Logan HartkeThe point that seems to be consistantly missed is that had they chose the Tomcat instead of the Hornet to upgrade you’d be seeing something more like the Attack Tomcat 21. New radar, new engines, essentially doing to the Tomcat what they did to the Hornet and incorporating sustainabilty improvements as well. It would have had about as much in common with today’s Tomcat as the Super Hornet has to the Hornet.
Oh, that’s completely understood. There’s a lot there that’s not being said, or is misleading at best. While you would acheive a maintenance ratio between the Cat and the Super Cat like that of the Bug vs Super Bug, the issue is the difference between the Tomcat and the Hornet, which would remain the same between the Super Tomcat and Super Hornet without enough difference in performance. Unless you’re assuming an AIM-152 with the Attack Tomcat 21 (which bring the pricetag up to a whole new bracket), the new Tomcat with AMRAAMs would have little but radar range and speed advantage over the current AESA-equipped Super Hornet. I agree, it would be a better fighter, and at least as good of a ground attacker, but at what cost?
The maintenance would be somewhere around three times as much as the Super Bug is now, if we go by Tomcat to Hornet ratios. Factor in maintenance cost and it’s significantly more. Add fuel consumption, and that’s more again. Figure in a much higher sticker price than the Super Bug due to much greater weight, complexity, capability, etc. Sure, you get a better plane, but overall operational cost for a fleet of them like the Super Hornet would likely be about 3x as much, all said and done. Even at half of that (150% cost), if you look at the current operations, it wouldn’t seem to be worth it. Furthermore, it drains from future projects like JSF and UCAVs. Last but not least, you can’t hold as many Super Tomcats as Super Bugs on a carrier, which, combined with higher unit acquisition cost in a time of tight-fisted defense spending period and a much higher maintenance requirement and all you get is a lot fewer planes in the air and no Navy guys to do the tanking anymore.
With where defense spending was heading in the post-Cold War era, the Super Hornet was a good choice for long-term investment. A Super Tomcat might have led to a lot few planes and a lot less funding for other projects such as JSF, USN UCAVs, and the CVN-21. Not only that but that still leaves you with the problem of an adequate EA-6B replacement. Do you modify the Super Tomcat? Even if it would work, the RIO already has his hands full. Do you give him more hats and expect it to be alright or do you make one of these?
That’s a whole other can of worms. Additionally, you don’t have the money to replace the legacy Hornets with them as well, so you’re still operating (at best) two very different types of combat planes as opposed to the all Bug fleet the USN is going to have from 2008-2012.
No matter what, it’d have cost a lot more. The money’s got to come from somewhere. What are you willing to axe? UCAVs? Fire Scout and the E-2D? Push the F-35C back to 2016? What’d the Super Tomcat have been worth?
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeAnd last time you ignored the part where I stated that we had more than enough AAR assets in-place in the form of KC-135Rs with MPARS pods and KC-10As to handle the AAR mission.
Ignored? I was the last one to comment on the discussion. I answered your comment and never received a reply from you on the matter.
It was the relative value of their roles. For one thing, most of the Super Hornet unit in theatre were relatively new to the type and needed training on buddy refueling from the perspective of the tanker and not the tankee, considering the fact that they primarily came from already retired Tomcat units with no such experience. Additionally, the C/D units were over Iraq because they also needed to fly some, as well. A Hornet can drop a JDAM just as well as anyone else, since-as a Tomcat driver put it-“if you can use a keyboard, you can drop a JDAM”. The S-3Bs were best-suited to live video feed, surface surveillance, and targeting roles, since these could not be as easily accompished by any single other type. For that reason, they were passed over in the buddy tanking role. Guarding the Gulf against potential attackers in small boats was a role the S-3B was best-suited for and using it in the buddy tanker role would have been a waste of resources. Since the F/A-18C/D and F-14D could carry the small amount of munitions necessary to be bomb trucks in this low-intensity conflict and they could not do buddy-tanking, anyway, that was the role the Super Hornet was best-suited for.
To that I’d like to add the fact that Navy prefers not tanking from you guys because they don’t like taking JP-8 back to the deck. They’ll take JP-8, but only if they know they’re going to burn it all, so that’s why they use mostly USN tankers, and S-3Bs just can’t meet demand. Furthermore, just tanking isn’t enough of a reason to keep the S-3B around, which, besides some targeting and surface surveillance, was the only job left on a CVN for a Viking. If the Rhino can do it, why keep the Viking around. The Navy uses Navy tankers because Navy tankers use Navy jet fuel. It’s not a matter of the parts not matching, it’s a matter of making the Hershey’s Kisses back on deck all nervous when you start bringing a lot of JP-8 back to their floating home.
So, that’s why the Navy would rather use Navy tankers. Say an F-14 gasses up from a KC-135, then has to divert back to the carrier due to an engine malfunction or some such. You have a plane chock full of JP-8 coming back to the carrier? Makes them nervous. Either they’d have to divert it to a land base, which is risky if it’s further away, and inconvenient even if it’s not since they’ll have to Greyhound a crew in there to fix the plane and fly it out, then Greyhound them back, or they have to take a problematic plane full of unsafe fuel back to a carrier. Navy’s got good reason not to want USAF JP-8 if they can help it. A Super Bug with four tanks full of JP-5 and a buddy pod is their “if they can help it”. No other plane but the S-3B gave them that option short of the KA-6D, and we all know that maintenance problems with the good ‘ol Intruder.
So, THAT’S why the Navy didn’t want your fuel if they can help it. How’s that wash?
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeIn 2002 the UK Exported to the USA:
Under Category V “Attack Helicopters”… one ‘Tornado GR1’.
I bet that’s the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force’s Tornado.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeNot to mention support . Would companies be making Parts for the Mig-21 in 2025 ?? Or for the F-5/F-4 for that matter?
I believe Brazil plans to keep its F-5s in service until 2025, so the answer to your question would be “Embraer”.
Also, I know F-5s can be given BVR capability, some even have already. The main thing limiting the F-5s is airframe time. If they were still building them, I’m sure some countries would still be buying them. They’re pretty cheap to operate, spares are still common (and still being produced), and upgrades are plenty. If you can find low airframe F-5Es, grab them, you won’t be disappointed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still around in 2025. In the right hands, they’d still give a lot of fighters a challenge in 2025 if you let them get close. With the right version (Chile’s or Singapore’s) you can hit your enemies at AMRAAM or Derby range, which is enough to down an F-16 on a strike mission in 2025, for example.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeActually, I was in Iraq in 2004 for a while, and the Super Hornets WERE the tankers :diablo: Saw plenty of F-14s flying around over Baghdad though…
This has already been discussed, remember?
People can cry all they want, but all the aircraft the Super Hornet is replacing short of the Viking are being replaced primarily because the manhours and cost required to keep them flying are a gross outrage to the maintenance crews and the American taxpayer regardless of original sticker price. Phoenixes weren’t working reliably anymore and neither was the APG-71. The AGP-71 has been recently because of all the spares out there after the mass retirements, but had the Tomcats not been largely planned to be removed from service this early, it’s likely the situation would be worse now than it was in the mid-90s.
By comparison to the Bugs, the A-6s were wearing out and hard to maintain, the F-14Ds were wearing out and hard to maintain, and the EA-6Bs are wearing out and hard to maintain. All take a lot of time to keep in the air, and without Bugs and Rhinos to fill the gap, you’d end up with a lot fewer planes in the air, except the Greyhound, which would be getting record time in the air for all the spare parts it’d be dropping to the carriers to keep the Tomcats, Intruders, and Prowlers flying.
The Super Hornet is a good package. The pilots like it, the Navy loves it, Air Wing commanders like it, even old Tomcat drivers respect the reasons behind it replacing the ‘Cat. Squadron commanders don’t have to bite their fingernails anymore, worrying about whether they’ll get enough planes to make this sortie, let alone the one after. The Super Bug will fly, the Tomcat…maybe. What, you want it to have a working radar, too? That’s pushing it (F-14Ds often were sortieing in the late 90s and early 2000s with only some aircraft having working radars, especially by the end of the mission). Even ex-Intruder drivers have come to respect and like it. Only people with no long-term first-hand experience seem to hate it. The Rhino’s a good little beast. She’s no carrier-borne F-15E or naval Sukhoi, but she’s got the right attributes for the right time.
Not only that, but Boeing is doing a good job with production. In fact, delays with the JSF and increasing wear on legacy aircraft means that they are looking at increasing the numbers, not cutting them. Short of the Viking, it is the most economic aircraft on the carrier. Since the Viking is just another type doing most of the same jobs, it’s even more economically sound to get rid of it, too. That’s why your pre-JSF USN is only going to have Bug and Super Bug variants for combat carrier jet types.
A mediocre air-to-air on the catapult is better than a great one on paper or the budgetary chopping block, which is just where a naval F-22A equivalent would end up.
Logan Hartke
P.S. – You want to talk “Band-Aids”, talk to an F-14 mechanic, an APG-71 radar technician especially. By the end of their run, they’re running entirely on borrowed parts and bubble gum. The Tomcat’s hydraulics were also especially problematic.
Logan HartkeLogan, those were MiG-25RB or RBS recce aircraft, I am not aware of a single MiG-25P or PD interceptor painted in the mentioned camo, no matter how cool it might have looked.
Quite likely. I was only thinking of the Foxbat in general, and didn’t mean to indicate a specific version.
Here’s a thread with a lot of the schemes I was referring to. They look superb on the normally somewhat bland Foxbat and Flagon, again, in my opinion.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeI loved the camo scheme that some of the MiG-25s (and even some Flagons IIRC) were carrying late in their Soviet days and when they became ‘Russian’. That was the best those interceptors have ever looked.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeOr Bill Gates…
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeDunno. I think it’s a combination of the F-15 coming out of nowhere for the two “biggies” and Russia dominating Algeria. I kind of think that Dassault got started a bit late on the European marketing and suddenly found no one left to buy on the continent, and that’s not good. Teal thinks that it’s the same thing that’s wrong with the Super Hornet’s export sales-no one wants anything a hair over $60 million unless they splurge and get the Typhoon or wait and get the JSF. In this case, they think $10 million makes all the difference. The difference between Dassault and Boeing is that Boeing is going to do well whether or not the Super Hornet does well on the export market, so they’ve not been pushing it hard. They make more profit from F-15 exports and the airliner business keeps them afloat regardless. They’ve got bigger things on their minds and the Super Hornet production line will stay online for years to come anyway. Boeing can afford to be laid back about it; Dassault can’t.
One interesting thing I read was that the cheap availability of the Mirage 2000 might be cutting into Dassault’s traditional markets and setting the Rafale back. Interesting. I don’t know, but anything’s possible.
No matter what, though, suing the last country that didn’t pick your plane doesn’t exactly make your product more enticing to countries holding future competitions, either. That was bad PR.
Dassault’s poor Rafale sales are probably a combination of bad luck (F-15, odd price range), bad marketing (Europe), lack of sufficient political leverage (S. Korea, Algeria), and the abundance of cheaper aircraft by better salesmen (Saab Gripen, Lockheed F-16).
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeThat clearly shows that your 12xF-5 bonus to Superbugs is absolutely sucked out of your finger. In fact, it does not exist at all, as the F-58E offer is only a part of a completely different package for Bulgaria counting 12 used F-18C/D from US NAVY stocks as the main asset.. But yes, why bother reading facts if empty trashing is so easy..
Here’s where I was getting the information from. They may be wrong, but there’s a lot of them, and “my finger” was not one of the sources.
Boeing is the only one of the 3 suppliers to respond so far. The company has proposed 3 options for the supply of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to the Bulgarian armed forces: 16 new Super Hornets and 12 used [F-5s]; 12 used F-18s and as many F-5s; and 12 used jets.
Gripen and Lockheed Martin are preparing their response to the information request sent out by the Bulgarian defence ministry.
Source #2: STL Today (where the planes are made; original link broken)
Earlier this month, the Navy delivered pricing on three fighter jet options to the Bulgarians, a Boeing spokeswoman confirmed. One package would include 16 new Super Hornets, which cost about $54 million each, and 12 used F-5s made by Northrop Grumman Corp.
The proposal was sent by Washington last Thursday in response to a request for price and availability information received from Sofia in June 2005 for 16 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.
In addition to the Super Hornets, the letter also requested price and availability information for 12 used F-5s, which are flown as training aircraft and are no longer in production.
Hartigan said the first supply option is tailored to the number and type of aircraft mentioned in the Bulgarian letter of request.
Source #4: STLToday’s good enough for SBAC
You try to mod your aircraft, go for diversity. Well, I try to avoid costs for modding. At least, bevore modding some aircraft, you need some experienced personal. Therefore, Gripen as low end, EF as highend. They provide at least weapons commonality.
Now you try to get a system running, with myriads of aircraft and weapons. Good luck, paying billions for foreign “advisors”, that run your “cheap” aircraft.
Even worse, with your modded Hinds, you will need advisors from different countries, that don’t necessarily like or even support each other.
As a sidenote, Boeing canceled it’s partnership with Aero Vochody. So, no common service here, too.
Why do you think I’m acquiring so many training aircraft? Set up a few training centers where the initial batches of domestic instructors are trained by company techs and then take care of training the service personnel myself. Oman does it this way with great success and even make some money training other air forces while they’re at it. Also, most of the main companies I looked at (Boeing, BAE, Lockheed, Saab, Pilatus, ATE, Sikorsky, and Kazan) are known to offer great support in setting systems up and getting service industries started in those countries for large numbers of equipment.
This thread should be a free discussion, with no condemnation of peoples suggestions, just because they do not match the intended outcome. If you want people to follow rules, then you have to make them nice and clear, and allow people to feel free to suggest things. It might help to set some ground rules, i.e. $10bn to buy initial equipment, then a further $2.5bn a year for future procurement, with no fuel or weapons costs.
That’d be fine. Someone with more experience and knowledge mind getting it started along those lines?
I hate the path it took to get there, but I very much like the point this has gotten to. I don’t mind being proven wrong as long as there is sufficient evidence to do so, and I’d love to see what’s best out there for the prices as the market right now is undergoing a lot of flux with a number of upsets and surprises. Are anymore details out there on flyaway costs stated in these contracts? All of this has already got me reconsidering the Rafale…
Respectfully,
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeI am not saying that Typhoon is cheaper than F-18E, because it isn’t.. It is good 50% more expensive. Not twice as much, not three times as much and definitely not your claimed 3.53 times..
BTW, Typhoon has been offered to Norway at $49.5mil flyaway once, in a competition against F-16C Block 52. That was long time ago, before Norway decided on getting three fregates instead. Now, go figure..Again, I am critical to your ‘twice as much’ and ‘3.53 times as much’ quotes. Why? Because they are simply not true.. What is your problem? First you claim absolutely ridiculous figures and when I disagree and provide proofs on the contrary, then you suddenly change your rhetoric and are trying to paint me as the conflict monger.. Get a grip..
Nowhere did this happen. First of all, the only figures you quoted at any point were the ones for domestic cost, which don’t apply here, as recent export sales have clearly shown, and as that article clearly admits. It basically said, “export sales are not part of this report, so use this data accordingly.”
My figures are not “absolutely ridiculous” or “not true”. They come from actual sales on the recent aircraft trade market. Both of mine came from the past year, the past few months, actually. The cheapest EF-2000 offers were to nations very closely linked to the developing nations economically and geographically and so benefitted from those factors accordingly. Take those out of the mix, and the export price changes drastically, as Saudi Arabia clearly shows.
The Bulgarian deal right now is too vague to get down to the nuts and bolts, but we know enough to know it’s not “just the flyaway cost of 16 naked Super Hornets”. It is likely more and is definitely 12 F-5s more. That’s a heck of a lot more than just “two screwdriver sets and one xeroxed do-it-yourself manual…” In fact, Brazil paid quite a lot for their recent acquisition of second-hand Saudi F-5Es, as did the US for Switzerland’s and those were in bad shape. You’ve not provided any good figures to dispute mine and instead brush mine off providing little reason why. As has been shown multiple times, your assessment of the Bulgarian offer is incorrect and even when I took the Austrian price versus the Bulgarian offer, the Eurofighter still is 2x as much.
Let me remind you your own name of the thread topic.. Equip your air force. That means everyone can write down what he wants. If I write I want 3,500 Rafales, it is strictly my imagination about a perfect air force, what is here to ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’?
No where does it say “unlimited budget”. In fact, in the first paragraph, the following is clarified:
Later discussions clarify a country with a sizable budget, but nothing like the major spenders (India, China, US, Russia, etc.). We’re talking about a military, that when everything is said and done and if money is spent wisely, might approach the level of the Netherlands, Chile, or Malaysia in their regions, for example.
That’s supposed to limit the number of people putting down huge numbers of Tu-160s and aircraft carriers. That’s what the point is from the beginning. What’s a good value, what are good combinations of complementary types, and why? That’s the only way anything useful comes out of these comparisons, otherwise it’s a “What are your favorite planes?” and those threads are far more common than this one.
Logan Hartke
Logan Hartke1. This is based on water, really. There are absolutely no indications about that..
2. No? Look at PPP figures of both countries and their respective defense budget, that is all you need to start with.
That’s not true by any means. You can certainly get a ballpark on both of their prices by looking at the offers on the table and the contracts signed; this is exactly what I did here. Boeing is staying competitive with the F/A-18E/F’s price on the world market. They’d not have been able to even start participating in the Indian competition, either if they weren’t able to keep the Super Hornet’s price down to a level where it could have even been entered. Similarly, Bulgaria has already stated what the price range is on the contract and by submitting the different proposals, the US Navy/Boeing is saying that they can meet that with the proposals on the table. That includes the offer of 16 new Super Hornets and 12 F-5s for under 1.2 billion USD. There’s no way the EF Typhoon could ever get down to that level for an export. That’s evidenced in the subsequent export deals on the Typhoon.
I don’t see how you can be so critical when the evidence provided by the export offers that are on the table show the Super Hornet to be far under the Typhoon’s price range. That’s not to mention a much earlier delivery date, as well.
The best piece of advice I can give you is to relax, cool down and take it easy. If you mark every post here with ‘BS’, ‘crap’, ‘joke’ and ‘stupidity’, the you can bet your a$$ that everybody will show you a middle finger instead of trying to satisfy your thirst of courtesy and knowledge.
By no means did I come in here marking everyone else’s as horrible. In fact, I just ignoring the stupid ones until it got to the point where they tended to outnumber any thought-out ones (of which there were a number). Previously, on others’ lists, I have seen a lot of choices that I disagreed with, but a lot of others that caused me to change my thinking and really commend the person that came up with the concept. For this reason, in the ground aspect at least, it’s caused me to change my selections over enough times that many aspects of my current selections don’t resemble my originals at all. I’m not adverse to ideas or opinions that go head-to-head with my own and I have given credit to many such people that had better concepts, adopting many such ideas myself. With some thought, the creativity that this thread can spawn can be amazing!
I think these threads can be useful for a number of reasons. It tends to keep people on the up and up with aircraft and company developments. It can introduce people to new types of aircraft, and it can help a lot of people to better understand the outcomes of many competitions. It almost always educates a participant in numerous areas, if only because everyone has their own area of specialty and this is one of the few areas where they can combine and people can see how they all fit into the ‘big picture’.
All in all, I’ve found that it can be both entertaining and informative. That’s certainly what I’d like to see it be here.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeSo, let me sum it up. You still support following claims:
1. Super Hornet is roughly 3 to 3.53 times cheaper than EF Typhoon with comparable support package.
2. Bulgarian deal on Super Hornets is equivalent to Saudi Arabian deal on Typhoons in terms of program support and spares.Do I understand you correctly?
1. I believe that the EF Typhoon would likely be at least twice as much as a Super Hornet per plane assuming a comparable support package
2. There’s not enough information at my disposal to go on yet for the Bulgarian tender, but it’s all we have to work with so far on Super Hornet export sales.
Listen, this isn’t supposed to sound personal, because it isn’t. I’m not trying to come in here and take on veteran members, I came here looking for advice and suggestions and I got combination of insultingly stupid responses and insultingly haughty responses. I’d been a lurker on this forum for some time before I started posting and I had come to respect the knowledge of many of the posters. Instead, when I post this thread, I get responses that show either massive amounts of jingoism (“I want MY country’s Air Force”), irreverent stupidity (“I’d just get me tons of cheap jets and pwn u allz, LOLZ!”), or show that they have a secret desire to go on this massive shopping spree and destroy all their neighbors.
I came expecting more courtesy and knowledge than I’ve seen so far. I don’t know if I came at a bad time or what, but after having been an observer of the forum before joining, the reality seems to have been disappointing.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeMe do my homework? I’ve already read that report in its entirety. In fact, I jumped on it within days of it coming out. If you, on the other hand, had made it to the report’s third paragraph, you’d know that it means nothing to this scenario:
These figures can appear surprising, especially as they indicate that the Rafale costs less than the Gripen, yet they reflect the actual price paid for these fighters by domestic customers. We opted to disregard other prices, such as those offered on export competitions, on the grounds that they are slewed by commercial considerations, while prices paid by domestic customers more accurately
reflect the real cost of developing and procuring combat aircraft.
You are mixing program costs including support of one aircraft with bulk flyaway prices for the other one, geez, what a terrible mess!
I wasn’t using the bulk flyaway cost, no US figure in there, instead, I was using the cost as they were offered to Bulgaria, without even factoring out the cost of the F-5s, which would bring up the total package to about the right equivelant for the Saudi deal. Furthermore, I also included a comparison with the Austrian deal, showing that again, taking that ‘never to be seen again’ low price, the Super Hornet still turns out cheaper.
In the end, what matters is the export cost. The source means nothing if it doesn’t apply. Look at the prices offered in competitions and quoted in contracts if you want to know what a country is going to have to pay for a foreign aircraft. It doesn’t matter to me what amount of money the US makes or loses on the sale. I don’t care if they eat $30 million just so that they can get the dividends from exporting the munitions and/or other aircraft, or if they make $20 because the price is higher than it needs to be, all I would care about is the cost of the aircraft to a foreign air force.
Figure out if your sources even apply before trying to throw them in my face. I read through that thing in its entirety beforehand and so knew that it didn’t apply. Obviously you didn’t.
Logan Hartke
Logan HartkeWell, why do you think a Gripen/Super Hornet combination comes cheaper then a Gripen/Typhoon combi ?
Because I follow export orders and fighter competitions.
Not counting the dozen F-5s (which I want for may air force, too) that Boeing threw into the deal, 16 new Super Hornets for Bulgaria are being offered for about 1 billion USD. A look at the most recent Eurofighter deal (Saudi Arabia) shows that 48 of these planes cost about 10.6 billion USD. That averages out to 62.5 million USD per Super Hornet and 220.8 million USD per EF-2000, respectively. That brings the EF-2000 to 3.53 times as costly as the Super Hornet, again, not counting the F-5s. Even if we took the low end cost of a Eurofighter in the Austrian deal of 2002, it still ends up being about 110 million USD, still about twice as much as a Super Hornet and Aloysius Rauen, EADS’ chief executive officer for military programmes said that, “No other customer will ever get the Austrian price for Tranche 2 [Eurofighter again]. […] Their fixed-price is the privilege of the launch export customer.”
Your combination of 70 Gripens and 30 Eurofighters is a joke. That would cost you over 8.7 billion USD taking a very, very kind price of 30 million USD for the Gripen due to its desperate situation right now. My same order only brings me to about 1.5 billion USD.
Your scenario is for fun purposes, but some additional informations would be nice. The background of your military personal for example would be from interest. Was your parent country (from which your nation broke away from) equipped with Russian or western weaponry ? What kind of opposition you have to count with ? Are your potential opponents focused on air, ground or naval forces ?
As was said above, when your country broke off, the parent country kept all of the military resources. You can expect that much of the personnel were also loyal to that country, so you’re looking at a clean slate. Your opponents have mixed forces of all types, being more focused on quantity than quality right now, but as the Ethiopia-Eritrean conflict showed, a country with a bit of money can quickly buy high-quality equipment and trained mercenary pilots before going to war with you, so suffice it to say that you need to be prepared for anything within reason. Plan largely to defend against either a primarily Russian force, or a mixed force. Think along the lines of Venezuela, Peru, Indonesia, or even India (on a smaller scale). A mixed force with some serious capability when necessary.
PC 21 (20)
Basic training by a civilian company in land. Then transition to the PC-21. It is said, they behave like jets. So this training would be absolutely sufficient, no need for a jettrainer. No coin, no nothing, just training.
While Pilatus recommends using the PC-21 for all stages of training, I don’t plan to. While I agree with the concept in smaller air forces, the realistic needs of medium- to large-sized air forces make it impractical. Going straight from a PC-21 to an operational Super Hornet or Gripen unit is nice way of losing Gripens and Super Hornets and I’m not prepared to do that. Instead, I plan to fast track the best pilots doing their basic training on the Super Tucano to the PC-21 which will form the bulk of their advanced training, only the last phases taking place in the Hawk LIFTs before conversion to front-line fighter units. The idea is for pilots to already be versed in radar useage, air-to-air refueling, advanced fighter combat tactics, and weapons release before arrival at an operational squadron. Most of these tasks cannot be performed by the PC-21.
The running costs are in the same league as a Hawk. So why would I want any of those funny LIFT aircraft ?
That’s not true, by any means. South Africa can tell you that the Hawk LIFT is both cheaper to operate and intelligent to acquire for training up to the Gripen.
My plan for the Gripens and possibly the Super Hornets is to lease the Gripens, like you Aurel, except that I’m going to have my Gripens upgraded to the JAS39EBS HU-standard, like Hungary. Then, like I showed here. , I plan to go with the GE F414 and AESA upgrade to increase compatibility with my Super Hornets. Additionally, I am very interested in the current work on Super Hornet developments.
Also, both my Hinds and my Mi-17V-7s are to use the VK2500 engines.
Logan Hartke
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