VnomadVN – For the 2017 buy year, 2019 delivery year, the F-35A URFC is $87m in base 2012 dollars. It’s in the SAR. You don’t see the $75m numbers until the 2019 buy year, where LockMart is predicting more than 200 deliveries.
Must be aircraft ordered in 2019 then. I got it from the GAO March report. $83.4 million. Its not a LM estimate. I don’t think 200 unit order in 2019 is seen as feasible by either side – DoD or LM (unless you’re referring two year clubbed order).
These targets are based upon planning assumptions reflected in the FY 2013 President’s Budget and the 2011 projection for international partner procurement. If there are subsequent changes to either the U.S. or international partner procurement quantities the program will isolate the effect that this has on the targets as a factor that is not within their control.
If production ramp-up is slower than foreseen, it’ll take longer but barring any technical issues, they should eventually be able to achieve a cost under $90M TY (or $80M FY 2014).
Intuitively, a 25% cut in cost (from the current $112M) doesn’t seem too high for a whopping four or five fold increase in production.
VnomadUK/French plan, new US engine, Israeli targeting pod, Indian avionics. It was always going to be ambitious…..
Already has an Israeli LDP and Indian EW suite & avionics. The technical issues likely relate only to the reengining.
VnomadThis is becoming more and more of a joke. You can’t deliver an UPGRADE program — designed to extend the useful service life of existing airframes — nearly a decade late and hope to gain more than a fraction of the benefits that were first anticipated. This program will not be complete until mid-2020s, by which time the Jaguars will have, what, five years of service life remaining? It would be better to cancel this debacle outright and put the funds into increased Tejas production/development.
Spot on!
VnomadVN – EADS qualified on price and number in Korea (aside from the dispute on the number of two-seaters) and F-35 did not.
As for the base-2012 $75m flyaway – the assumptions are still squishy. It certainly involves no further US cuts and substantial non-US commitments and a production rate close to 200/year.
The figure is for an aircraft delivered in 2019. A production rate of 200/year or substantial non-US deliveries could not have been factor.
VnomadThe URFC for the last LOT signed (LRIP 7) is north of 120 million US$, 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 41Cheers
The 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 2.213
TOTAL – 112.861
(Page 3 of 26)
VnomadVnomad, 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
I 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.
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.
VnomadYou must realize that this is an ESTIMATE from the program head, and not a KNOWN entity. 2019 contracts have not been signed as yet, When they sign contracts for LRIP 8 and 9, a better picture of the trend will emerge (We know for example that the price came down from LRIP 5 to 7). Full rate of production contracts are some time away. Until then we just have estimates that may or may not come true.
In time the picture will become clearer. Also, Any potential Gripen customer will value its operational cost as well, which is ridiculously low for the capability it delivers. Even if the F-35 considerably narrows the upfront cost gap between it and the gripen, operational cost would still be considerably higher as will be for most 5th gen jets.
Yes its an estimate yes but it is based on certain assumption and calculations. Point is, even assuming that a 35% fall in cost is optimistic, even pessimistic estimates wouldn’t be so much further off that figure. Even if the cost falls by just 20%, it’ll still breach the $90 mil flyaway mark.
Vnomad(the “Fly Away Unit Cost” in “then year dollars” never gets down from the 90 million US $ barrier for the F-35A)
The F-35A its not an F-16, its a much bigger/heavier and (almost certainly) a much more capable airframe, so it will cost quite a bit, always.
Even if Mr Bogdan gets it right with an 2019 “80/85 million US$” Non-recurring Fly Away Unit Cost (and its predecessors have got their predictions wrong), it stucks the cheapest Dave into Evolved Strike Eagle/Typhoon land, and IMO the JPO boss is a very, very optimistic chap.
The $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).
VnomadThe EF bid was responsive, as far as I know, in terms of price and number. They wanted 60 aircraft for a fixed budget, which the EF and Boeing bids met.
EADS 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.
Vnomadwhich means F-35 radar will be much more powerful in the direction it is canted (upwards)
The F-35’s radar has a inclined antenna but its not necessary facing upwards (in terms of radiation) – the TR modules would likely be ‘zeroed’ forward. Of course the Vixen will still have wider FoV regardless.
VnomadYou wanted sources, I gave them. Mentions “breach of flying discipline” being a possibility. That certainly falls under pilot error and/or training. Play with words as much as you want, but western and indian media is reporting that as a possibility, you wanted proof, I gave you 3 links.
Provide sources to your speculations if you will – ‘poor training, lack of experience, difficulty coping with a new aircraft, modern-trainers-something, etc.’ Lets not pretend your posts here were all about pilot error.
The crew was all trained at a USAF training establishment. So either the USAF trainers cut corners during the training or they didn’t. I’m inclined to believe they didn’t.
VnomadShiv Aroor @ShivAroor Mar 31
As details are awaited on the C-130J, a breach of flying discipline between the two formated aircraft is being weighed as a possibility.
All possibilities are investigated in crash investigation. Here’s an example. The IAF’s investigation will proceed on the same lines. Shiv Aroor’s tweet doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know.
The rest of the quotes mention the strong likelihood of human error. Again, a known factor, especially considering the mission the squadron was training for (special operations/low level ingress).
But what none of those actually do is support your claims – poor training, lack of experience, difficulty coping with a new aircraft, modern-trainers-something, etc.
VnomadThere is no chance that the accident could be caused by poor training or human error and that even to suggest as such is “nonsense”?
Also, when should feasibly ask questions about the cause of an accident if not straight after the accident happened? In which case the entire western and Indian media is being “distasteful”.
Don’t club them together. Do you have any evidence suggesting or has any Western/Indian media source pointed towards ‘poor training’ as a cause?
VnomadWow. Keen to put words in my mouth. Where did I state the IAF does not take remedial action? My point was by even denying such a scenario could occur due to the pilots being perfect, you and other posters are the ones implying it could not possibly pilot error. So which is it to be? As I stated in my very first post on this matter, we will not know till the board of inquiry, but pilot error could be a possibility, and yes, this may be due to discipline issues. That is a painful fact of life.
Had you limited your response to – ‘its a very reliable aircraft so there’s a strong likelihood of pilot error being responsible’ – there wouldn’t have been an issue.
Instead you engaged in wild speculation – the pilots not having the ‘experience needed’ and finding the transition from the An-32 to the all glass C-130J ‘too much’ – aside from making an irrelevant connection to the need for modern trainers and now insinuating that there might have been discipline issues.
Also, just as a heads up, Indian defence commentators are already pointing out that the IAF is investigating the possibility of a breach of flying discipline by BOTH aircraft.
The crash investigation will examine every aspect of accident, from the pilots’ family life, to the activities occurring on ground in the region before the aircraft entered the vicinity. Please post your source if it claims that there’s an unusually high focus on a possible ‘breach of flying discipline’.
VnomadThis is the tragedy of this situation. No one is prepared to question the training or the leadership. No one doubts the IAF’s profressional roots, but every organisation has sometimes systimatic failures, in training, procedure and leadership. There is a possibility this was the case here.
Are you claiming that the two veteran pilots were not qualified to train at the Little Rock or that the USAF cut corners on the training?
Let me give you two examples of foreign air forces that have “professional roots”.If you dont know the stories behind the below use Google.
1) The USAF nuclear scandal at its Minutemen Nuclear missile bases. Drug taking, exam cheating, leadership cover ups
2) RAF Puma base scandal that revealed negligence in training, leadership and administration after several crashesThe difference between these two “professional air forces” and the the IAF fan boys on here, is that in the two cases above action is being taken to remedy the situation. So human failures like this do happen. It MAY have occured here is what I am saying, but please feel free to bury your head in the sand.
What makes you think that the IAF, unlike the USAF and RAF, does not take action to remedy its issues? Are you implying that the Court of Inquiry ordered is a farce or that its recommendations will not be implemented?
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