White House Says F-35s Not For Sale to Gulf Arab States

White House officials on Monday sought to tamp down speculation that King Salman of Saudi Arabia canceled his attendance at Camp David when the U.S. made clear that his country would not be permitted to buy F-35s.

“We do not and never anticipated this to be a summit that only focused on one capability, like the F-35, for instance,” said Ben Rhodes, the deputy National Security Advisor to Obama.

Next, a letter is received in the WH saying something like

“Thanks, yours Eurofighter GMBH”

This entire topic reminds me that (recent) one about the “PLAAF Crisis”, in wich someone cuts and passes parts of article in order to discuss the “PLAAF Crisis”, when it should be blindingly obvious that the “Chinese Air Force” its in is best shape ever.
This topic its almost identical, just looking at the numbers its entirely arguable that the Russian aerospace industry its in is best shape since 1989.

Ruaf size is going into infinity.

“To Infinity and Beyond”

By Buzz Lightyear

This claims it was exceeded and what the initial batch cost was closer to 11 Million dollars vs a 6.09 promise. Of course there was a less of a legal argument because even the GAO claimed that the NTE definition was ambiguous at best. There are obviously many ways to look at the development of the F-16 to the F-35 and similar ways to look at the F-16 production vs the F-35 production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM

Thank you, just started to see the video, like it

The F-16 went from a $6 Million NTE price to a more than $11 Million price for the initial European customers- an 80%+ cost increase over the NTE price.

Well, you´ve just picked my curiosity. 🙂
Are those $11 Million in 1975 Us$? The original $6.091 million NTE Unit cost were. And are we talking about the original 348 airframes or that number also includes the 225 follow on orders?

I guess it too should have been terminated because that was totally unexpected and the aircraft bankrupted the users that bought it and that is why its a totally failed program !

Well, the F-16 development costs went ~10% overhead, the original IOC date was fulfiled, the unit costs for the original 650 USAF airframes went some 14% overhead, the GAO (end of the seventies/beggining of eighties) reports on the F-16 program dont look nothing like the same reports on the JSF program.

schedule and meeting performance requirements.
Its current program cost estimate per aircraft of $6.4 million (fiscal year 1975 dollars) is within its estimate of $6.7 million (fiscal year 1975 dollars). Moreover, the operational commands are satisfied with the aircraft’s performance, and its mission capable rates have met or exceeded Air Force expectations. How- ever, technical, operational, and program concerns and uncertainties exist. Those in- volving classified data have been

1981 “THE F-16 PROGRAM:Progress, Concerns, and Uncertainties”
http://www.gao.gov/assets/140/133140.pdf

And (this is important) the countries that bought Hornet´s and Vipers in the seventies, eighties, were spending 3,5% to 5% of their PIB in defense (Fulda Gap and all that).
The Viper and classical hornet had their fair share of problems, but the JSF trumped them by a very fair margin. Something normal when we think about the sheer technological magnitude of combining STVOL/Stealth/mach 1.6 and 9 g´s.

It was an honest reminder of what “pains” developers, operators and the tax-payers had to go through when the previous generation of fighters were developed.

Nice initiative, i would have brought Eurofighter and ATF examples.

Cheers

Yes some short memories….

Well, that turned out well for the ATF program…

I´ll get me coat

I think the MiG-23, MiG-27 is the answer of the Russians for Tornado ADV, Tornado IDS

MiG-23 & Tornado ADV = Air-to-Air combat
MiG-27 & Tornado IDS = Air-to-Ground combat

The Mig-23 prototype was flying two years before Panavia was formed.

Tornado ECR may be compared with Su-24, EF-111.

Tornado ECR – SEAD variant of the Tornado
EF-111 – Electronic Warfare (including SEAD) variant of the F-111
SU-24 – Errrrrrmmmmm, “vanilla” version of the SU-24