its lessons and had developed an efficient “Air interdiction model” developed by Arthur Tedder. On “Torch” the USAAF had its units directly subordinated and divided between land commanders, it was a bit of a shambles, they were used piecemeal like air cover for the army units and winged artillary, the much smaller Luftwaffe gave them a bit of a bloody nose. Things improved when Tedder came in and was made Air Commander in Chief for the entire TO (forget “Patton” the movie, beyond silly), took the command from the land forces and gave the following instructions (very, very, very “Readers Digest” version) “first go after the Luftwaffe (that includes turning their airfields into craters), second destroy the suport/logistical (from ships, more ships, and yet more ships, to trains, depots, whatever) system of the Afrika Korps and third engage the combat units of the Wermacht, by this order”. The USAAF would use Tedder model has a tactical template for the remainder of the war (and Korea), no more land corps commanders dictating how air power was being applied.
On the Marine Corps, the US has a massive numerical and technological advantage over, well… everyone, it can give itself the luxury of three diferent “Air Forces”, each one of them is bigger than almost everyone else… How well would they fare against a foe who could deploy the same level of air capability, but with a centralized command?
Corporate, pretty much agree with what you´ve wrote.
Cheers
ps – I am being a bit simplistic 🙂
SintraThat’s because they operate in an opposite way to the JDAM inflation spoiled coalition.
While they start(ed) from faraway bases, pass all over Iraq and attack pre-designated locations as their fighters were B-17 in disguise,
B-17´s? Pre designated locations while doing CAS? Really?
Russians start from close locations (for Palmyra Deir-el-Zour operations they relocated choppers and relatively short legged Su-25 in Homs governatorate airbases) and usually keep their planes over SAA operation zones ready to answer to aid calls by ground troops or to engage “on the run” targets discovered in the meanwhile by their (or their allies) UAV/SF.
In what particular way is this diferent to any combat CAS mission performed by the USAF, or the RAF, or the Adla?
There´s a very good reason why ROVER is such a massive presence across the western air armada in the Midle East.
SintraWhich falls into my plan; let the crabs do air defence with the only plane I let them have. AAC can have a CAS type (Harrier or A7E) and the RN can do power projection from sensible sized flat tops with airframes they can handle (Twosaders).
That plan looks suspiciously close to the likes of what the Americans were doing in “Torch”, not too dissimilar to what the South Vietnamese did in the last year of fighting, the Poles in 39 and a few other examples in wich airpower was subordinated to land commanders, all of the examples that i am aware ended in shambles.
SintraSEAD can be done without F-35 however Belgium put restrictions on the scenarios, like only 4-ship and no extra assets allowed. This makes it hard in particular for Typhoon and the SH.
The Rafale F4.2 (with built-in GaN jammers) is probably the best alternative to the F-35 in particular given the constraints they put on mission planning.
If you want to do such a mission with e.g. the Typhoon you would probably need many more Typhoons, and equip some of them with stand-off weapons. You may also have to factor in significant attrition rates which again would mean more Typhoons
What particular advantage does the Rafale have in a SEAD mission over the SH or the Typhoon?
Boeing can throw a great big chunk of the Growler capability into a vanila SH (see the Aussie conversion) and Eurofighter can at least in theory leverage this particular piece of brightly painted orange hardware into that mission.
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Cheers
Sintrabut as we’re not in WWI anymore, and fighters take some 20 years to develop, 10 years ago is just as good as yesterday… 😉
Nope
SintraIn Europe it should be Italy no?
Germany
SintraAt some point the highest level partner, with a ton of industrial benefit has to step up and order aircraft and ramp up its procurement as it gets its carriers ready. That is largely a political decision as I’m sure the RAF/RN would like aircraft faster.
I would imagine that the problem is more “budget” (lack of it) than political.
There´s a bit of problem (or an oportunity) here, with seven sqn´s of front line Typhoons till the thirties/fourties, unless the UK PLC boosts the number of front line fast jet sqns there´s no space for more than the initial order.
Cheers
SintraThe key problem that I see is that they wanted firm numbers for things like:
once spares and upgrades are included.
Not quite, they´ve asked “rough orders of magnitude”, not “firm numbers”
“8.The lack of transparency over the costs of the F-35 is unacceptable and risks undermining public confidence in the programme. The Department should provide us with the ‘rough orders of magnitude’ it claims to possess for the total costs of the F-35 programme beyond 2026/7. (Paragraph 94)”
Remember that these will span 40+ years. Good luck trying to tell the future.
The MOD and the NAO have done it before for a number of major programs, sometimes the chaps got very near of the actual numbers, sometimes they´ve blundered. Pretty much your point, predicting the future its not exactly easy.
Normal request with a normal reaction from the MOD.
If anyone is interested in the arcane art of HM MOD budgeting and capability requests, this place is a pretty decent place to start: https://www.nao.org.uk/search/type/report/sector/defence/
Cheers
SintraWith German adaptation an F-35 will see more leverage effect than a Typhoon that is already more expensive.
Thats based on what?
Do you or anyone really believe that for the German MOD it would be cheaper to acquire an entire new system than another batch of an aircraft with an assembling line in Manching and every bit of the logistical and training system already in place? Sending aircrafts for Italy (airframe) and Turkey/Netherlands/Norway (engine) for sustainment?!
SintraOdd that every eval done shows the F-35 cheaper than the EF.
Except Korea… and, oh, Japan…
Of the four direct eval´s, two found out that the Typhoon was cheaper, and two, the Danish one and the 2008 Norwegian one found out the oposite.
Now, i could state that the Danish one was “interesting” (being polite), loved the bit about comparing the Fly Away Unit Cost of 27 airframes versus 38 airframes of the other using a Bundestag report that included sustainment costs, but hell no, i am not going to extrapolate on that…
No, i am only going to comment on the Norwegian one. Almost nine years ago an younger Sintra wrote in these same pages that the costs on that report were entirely absurd.
48 F-35A´s costing 18 Billion NOK´s (2008 NOK´s), on that timeframe? 48 million US$ for aircraft, right…
By 2013 the budget had more than tripled to 63 Billion Nok´s, that in theory would include sustainment and infrastructure costs, well, now they dont cover those items anymore. By now those 63 Billion NOK´s are looking incredibly optimistic, the Norwegians have added more four airframes, the NOK went down versus the Us$, the aircraft ended up being quite a bit more expensive and so on. Today the 2008 Norwegian report on costs is a prime example of wrong maths.
But, Spud if you somehow believe that for the German MOD would be cheaper to acquire (through the FMS) and operate a fleet of Dave A´s versus an aircraft that is built inhouse, the entire training, suport and logistics is already in place i have a very big bridge to sell to you…
Cheers
SintraIf Germany chosses EF to replace Tornado, they will have to pay a lot of money to develop Typhoon into a Tornado replacement.
The only thing not covered by contracts today is the B61-12 and a long range SEAD/DEAD weapon, Spear 3 would be at the top of the list.
Typhoon is already more expensive than F-35.
No its not and specificaly speaking on a German early 2020´s scenario, its almost certainly cheaper by a great gigantic margin. The entire logistic, training and suport infrastructure is already in place, and the aircrafts will be built in Germany.
While i wont comment about any 2025 Midle East deal, that could go either way, there´s no freaking chance of a Typhoon Luftwaffe acquisition based on the Kuwaiti/Qatari specifications being more expensive than a FMS F-35A deal.
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