SintraWho told you Rafale line would be closed? Minister reinstated in january that a further tranche would be ordered…
Blasted, i was making the wrong assumption that all the 180 MN and Adla airframes would be delivered till 2019/20, the next tranche (~45 aircrafts) would take the production line till 2024. This reasoning was correct till August last year, when the French Budget plan was released.
Sintraif my memory serves well, they already didn’t want the F-16 in the first place, among other reasons because it was single engine.
No, the main reason why the Viper was rejected was because its take off and landing characteristics were deemed unacceptable/vastly inferior to the Hornet (and i imagine thats the reason why LM didnt offered the Viper in this competition). The Mirage 2000 lost that one because its avionics package was inferior to the Hornet. On the other hand, in the seventies the twin engined Fiat G91Y (IIRC another twin engined bird, the Jaguar was also evaluated, the other contenders were the A-4 and the Mirage V/Milan) was entirely outclassed by a variation of the A-7, when the original competition to replace the Hawker Hunter in the ATG mission took place (the acquisition of the Corsair by the Swiss Air Force had a very similar fate to the Gripen, died, then a second competition for an ATA platform ended with the F-5E being chosen).
Read quite a few articles on the subject in Air International by the eighties when Dassault tried has hell to sell the 2000.
Cheers
SintraFact is that the Swiss Army does not need all around stealth. They are not going to fight a solid IADS unless they change their policy. This can save them big bucks as all around stealth remains costly to design.
Secondly, I understand that the Tiger replacement is ideally to be manned by reservists.
You can see here a synergy in the requirement that will stands long unless we see some drastic changes in the defense policy.That’s why I do not see the 35 being a leading candidate. However, this is only a framed picture on the low technical level. For example The B version will be able to draw large cuts in a budget focused on theorized concepts (small footprint on the infrastructure level – lower manpower ressources, remote operation on less densely populated area etc…)
Regarding the Gripen E, I don’t understand those that does say that this is only a revamped C and does not offer much.
I would like to point here the 106 Vs the 102. Same nest but….
Time. By the time that the Swiss will need a replacement for the Hornet, the assembly lines for the SH and Typhoon will be closed, the Rafale line in France will also be closed, that leaves the Gripen E, an hipotethical “Indian” (built) Rafale and the F35. SLEP the Hornet airframes and there’s a real possibility that the only game in town is the F35.
Cheers
SintraI find it somewhat amusing after the endless talk about the supposed death spiral facing the F-35 that when the Gripen loses some 20% of its total orders in a day that all people around here seem to have to say is “well, more workshare for everyone else… ”
:highly_amused:
And by rejecting the Gripen E, the Swiss voters might just have transformed the F-35A into a leading candidate for the replacement of the F/A-18C. A bigger, heavier, more capable and more expensive airframe than the Swedish jet. Had the acquisition of the Gripen E proceded, a second batch would have been a natural selection for the Hornet replacement, but now… Oh, the irony of it…
SintraWell, listening to people and politicians reactions in the Swiss media there were 2 main reasons for the “no”
1- We don’t need a new plane now
2- We want a better plane than the Gripen (ie a plane better than the current F-18 so that it can replace it in 10-15 years)The concequence of N°2 is that some people in favour of bying new planes, and who should have voted “yes”, eventually voted “no”.
There´s a bit of wishfull thinking in here, the entire “NO” campaign was around “le gaspillage de l’ordre de plusieurs milliards de francs”, the campaign motto was “NON aux milliards pour des avions de combat!”…
The acquisition of new aircrafts for the replacement of the F-5E fleet is dead, it was entirely clear before the election that if the Gripen got booted, no one was going to commit political Seppuku by proposing the acquisition of new combat jets for quite a few years, and anyone proposing the acquisition of even more expensive aircrafts would be labelled nuts. The Swiss Air Force just lost 3/5 of its Jet fleet, unless some sort of very inexpensive leasing is achieved, and Spyhawk is correct, in a decade Switzerland will have to choose if it wants an Air Force or not, and i have the strangest feeling that its not the last time that the Swiss are going to have a say on the Gripen (and the irony of it, is that by then the biggest competition will be an even bigger/heavier/more advanced airframe than the two twin´s).
Cheers
SintraMostly the result of two delays ordered by the government for the sole purpose of shifting costs to a later year, so as to be able to balance that year’s budget.
The contracts with the builders required that the government continue to cover workers’ wages, shipyard plant costs, etc during the delays – even though less (or no) work was being done.
The result was a slightly lower “per-year” cost, but a significantly higher total bill.
Penny wise, pound foolish…
SintraI am going to get shot because of this… but…
Just been reading the Ministry of Defence – The Major Projects Report 2013 (released three months ago), and QE/POW have the biggest increase in costs of any UK MOD “Kit acquisition” program (from 3541 to 6102 million pounds)! Both in % or total expenditure!
Bad planning or completely irrealistic initial projections?
SintraGaN radar actually (in collaboration with Chalmers university, using their GaN process)
The longest range version is Giraffe 8A. 4A is the middle one. All S-Band. There is also a low-range GaN in X-band, Giraffe 1X.
Edit: Here is a link to the product brochure for Giraffe 8A, http://www.saabgroup.com/Global/Documents%20and%20Images/Campaigns/Radar/product%20folders%20low/Saab_Broschyr_G8_low.pdf
AAArghhh
You are correct, offcourse, i was thinking “GaN” and wrote “GaaS”. It wouldnt be news a “GaaS” antenna in 2016… Thanks
(“Must not write before coffee” memo…)
SintraSide note
The Swedes just showed off a land based GaN radar (Giraffe 4A). The thing is, the chaps are going to deliver the production model in 2016!
SintraThe flyaway costs for FY2015 (for LRIP 7) almost exactly equal $112 million.
From your link –
FY 2015 Base Unit Cost ($ M)
Airframe 74.613
CFE Electronics 22.238
GFE Electronics –
Engines 13.797
Armament –
ECO 2.213TOTAL – 112.861
(Page 3 of 26)
You are reading the document incorrectly, those 112.861 US$ million (has i´ve stated) are for a 2015 contracted aircraft (delivered in 2017), thats LRIP 09, not LRIP 07.
Cheers
SintraI though the contract was signed in 2009. Factoring in five years of inflation I figure the cost had to cross $125M. And while part of that might have been on refresh programs for the older aircraft, unlike an export customer the consortium members didn’t have to pay any significant infrastructure or training costs.
Off course, you are correct it was in 2009. 2+ Billion Euros were for the T1 and T2 aircrafts.
The offer to UAE was priced at about $10 billion for 60 aircraft IIRC. Cost to Oman is even higher. I just don’t see how they could have offered it for $7.5 billion to South Korea.
Look at what i´ve wrote above. On top of that, just 10% of the Korean Phoon´s would be twin holed ones, and the argument that ends this particular discussion is that according to DAPA, the South Korean agency that handled the “competition”, EADS did indeed offer the sixty aircrafts for the availlable budget.
In the end it all depends on what the customer is asking, the UAE were asking for the most advanced aircraft that the Eurofighter consortiun could offer, the Oman contract includes Hawks and a in service contract, i doubt that the South Koreans would need British technicians at their airbases for a great big chunk (if not all) of the aircrafts operational life.
Cheers
SintraI have been able to save my text by pressing [go back one page]
Yep, i usually do the same, but the entire PC went nuts…
SintraThe $85 million being quoted is in 2019 dollars. At today’s rate, it equals approx $75 million per F-35A. Beating the $90M figure shouldn’t be a problem at all. (URFC is already at $112M IIRC).
I just hate it when we write a huge text and the net crashes…
The URFC for the last LOT signed (LRIP 7) is north of 120 million US$, the USAF is predicting a 112 million US$ URFC for LRIP 9, thats the LOT to be contracted next year (aircrafts to be delivered in 2017). The URFC for 2019 should be (according) to the USAF Budget 90.962 million US$. But i was specificaly mentioning the “Fly Away Unit Cost”, on top of the URFC it includes non recurring and ancilary costs.
You can find the exact numbers here:
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-140310-041.pdf
Pages 37 to 41
Cheers
SintraEADS was able to offer the EF for under $125 million each, all inclusive? I doubt that very strongly and I’d wait for clarification. That’s cheaper than what the EF members are paying for their T3s.
Vnomad, i imagine that you´ve picked the 2011 9 billion Euros contract and divided by 112 aircrafts and 241 engines? Even so, its a bit less than those 125 million a pop, but a fair chunk of that contract was aplied on the T1 and T2 fleets (electronic obsolescence) has stated in severall articles at the time.
Cheers
SintraTyphoon did meet the price point, however EADS changed the mix of single seaters to two seaters during the second round after all the bids failed to meet the price (iirc). This was considered unacceptable by DAPA and therefore EADS were DQ’d. EADS protested claiming that their was no clause stating that they had to seek explicit consent from DAPA to re-adjust the mix. Some committee was to rule over the matter the last i recall reading on the matter.
That was an amusing argument. All the Boeing Eagles were twin seaters, all the LM JSF ones were single seaters, so lets boot the EADS offer because they only offered six (or twelve, dont remember) twin seaters, while the rest were single seaters Phoons!
The only thing that puzzles me is why did EADS make a bid?
Sign In
