Quite. But not so much in consideration of the Argentine-Brasil de facto alliance. Regarding the costs, they will be shared, surely. The FX 2.5 went out for 36 planes and 4.5 billions. Argentine aport will be for 24 planes and 3 billions. Nobody expects those numbers to remain so low, options will most likely be taken, that could mora than double or maybe triple the initial purchases. Money is not an issue. Tech transfer and compensations is.

Who knows what that psico/sociopath will do next week. She really is a lame duck, going in 383 days and counting eagerly.

The NGs for the FAA will be identical to those of the FAB in every aspect.

Or more. :p

Buitreaux

I don’t want to be a j****as but the original text in Portuguese said that Argentina was going to start discussions for a possible future acquisition of the Gripen. There’s no guarantee that those discussions will bear any fruit. And money is an issue, a freaking big issue.

The F-35A is about $110M flyaway currently which will fall to $70-75M after the production ramp up.

According to the USAF there wont be an F-35A at $70-75M fly away unit cost (in then year) US$ ever (http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-140310-041.pdf page 37).
And if you are talking about the Fly Away Unit Cost excluding non recurring costs and ECO, your Super Hornet is on the 55 million dollar apiece bracket.

Less two-seaters than required means that the required number of planes would not have met the budget.

Eurofighter also left out R&D costs to integrate the required weapons.

http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/600033.html

?!

For crying out loud, the freaking F-35A doesnt have a twin seater, in the final EADS offer the number of twin seaters went from fifteen to six in order to comply with the SK budget, then we have the small problem that the weapons that EADS offered were European, and on top of that EADS offered to build the dam aircraft in … South Korea… EADS offered an assembly line. The SK F-35A will be built in the States.
Its nothing short of a huge compliment to the F-35A that the ROKAF went for this aircraft in these conditions!

We can look at the Rafale and Typhoon and infer that such a project would still be expensive, even minus an engine. You won’t get as many more fighters for a given sum as you think you’ll get.
[/B]

They are not very good examples, the Rafale is being built at a rate that can be described as “craftsmanship”, the Typhoon on the other hand is being built in decent numbers but the industrial setup is a freaking nightmare, four diferent lines… Even so, “Airbus” was prepared to deliver to the South Korean Air Force 50% more airframes than LM for the same price (and most of the ROKAF F-35´s wont be LRIP examples), so, this isnt so clear cut, it would be expensive, yes, but ditch the STVOL requirements, shed two or three tons, use the F119 and they might be on to something.

But surely a good trade off can be made in many combat jet fighters, by placing a newer and better engine. An F404 engine inside Panavia Tornado could catapult the tornado to much superior characterstics.

Read a bit about the F-4M, or how the Brits ended up with a much more expensive Phantom, with less performance while using more powerful engines. And if you want to see what a Tornado would behave equiped with RB199´s with the thrust of the F-404, thats an easy one, the Germans and the Italians have such birds. The ECR version of the Tornado are equiped with the RB199 MK105, it has almost the same thrust of the F404 while being slightly lighter.

Blasted, dont believe i´ve just answered a post made in 2010…

The problem is that people have developed this overwhelming sense that that the F-35 should be kinematically equal to an F-22 AND be a strike fighter with longer range AND be much less expensive. Anything else is a failure in their eyes. They’re asking the impossible.
.

Entirely correct.
But i would point out that the “overwhelming sense” was developed by the the JPO, Lockheed Martin and severall European and allied MOD´s (Australia comes to mind) between 2001 and 2006, not by “people”. The JSF was promised circa 2001 has being more affordable than its smallest/lightest competitor (we can go right up to the 2008 Norwegian MOD study to see that written in an official document) at the time while being inferior in the ATA scenario only to the Raptor (a bucket load of officials, from Industry, Tom Burbage comes to mind, allied MOD´s, i would point out the Dutch Peter De Vries and ending on the JPO, well every single one of the JSF program Directors); so yes you are indeed correct, but the Flack that the JSF program gets its pretty much their own doing.
But to be honest i think that the JSF team and LM can pretty much live with the Flak (they were “only” selling their product after all).

Hell yeah… 🙂

Also, the F-16’s weapon stations 2 and 8 have been modified it seems to carry 3 brimstones each:

check the F-16 pic in the sept 17 post:
https://twitter.com/41RTES

CGI

The Brimstone has not been integrated on the Viper, and it wont be unless someone signs a contract and forks out the cash.

Cheers