JackonickoPoint of Order:
Swerve, mate!
Your maths is wrong! If you compound the inflation the final price of anything that cost $50m in 2002 won’t be $76 m in 2013.
If a price starts at $50 in 2002, with 6% inflation per year, it will have reached $67 in five years (eg now), and $89.50 in ten years. The price in 2013 would be $94.91c.
BUT
Though defence industry inflation has always run higher than background, I don’t see that assuming a 6% rate can be considered reasonable or fair.
JackonickoSorry, I misread your post, and the pic loaded and then vanished on my browser. If that’s not IPA 1 it’s probably not a test camera. Isn’t that where the anti-coll light is on production Typhoons?
JackonickoIt was in a red fairing, if memory serves
JackonickoIt’s a reflection from the test camera under the belly of IPA1
JackonickoI’m happy to agree to differ on the JSF price and remain silent if he does, or even to agree to continue to remain silent if he’ll use the formula
$50m (Lockheed forecast flyaway sometime claimed to be in $FY2002, compared to DoD APUC of $94.8m)
when he first mentions the price
and
$50m (claimed flyway $FY2002)
thereafter, when mentioning the price. He’s a strong supporter of JSF, and I wouldn’t want to muzzle him.
On Typhoon prices, to put the record straight after his last allegation (as I have said I will), the MoD has said that the MPR05 figure includes fixed costs for all 232 aircraft (eg including T3), but that it is averaged over 144 (T1 and T2 only). It’s therefore not a UPC, not a proper average, and not a reliable figure. The figure is disputed by EF GmbH, and an alternative from the previous year’s MPR is available and is widely viewed as being more accurate (£49.1 m).
Unless and until he mentions Typhoon prices, I’m content to let that stand as my last word on the subject.
JackonickoI can only speak for myself, and I’ve never referred to any JSF price as being anything other than either reported, or speculative.
JackonickoRon’s determined to keep highlighting particular figures on JSF and Typhoon as though they were uncontested and uncontroversial. I will continue to correct him when he does so, but will not instigate exchanges.
JackonickoThe USAF say that all quantities and costs after 2011 are TBD.
The USAF doesn’t know, in other words. Yet you do, you claim.
How can Lockheed know? How can Enewold? (And why does Enewold use one price, when others in the JPO have used another?)
The SAR made it clear that JSF APUC has risen by 31% since 2001, while you claim that Flyaway cost has remained static. How can that be? Does a Flyaway bear no relation to an APUC?
Why does the 2007 USAF Procurement Backup Book list ONLY flyway costs and USWCs, and why are those flyaway costs so similar to what the latest SAR call APUCs?
Is it because APUCs and Flyaways are linked, or even the same?
You say that: “The ONLY people that are pushing the $90-$100m figure are journalists like Jacko & salesman of competing aircraft.”
You insist that: “the numbers (I have) dredged up are more correct the the prices quoted by the people running the program.” You say that I “say they are all liars, that Lockheed is deceiving the world, and that only” Jacko “speaks the truth.”
Unfortunately, though, you are pushing a number that has only been quoted verbally, and then reported. A number that is known to be in FY2002 dollars, and that does not seem to fit in with the known cost growth that has afflicted the programme, and that has caused a one third increase in APUC.
The numbers I’m supposed to have ‘dredged up’ aren’t my numbers, they’re from the latest DoD Selected Acquisition Review, from the JPO, and from the USAF’s official Committee Staff Procurement Backup Book for Air Force aircraft procurement for the FY 2007 Budget Estimates. They are all new numbers, in FY2006/7 dollars. They are all itemised in official documents. They are all in line with the numbers quoted by amatuers like Air Force Times, Defence Analysis, Defense News and Av Week.
And I don’t view them as ‘my numbers’ – I’ve tried to make it clear that I don’t know what JSF will cost – they simply seem to provide the kind of evidence a reasonable person would need to assume not that Lockheed’s price estimate is WRONG, just that it might be unreliable, and that perhaps it doesn’t sound all that likely.
In short, the reasonability test is far from ‘passed’.
JackonickoAccording to the US Government, the USAF is paying $222.54 m for each of its first five JSFs, unit weapons system cost.
Like Ron O’s £64.8 m figure, this JSF figure is grossly distorted, since fixed costs for later aircraft are included.
JackonickoPrices are meaningless unless you specify exactly what you mean.
Typhoon costs between £42 m (unit price to the UK MoD for Tranche 2) to £84 m (unit programme cost including R&D). Austria paid €62 m per jet, flyaway, but this was a small proportion of the overall contract value, which included some training and support, weapons, etc.
So what do you mean?
Flyaway price?
Unit production cost?
Unit weapons system cost?
Unit programme cost?
Support contract?
Cost of ownership.
Jackonicko“It is NOT, as you claim, the average price, as the average will include the initial, much more expensive, 436.”
I think Ron acknowledges that the price he quotes is the flyaway, and that it doesn’t include the LRIP jets. When he says average, he means average between F-35A ($47m) and the other versions ($60m).
He draws a distinction between flyaway and production cost, however.
While it’s true that “the average will include the initial, much more expensive, 436”, but you’d be surprised at how little difference those aircraft make.
If you multiply the average by the DoD total of 2,458 you get £241.867 Bn.
If you then subtract the LRIP ($47.912 Bn – 424 x the LRIP average of $113 m) you are left with £193.955 Bn – the production cost total without LRIP.
Divide that total by the total number of production aircraft (eg minus the LRIP aircraft), eg 2,032 and you get a non-LRIP APUC of $83.6 m. Slightly less (about 5% less) for the F-35A and rather more (about 20% more) for the F-35B and F-35C.
JackonickoYes. Better just by shedloads of Tranche 3 Typhoons, with CFTs and a few more tankers
JackonickoJSF,
The $94.8 m APUC figure is given in the latest official DoD Selected Acquisition Report to Congress. It is in FY2006 dollars.
I can find no similar official mention of Lockmart’s $50 m estimate. It is, in any case, admitted to be in FY2002 dollars. Give me Lockheed’s estimate in real money, and show me where it’s officially validated, and I’ll take it more seriously. I already acknowledge its existance, and whenever I talk about JSF costs, I mention its existance (which is rather more than you do with the reliable and fully audited Typhoon figures)
I am grateful to you for your explanation of the difference between APUC and flyaway, and I accept and appreciate that. I note, however that an APUC represents a lower cost (by dint of what is and isn’t included) than a UK UPC, meaning that a US flyaway cannot be used to compare cost against a UK UPC.
I note your explanation that the price paid by the USAF will not be the APUC, though I believe that the annual APUC figure is exactly what is being paid during LRIP.
I note your insistance that any increase in development costs, or the cost of rectifying problems will be ‘soaked up’ by the USA, and will not be reflected in a higher APUC or flyaway, and will not be reflected in any increase in the price paid by export customers, except insofar as capabilities are deferred or cancelled to keep within programme cost targets. I don’t know that I fully believe your assurance, as I’m unclear as to where extra development money would come from (if not from increased prices), as Enewold has always been very definite that the existing programme total is the capped number within which he will have to execute the programme.
However, I simply do not believe that the US taxpayer and government would tolerate a situation in which export customers pay less per aircraft than the USAF’s average price, or at least in which they pay less than the ‘stable production price’ estimated by the JPO. It is my understanding that this would actually be against US law.
I do not claim to know how much the UK will pay for JSF. I do not claim that it will definitely pay the SAR APUC, though that would be my best guess. If Lockheed is unwilling/unable to guarantee a price to the UK government until after PSFD, I’m not going to second guess them.
However, if the APUC is $94.8 m, if an APUC excluding LRIP is $90 m, if the JPO’s stable production cost is $89 m and if Lockheed’s own estimate is $50 m (in FY 2002 dollars) then I personally don’t believe that the price will be $47 m for an F-35A and $60 m for an F-35B, or at least not in FY 2006 dollars.
Moreover, while the $94.8 m figure is the one put before Congress by the DoD, that still appears to be the best, and most credible, likely ‘guide price’.
JackonickoRon,
£64.8 m purports to be an UPC, and isn’t.
It cannot be a UPC because it includes fixed production investment. The MoD has confirmed this.
It cannot be a UPC because it includes other costs that have nothing to do with the manufacturer. The manufacturer has confirmed this.
The 2005 UPC includes fixed costs from Tranche 3. This has been confirmed by the MoD and IPT. It therefore cannot be a UPC, because a UPC (a UNIT cost) is by definition an average cost, and you cannot take a total cost figure applying to one number of aircraft (232 aircraft) and then divide it by another (144) to arrive at an average.
The EF heads of agreement dictate that (national contracts aside) all partner nations pay the same for aircraft, and the £64.8 m figure is about £20 m higher than the price paid by each of the other partners. Let’s leave aside the export cost to Austria, which is also lower than this figure, and which contractually is not allowed to be.
Proper UPCs audited by the NAO are available. Why do you continue to ignore them?
The UK paid £45.45 ($86.7 m) for each Tranche 1 jet.
The ‘global’ unit flyaway for Tranche 2 averaged £40.5-million ($77.25 m).
Averaging 55 jets at £45.45 and 89 at £40.5 m does not, can not, give an average of £64.8 m.
A higher T1/T2 average audited by the NAO at £49.1 m included fixed production costs from the two Tranches, and so wasn’t properly a UPC, but was at least closer to reality than this spurious figure you keep using.
Here is the Maths.
2004 MPR UPC figure
(T1 fixed + variable costs) + (T2 fixed + variable costs) + (estimated T3 fixed + variable costs) divided by 232 (T1+T2+T3) = £49.1 m
2005 MPR UPC figure
(T1 fixed + variable costs) + (T2 fixed + variable costs) + (estimated T3 fixed costs) (probably/allegedly + QinetiQ charges + NEFMA running costs + RAB costs) divided by 144 (T1+T2) = £64.8 m
Do you see the flaw? Even without the extra costs alleged to have been added in, to retain fixed costs for T3 and then divide the total by 144 means that this is mathematically flawed and so distorted as to be of no use in comparing current Typhon costs to anything else.
But this is the basis on which the calculation was done that the NAO was asked to audit. The NAO does not comment on which figures are and are not included, nor on what the basis for calculation should be. It’s task is simply to check the figures and remark on ACTUAL cost increases. Interestingly, it did not comment on the apparent increase in UPC between MPR2004 and MPR2005 because this ‘increase’ was explained by the change in accounting procedures, and because the new UPC was being calculated in a new way.
According to NAO audited figures there has been a £15.7 m increase in UPC in one year. There has been no increase in costs, actual or predicted, that would explain or justify such an increase.
You are using one of many available Typhoon cost figures – it happens to be the highest possible figure available. While all other figures cluster around the £42 m figure, this one is the only figure that is more than £7m different.
It happens to be the only figure to have been publicly contradicted, in print, by EF GmbH. Only a Lockmart propagandist would choose to use this unrepresentative and unreliable price above the others.
By sticking to this figure (and I know that I am not the only one to have explained the real figure to you) you are showing yourself to be an unscrupulous and dishonest propagandist.
JackonickoThe details you’d like to see are pretty highly classified, I suspect. The figures I quote are those that have ‘leaked out’ in various interviews and in PR material and releases.
You may be surprised at the paucity of information available, whereas as someone used to UK official secrecy, I’m quite surprised that we know so much! Apart from F-22, I don’t think that the competition has been any more open about their supercruise capabilities, and in many cases we aren’t sure whether people mean accelerating to and sustaining supersonic speed without burner, or merely sustaining it without burner, having used burner to ‘get there’.
I can honestly say that I have no clue as to whether the optimum speed of Mach 1.2 is with 4+2, 6+2, or both, nor what the optimum speed might be with 6+2+tanks or 4+2 with tanks. It depends why the reduced speed gives a reduced SFC in this case. Is it a function of rpm, or a TGT limit, or is it that drag increases steeply above that speed?
I don’t think supercruise is all that significant even for F-22 (which has less supersonic range than an F-104!) so with Typhoon I’m sure that it’s of very limited usefulness, except as a ‘we’ve got it’ tick in the box.
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