How many have been delivered?

How many are actually firmly ordered and funded?

Isn’t it still 120?

Worrying about aircraft 241-294 seems less important than worrying about the next 60, I’d have thought.

LA Times: ……..A source who was briefed on the selection said Northrop won in every major selection criteria category, which probably would make it difficult for Boeing to win an appeal.

“I can sum it up in one word: more,” said Gen. Arthur J. Lichte in explaining why the Air Force choose the Northrop-Airbus entry. “More passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more [battle casualties] it can carry, more availability, more flexibility and more dependability.”

The US DoD have done the right thing again, selecting the best aircraft for the requirement. The only recent example of choosing the wrong bird is CSAR-X – where it was more the desire for more SF Chinooks than a political ‘born in the USA’ push that led to selection of the least suitable platform for JPR/CSAR.

The idea that the USAF needs a small tanker because the -135 is small is risible. It would be like limiting the C-47 replacement to a C-47 sized aircraft, or a restricting the hold cross section of a C-130 replacement.

And had the USAF wanted a tanker with no greater capability than the -135, or offering the smallest improvement the requirement would have provoked Airbus to offer the A310 tanker.

More is good, and, in any case the world has moved on. The KC-135 was born as a single-point tanker, optimised for supporting SAC bombers – one tanker per bomber, sitting strip alert or on airborne alert. Today we need tankers for supporting expeditionary operations and for refuelling multiple tactical jets – you need three-point capability and you need to be able to operate for as long as possible on the towline, offering as much fuel as possible to offload.

And this airfield thing is distraction and hooey, too. Find me a runway that’s wide enough for a KC-767 but too narrow for a KC-30 – the wheel track, wheel base and span are very close.

Smaller wingspan does theoretically mean that the KC-767 can operate from more constrained ramps and taxyways than the KC-30 – though the difference is small, and in the real world there are few tanker bases where the slightly larger dimensions of the KC-30 would make any practical difference.

Lower weight does theoretically mean that the KC-767 can operate on weaker surfaces than the KC-30 – though the difference is small, and in the real world there are few tanker bases where the slightly higher ‘footprint’ of the KC-30 would make any practical difference.

And more important than taxyway clearance and runway width is runway length, and here the KC-30 wins.

“But the Boeing 767 can take off after a shorter ground roll than the KC-30.” I hear you exclaim.

And intuitively, therefore, you’d expect the 767 to be able to use more airfields. But counter intuitive as it may seem, it cannot.

Unfortunately, the 767 cannot operate from shorter runways safely, because it can’t stop as quickly as the A330, and it actually needs a longer balanced field length.

When the RAF was looking at the 767 and A330 it soon discovered that there were many existing real world tanker bases where the runways were too short for a fully laden 767 tanker to use, but where an A330 had no trouble – and indeed they did not find an airfield they wanted to use that could not accomodate the A330’s take off and landing requirements.

I haven’t checked, but I think that Balanced Field Lengths may be explained at:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-468/app-h.htm

So the A330 can actually operate at full weight than the KC-767.

And once operating, it can give away more fuel, more cost effectively, further from base, staying on station longer. This equals greater versatility, and greater capability – especially in the Afghan scenario.

You can therefore see that the USAF has therefore selected a better, more flexible tanker, that can operate from more real world tanker runways. In fact, it has been assessed that a KC-30 with a maximum fuel load could be supported by 625 airports globally, versus 465 for the KC-767 with a smaller fuel load.

When talking about India or Japan, you’re talking to some extent about licence manufacture, and not about selling aircraft. A licence to manufacture a Typhoon won’t cost the same as having one built for you by GmbH, and NETMA won’t insist on that licence costing the same as they pay for a completed aircraft.

All bets on a unit price for India (and Japan) must therefore be ‘off’.

1) An order for 126 aircraft could bring with it a real scope for Indian local production of components for use across the core four nation programme as well as for the IAF aircraft – with India’s lower labour costs this could even generate a lower Tranche 3 price for everyone.

2) 126 is certainly a big enough number for a local FACO, meaning that India’s aircraft could be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than EF GmbH assembled aircraft. And as long as India paid the same as the NETMA customer for the EF GmbH-supplied contents, I suspect that lower price would be allowable.

3) A hypothetical question, with many good and compelling reasons why not, but one that might be asked if budgets remain tight. If the RAF wants a third Tranche, why couldn’t they be built in India?

4) Could a clever solution, meeting India’s industrial aspirations and reducing costs across the board, be to give India a dedicated line for all two seat aircraft?

They’d have to go back in time, too.

(When the young Jag mates were busy killing less capable fighters!)

And while their famous victory was at low level, their victim wasn’t heavy.

Range, range and range.

oh, and the ‘Bear’ could go further than the ‘Bison’, too. Did I mention range?

Of the tankers available at the moment the best and the third best are competing for KC-X. (The second best is the A310 MRTT).

The KC-767 will not offer the basing flexibility that the KC-30 does, because it needs longer runways.

The KC-767 will likely incur higher through life costs (older generation technology).

The KC-767 will not have as much fuel to give away on a towline, will not stay on that towline as long, and will not have the ability to fly to a towline as far from its own base.

If the KC-30 had Boeing logos on it, no-one would be arguing for the KC-767 whose only advantages are industrial.

All tankers should be three point – preferably with a fuselage HDU as well as a boom.

You can be sure of no such thing.

The total Rafale cost is estimated at €35 Bn, but could escalate higher, or could even be reduced, depending on integration costs, additions and cancellations. If some or all of the future batches were to be cancelled, for example, money would be saved.

The same is true for Typhoon. Remove Storm Shadow integration, for example, and the cost goes down – add in AASM and it goes up. There’s also still the question of the Tranche 3 production contract – with many believing that the UK won’t sign without a significant price reduction.

But at the moment, working on the last available total programme costs and the current expected buy, France wil pay €35 Bn for 294 Rafales (about £89 m each) and the UK will pay £19 Bn for 232 Typhoons (about £82 m each).

Yes, the Italians, Germans and Spanish have paid towards Typhoon’s R&D – that’s one of the advantages of a collaborative programme. Another advantage lies in the economies of scale provided by a four nation buy. And there have been some extra costs too.

Yes, Rafale’s total programme cost is distorted by the need to develop a Naval variant which will be built in tiny numbers, but that’s a disadvantage inherent in the programme.

The bottom line is that the old claim that Rafale is “significantly cheaper” than Typhoon is wrong.

TMor,

The only official figure we have for UK Typhoon total programme costs, including the UK share of R&D and including VAT is £19 Bn. The figure was then classified. Has it increased, as a result of slippages, new requirements, inevitable inflation and problems? Or has it been reduced by hard negotiation and the removal of some planned weapons integrations?

We only know that the figure was £19 Bn, so that’s the figure we have to use.

£19 Bn divided by 232 is £81.896 m. That’s the unit programme price.

That’s directly comparable with the €35.5Bn total programme cost for Rafale (for France), and it includes 100% of the UK share of the R&D and production of all 232 aircraft for the UK. The Saudi aircraft will actually drag the programme cost down.

The fact that Dassault paid some of the French total is interesting but irrelevant.

When we come to unit production price, we know that the EF partner nations pay the same price for their aircraft (as is dictated by the heads of agreement), and that export customers must not be able to buy them more cheaply, and have to pay an export levy.

We can therefore say with confidence that the partner nation price for a given standard of aircraft will be lower than the price paid by Austria – as Scorpion’s figures show.

The UK NAO revised the way in which it calculated Typhoon costs in 2007, including some overall programme costs (which should be spread across all three Tranches, and not just Tranche 1 and Tranche 2) and some system costs that should not be included in a UPC. I have e-mails from the NAO and the DLO confirming this.

When the NAO did produce proper UPCs they were aproximately £45 m for Tranche 1 and £42 m for Tranche 2 (including VAT) – which is EXACTLY in line with the Austrian and German prices.