Agreed about Typhoon. How could whoever was responsible agree to build an aircraft designed without provision for its mechanical radar to be replaced with an AESA radar at a later point?

Equally astonishing is the initial tranches of the Gripen i.e. Gripen A/B which was entirely retired just 15 years after the first delivery (though plenty of those were later resold on the second hand market).

Please note that when comparing the cost of Eurocanards to the F-35.

The F-35 has a rather larger proportion of its cost bundled up in maintenance and logistics than the Eurocanards.

No evidence of that. In fact given the scale of the program (read: production of spares), its quite likely to be cheaper than Eurofighter & Rafale over the long term.

I’m sure it’s due to the enormous cost pressures on the F-35 program to lower its “flyaway” costs, where a large chunk of costs are shifted to the right where they can be accounted for in maintenancesustainment.

The flyaway cost has little to do with the maintenance/sustainment cost. The cost negotiated for the recurring flyaway cost ($95 mil at last count) includes everything specified by DoD regulations.

Concurrency is an entirely different issue (average retrofit cost: $4.5 mil/aircraft) and doesn’t apply to aircraft delivered after 2017, in terms of hardware (deliveries to the ROKAF will begin in 2018).

The commonality between F-35 is small ~30%, your in effect getting 3 fleets of dissimilar aircraft so don’t go counting all those F-35 in one.

That applies only to the airframe. The mission systems are almost entirely common while the engines are common for the A & C (with some commonality with the B). So as far as spares and software is concerned (a major driver of sustainment costs), there will be extensive savings.

While Concurrency issues will plague (cost) the F-35 for the next decade, its the maintenance cost that have risen that is a concern.

Unless the operating cost per hour is on a rising slope (it isn’t), its not a concern vis a vis the Eurocanards.

No its 60 airframes.

60 EFs for $7 billion puts the unit acquisition cost at less than $120 mil each. Sound likely?

Is it as I have posted before that they try to make one plane a do all end all all things to all people machine? I still say we really need two lines of planes, pure fighters, and a line of attack aircraft.

F-16, F-15E, F-18C/D, Mirage 2000, F/A-18E/F, Su-30, Su-35, PAK FA, J-10, J-11, J-20,Rafale, Eurofighter, Gripen, Tejas, FA-50, JF-17.

The jury on multi-role aircraft came out a long time ago.

1. What sense would it make to maintain a continuous g turn with such heavy loadout? Does not add up for me..

Rather self-evident I’d say – its when you want to change direction without sacrificing air speed or altitude (as opposed to quick nose-pointing to cue a missile shot, where ITR comes into play). Hardly an unusual scenario for a strike mission.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/second-mitsubishi-x2-421374/

India cancels Rafale/MMRCA..Again!!

Your link is headlined to an article about the Mitsubishi X-2 demonstrator while actually directing the user to a subscription page for ‘Flight Global’, and is followed by a quote from an article from ‘The Diplomat’ about the MMRCA cancellation, dated August 2015.

Weird.

If India has a change of heart and go for F-35, well its their choice, but a big mistake in my opinion.

Unless they get both, which IMO would be the best choice. F-35 in lieu of the Rafale/MMRCA. Several advantages to it that I can see –

– The definitive variant of the PAK FA will be available only after 2025. The F-35 could fill in the numbers well.
– Having the F-35 already available, would improve India’s negotiating position when hammering out a deal for the PAK FA.
– The two aircraft’s strengths are somewhat complementary.
– It would help in terms of diversification; especially with Su-30’s numbers likely to climb past 300 units.
– Would allow diversification within the domestic industry as well, with HAL partnered with UAC & Tata with LM.

India will get offset for any weapons they want to develop and use, and most likely for some spare parts used for keeping PakFa in service.

In practice, they’d be forced to operate mostly Russian weapons. For one, integrating foreign equipment is likely to be far more expensive than it was for the Su-30. For another, US products, which are increasingly favoured by the IAF (and a fair bit of European equipment), would be off-limits for a Russian aircraft. Practically speaking only, Israeli gear would really be viable (shared with the F-35I interestingly).

High Altitude trials at LEH reportedly just 3 of the 7 contenders passed it , another would be Hot and High Weather trials something Jags RR engine known to face issues.

Leh again?!! Can you give me any example of a unique problem faced by the IAF NOT including operating from Leh (which is just one out of two dozen northern/eastern airbases)?

[The Jaguar’s issues with a substantial warload in hot conditions were shared by the RAFO (& RAF).]

JV means you fix the issue before full production , How on earth do you expect FGFA to come to fix unknown issues unless its trialled in Indian Condition at various bases IAF operate , it could be minor or something more major but that is only possible with trials.

The JV is a farce and everybody knows that. HAL’s contribution is going to be diddly-squat, beyond the type of routine customization that all IAF aircraft (inc. the Su-30 & MiG-29) go through.

To reiterate, Haarvala’s on-point observations, the model is simple – money first, trials later.

Which just goes to prove that the DPP provides adequate discretion to the MoD/IAF wrt field evaluations that are to precede major acquisitions.

Even proved MMRCA types with decades of service in host AF faced challenges in Indian condition and which is expected to be.

Can you please name some of these challenges? (And please, not Leh again.)