Swizterland is restarting its quest for a new fighter jet for its air force after a botched attempt two years ago to purchase 22 Saab Gripens. New aircraft are still needed to replace ageing F-5 Tigers, defense minister Guy Parmelin told Swiss government on Wednesday 24 February.

What’s the point really? Just ask Saab for an updated quote and announce a new referendum. Unless they replace the proposal with the FA-50 or (upgraded) Gripen C/D, the result of the last referendum (which wasn’t very long ago) still stands.

Despite its falling cost (and rising cost-effectiveness), the F-35 will still be a pricier alternative to the Gripen E. Its not making through a poll (especially given the F-35’s PR issues). The Rafale even more so.

I´ll be damned, the chaps got the number of airframes wrong! Look at that chart, seven airframes, but the actual number requested was ten!
Vnomad good job, we´ve just uncovered a mistake on that doc.

Might have been the number actually sanctioned. Or perhaps vice versa. In any event, take a look at the figure from FY 2015 for reference, which computes to a URFC of $74.5 million. Only marginally different.

Recurring flyaway cost is actually 96,154 million US$ (you just picked the costs for airframe, Engine, CFE Electronics, you have to had ECO to that) but thats entirely irrelevant for the matter, the thing is the Non Recurring Costs have to be payed, and on the case of foreign exports they are actually more expensive because LM is not going to fork out 50% of concurrency like it does when client is the Pentagon.

You’re probably right. It didn’t explicitly say recurring ECO (like the Navy budget) so I assumed it was a non-recurring cost.

Oh no, they would have to pay for quite a bit of Non Recurring costs and Concurrency, those numbers are described in detail in the budget documents, an aircraft contracted in FY 2021 (and delivered in 2023) will have 9.32 million US added because of this. The numbers for the post 2021 are identical.

I’m guessing that applies to older aircraft (probably 2B units) that are sent for retrofits in 2021. There’s no way it can cost $9 mil in 2021 (the SDD would have long expired at that point). In addition, the figure being quoted for the retrofit cost for the entire fleet is a mere $1.7 billion for 340 aircraft putting the average cost of concurrency at less than $5 mil.

And most of that would be front-loaded. The later LRIPs should have much lower costs and it will cease to be an issue for the FRP aircraft.

I love good old Richard Aboulafia, he was artfull enough to find the correct number for the SH (77,791.000 million US$), two units, but he didnt find (?) the equivalent number for the Growler (56,307.800 million US$) just a few pages away, ten units… Why do i have a feeling that Boeing is toying with its SH/Growler production line?

The detailed summary of the flyaway cost says different. Puts the recurring flyaway cost of the EA-18G at $76.14 million. About the same as expected and only marginally higher than last year’s figure.

The F-35A Fly Away Unit Cost, was 129.144 million US$ in 2015, 109.882 million US$ this year, and is expected to be 98.994 million US$ next year.

Recurring flyaway cost for the F-35A is $94.3 million according to this year’s budget documents.

Rafale for Egypt don’t need specific logistic and double amount of spares to achieve a 50 % availaibility rate.
Then if for you less than 50% availaibility in simulated operational condition for F35, with specific optimum support framework is normal and routine… then it explains a lot.

Please stop making up numbers left and right. The F-35A’s current availability is in excess of 60% and this is full two years before IOT&E phase begins. By the time the Navy IOC comes around, availability will probably be better than anything else in the fleet. Better than the Super Hornet, which an year after IOC had a mission capable rate of only 57%.

And where did this ‘double amount of spares’ come from?

It doesn’t state explicitly that this is meant to be an upgrade to the existing fleet, but even if it is an upgrade for the Hawk Mk132, HAL could offer a similar variant for export.

New build for export yes, but the IAF’s order is likely to consist just of an upgrade –

The Indian air force likes the upgrade proposal, and the airframer will incorporate further suggestions made by the service, Raju told Flightglobal at HAL’s corporate office in Bengaluru.

Apparently, the idea is to improve on the maneuverability performance as well, most likely thanks to the new Adour engine that will be integrated.

HAL BAe eye JV for Hawk and Jaguar work

Doesn’t really mention a new Adour engine. The ones serving right now would have plenty of residual life remaining, no reason to write them off. Manoeuvrability could potentially be improved through refinements to the airframe and flight software.

Any chance someone could share the relevant documents/excerpts. I’m finding a bit hard to locate them. Would be worth seeing what exactly is included in that figure for a like-to-like assessment.

The F-16, also built by Lockheed, costs about $50 million, and the competing Swedish-made Saab Gripen NG goes for $55 million, Aboulafia said. The current flyaway cost of the F/A-18E/F from Boeing Co. is about $77.8 million, according to fiscal 2017 Navy budget documents.

The F-35’s current flyaway cost is in “roughly the same class as the Typhoon Eurofighter — around $90 million — and Boeing F-15,” Aboulafia said.

er, rather than trying to decrypt, in case of war, they may simply opt for destroying them, crippling the functionnality for some time at least

‘Crippling’ how?

Yet again parts are neither weapon system nor fighter plane, they are just parts of it. You do not need years of experience in metallic wings to produce composite wings, once the proper machine, the material source ,the labor training and the plans are provided. On the other hand, you would need more than mere experience on wing production to figure out a reliable process, using inadequate tools as to manufacture those same parts to spec.
It is pure speculation to think any more adequate company were interested, had relevant experience in manufacturing composite wings to spec, were ready to invest themselves ,and were looking for business relationship beyond the MMRCA. All of which would make any of those phantoms prospects less interesting in any regards

It is further speculation, borderline trolling I may add, to imply the choice was merely to “cook the book” and somewhat bypass offset. There are evidence to the contrary not the least Indian government sanctioning the deal. Dassault and reliance relation is not limited to Rafale and MMRCA it also extend to Falcon parts. So while one may be bitter and regret Dassault not partnering with any of the indian aerospace jewels, their proposition if any have obviously been less interesting and convincing or lacked the joint venture facet Dassault was looking for.

A dozen posts and one accusation of trolling later, you’re yet to provide a single cogent argument supporting Reliance’s suitability for Rafale production over the competition. Your argument about composites is also a flub, as the link Teer posted, proves that Tata (TASL) is again the one that has genuine competency in this field (Reliance having close to none).

Since you claim that Reliance offered Dassault something that Tata & Co. didn’t, we’ll have to consider what that could be. The only thing Reliance brings to the table is a willingness to bend the rules (its scams have their own Wikipedia page) and heap of political connections. If you can’t name a third, one is forced to conclude that those were those were the factors that appealed to Dassault (who’s own history in such matters is considerable).

I stand by my definition of offset, there are no favor, but an agreement as clearly written, where supplier agree to re-invest its revenue locally. Given revenue are both cost and margin, this either increase the price of the deal or require identifying offset with sufficient ROI for cost recovery at an acceptable pace to protect against bankruptcy. In any case its supplier money, not customer funds.

Your definition is flawed because its based on proviso that the cost of a weapon system isn’t affected by the deal’s offset content, while the truth is, like any other company, additional expenses are passed on the customer. Ipso facto, offsets are financed by the customer, which in this case is the Indian state.