You’re mixing up two different things here – non-recurring costs & concurrency costs. If Canada or India placed an order for F-35s next year (delivery in 2020), they wouldn’t have to pay any significant concurrency costs and would receive all aircraft in the mature Blk 3F configuration.

Oh no, they would have to pay for quite a bit of Non Recurring costs and Concurrency, those numbers are described in detail in the budget documents, an aircraft contracted in FY 2021 (and delivered in 2023) will have 9.32 million US added because of this. The numbers for the post 2021 are identical.

Cheers

You do realize that Aboulafia did not write the article? and that the author of the article himself also has an editor? So the whole thing is invalidated now?

I was aware of that, i´ve read the article and i was speaking specificaly of Aboulafia comments, thats why i mentioned the chap, and only him.

The prices he quotes….. The Super Hornet price of 77m is accurate. The F-35 is roughly 100 million in recent lots. The rest: good luck buying a FY 2017 F-15E for 90 million, a non-existent Gripen NG for 55 million ( even Saab’s preliminary cost estimates put the Gripen E/F at roughly 80 million). The F-16 50 million? ( I’ll have to do some digging) that seems low to me.

I love good old Richard Aboulafia, he was artfull enough to find the correct number for the SH (77,791.000 million US$), two units, but he didnt find (?) the equivalent number for the Growler (56,307.800 million US$) just a few pages away, ten units… Why do i have a feeling that Boeing is toying with its SH/Growler production line?

The F-35A Fly Away Unit Cost, was 129.144 million US$ in 2015, 109.882 million US$ this year, and is expected to be 98.994 million US$ next year.

Cheers

Found it. Recurring unit flyaway cost is about $68 mil as of FY 2016. By 2019, one can round that figure out to $70M. With the F-35A on course to hit $80M, it’ll be hard to for customers like Canada (and India?) to turn it down in favour of the SH.

Something important, look at the “Non Recurring Costs” in that chart, almost nil.
The non recurring costs are a big chunk of the unit cost of the F-35A and almost nil in the case of the SH/Growler and thats normal because the SH is a much more mature platform.
The non recurring costs are composed of “non recurring hardware” (example, the 2014 Titaniun spar that had to be redesigned), “non recurring tools” (the tools needed to produce the non recurring hardware) and recurrency, this last one (recurrency) is payed 50% by the JPO (in the name of the consortium countries), and 50% by LM, this last bit would have to payed in full by, lets say, India.
And how this pans out for an FMS acquisition? The basic cost of an F-35A in 2019 through the FMS would be “Recurring unit flyaway cost” (*1)+”Non Recurring costs” (*2)+”50% Recurrency” (*3)+”FMS fees”+”whatever training, manual and logistical stuff you order” (*4); points (*2) and (*3) are (almost) non existant for the equivalent sale of an SH.
Round numbers, in 2019 we will be looking at something like “102.406 million US$+50% recurrency+FMS Fees+”whatever training, manual and logistical stuff you order” for an F-35A versus “78.022 million US$+FMS Fees+”whatever training, manual and logistical stuff you order” for the SH (Fly Away Unit Cost is the 2018 one).

Cheers

ye, same technology

Diferent engines, diferent structure, diferent radar, diferent EW suite, diferent mission computers, diferent cockpit, etc, etc, etc. Two very diferent birds

The RN just went with the cheapest of the cheapest option regarding Crowsnest because of, well, money… lack of it, and sudenly, Boeing thinks that there´s budget for… the most gold plated platform that money can buy for … COD?! One of those birds costs more than a brand new C-130J.
COD will be by Chinooks and EH101´s.

Cheers

This is a really stupid argument…. Who cares how many times either refueled. It it the first transatlantic flight for one, and even now, transatlantic flights by fighter aircraft is not a walk in the park. They keep the fighters as fully fueled as possible in case of rough weather that prevents a scheduled refueling, or a leak, or on and on…..

What does this prove about either the F-35’s or the Typhoons range? NOTHING! It proves that people will argue over the dumbest minutia when discussing this controversial fighter, embarrassing all around. Read the tea leaves all you want. There is nothing useable here, other than a rather pointless, overdue milestone for the F-35.

Clap, clap, clap

Getting back to the topic, any recent Kuwaiti news ?

If on the territory of an independent state for decades are foreign troops – this military seizure. People just used to this state of affairs. They stopped to call a spade a spade.
US military bases in Europe not to defend against Russia. European Defence – an illusion for the electorate.
They have a different purpose. After a nuclear exchange the Americans planted the marines on the coast of Europe.
Russian troops have to get up on the Atlantic coast, to stop them. This requires the US military bases abroad.

You can not doubt the one.
If Russia and China will disappear, will disappear all countries except the United States. Make no mistake, after a year or two will be one large United States.
US “embarrassed” because there are Russia and China. Russia does not do this, because there are US.
The same is true for China.

A “military seizure” can be rightfully described as an unwanted ocupation of national territory, the”unwanted” bit is important. The three times (the most high profile case being good old De Gaul being “Franco French”) that Western European countries showed the door to the US armed force’s, they went, no discussions, they simply left.
I loved the bit about the American bases not being there to defend Europe, but “after a nuclear exchange” the “Russian troops” had (have?! I hope that you are talking of a pre 1989 scenario! ) to take a leisure park walk to Biarritz to stop GI Joe landing! Do you even read what you write?