Indeed. Being 90 knots faster (flat out) than an airliner in level flight does not mean it can climb to intercept an airliner before it leaves Swiss airspace.

Yep, on top of that trying to detect an aircraft, relying on the “mk1 eyeball” and intercom, on Central Europe, mid winter… sometimes it simply wont work.

Because it is another hack job by defense-aerospace.com. Who, if you haven’t noticed, isn’t exactly impartial. Do a little “research’ into the articles they publish. Little bit of Dassault Rafale love, perhaps? Giovanni de Briganti has a history of poorly researched hit pieces on the site. Would love to see the funding source for de Briganti’s publications.

This “article” is no different. I, having read the DoDIG report, can tell you there is no attempt to tie down contract to unit cost as the above piece does. All the DoDIG report gives is contract value and the number of engines, meaning: any contract costs, engineering fixes, testing not related to the actual engines are included in the cost.

Defense-Aerospace attempted to divide the contract by the engines…. fail. Please, it would be nice if people would realize what Defense-Aerospace is, and is not: namely a reliable independent news source.

Hmmmm, in my time i´ve seen some botched JSF numbers from De Brigantis (and he trully loves to go after the JSF, never seen him doing the same on French products, and in this particular article there are holes big enough that you could throw the eiffel tower right through it), but in this case the theory that the unit production cost of a LRIP1 being a mit lower than the same engine for LRIP2 has some traction, the USAF budget docs of 2009 and 2010 show that diference.
But the main (probable) reason for the diference in engine costs between LRIP1 and LRIP2 is a reasonable one, there were no navy engines (including the very expensive “B” version) in the first batch.

LRIP 1 USAF engine Unit Cost – 15.872 million US$
LRIP 2 USAF engine Unit Cost – 17.628 million US$
LRIP 2 Navy engine Unit Cost – 29.599 million US$

The numbers were taken from here:
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-080204-081.pdf
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090511-090.pdf
http://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/Documents/09pres/APN_BA1-4_Book.pdf

Cheers

Deino, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but…this is blackadams troll topic, not the main PLAAF topic :D. And when I say topic I mean it loosely. Not sure there really is a proper one in this thread.

I actually like the original title topic; “PLAAF crisis”…
The PLAAF is in the sort of “crisis” that the likes of the RAF, the Luftwaffe, the Adla, etc, would absolutely love to be in!
Unlike almost everyone else, its budget gets bigger year by year for decades now (nevermind that its almost certainly the Air Force with the second biggest budget on the face of the planet) , and it fields new kit at a speed that it looks like they are preparing for an Alien invasion.
Some “crisis”!

Point1
Cost will be lower since you won’t need to maintain as much an expensive infrastructure for an equal survivability. Manpower will also be lower since providing services for and maintaining an airbase with hardened infrastructure require more personnel with a dedicated formation.

You can then focus your defense needs in Manpower around a core of professionals sustained by reservists instead of having a large portion of them being professionalized.

There are studies (British and American, by obvious reasons) on the open about the costs of operating aircrafts on main bases versus V/STOL operations on dispersed sites, this last option, by comparison, is a bit (quite) expensive (and more survivable if WWIII had hit the proverbial “fan”). The manpower (and multiple related problems of maintenance, housekeeping, logistic support, command and control, and security) needed to operate in dispersed sites its a bit daunting (an example, think on the archetypal problem of delivering fuel to the sqn´s, in a mainbase thats done by a pipe, on dispersed sites thats either by truck or helicopter).
Offcourse that you can operate V/STOL aircrafts from a mainbase, but in that case, there´s no reason for paying a premium for that particular capability (and the F-35B unit cost is, well, on the “premium” side of things).
And i would imagine that the Swiss tax payer is not inclined to pay premium´s for fighter jets.

Cheers

PL10 is a copies Alenia Aspide missiles from Italy-based, with an infrared seeker, it is completely incapable LOAL, IIR seeker, all-aspect, the Chinese do not have access to this technology

A Chinese AIM-7/Aspide airframe with an IR seeker…

[ATTACH=CONFIG]237063[/ATTACH]

Why the hel* are gripen in this contest ?????

http://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/6715979-l-achat-d-avions-de-combat-pour-la-suisse-sera-a-nouveau-evalue-en-2017.html

Because they’ve won last time and they have a bloody good chance to win it next time.

Come to think of it, why would any customer/partner ask for deliveries before 2022? By waiting just a few years they will get a jet with lower operational costs and higher performance.

At least two of the partners (Norway and GB) and one customer (Israel) have some sound operational needs for wanting some air frames yesterday, and I suspect that SK and Japan might be in a bit of a hurry.

Cheers

The Tornado F3 received only minor upgrades over the last decade of its service and was retired on schedule AFAIK. The Jaguar and Harrier on the other hand were both retired ahead of schedule so upgrading them (or retiring them depending on your perspective) was not as per plan, The equivalent here would be to upgrade the Eurofighter fleet in 2025 and retire it in 2030. A major upgrade in 2035 on the other hand is highly unlikely.

The exact oposite…
The major upgrades on the Tornado fmk3 we’re made in its last decade of life, and they were quite massive; by comparison with it’s 1986 deployement plan the mk3 was retired a full decade before it was suposed to, on the other hand the Jag’s, harriers, sea harriers (and Bucaners) all outlived their original planned retirement by a very handsome margin.
The RAF has a past record of upgrading the platforms that it uses right to their retirement, it’s entirely conceivable that the Phoon will get this same treatment.