It’s impossible to compare prices with precision, even between the EF partners, because of the ways in which different costs are allocated, and because there are national programmes within the overall project (eg Austere A-G). Then there are different accounting procedures (RAB, for example).

There will be even bigger differences between the way in which EFT costs are calculated and the way in which Rafale pricing/costing is calculated.

If you want direct comparison, you’d need the NAO (or another similar body) to audit both programmes, accessing the same figures and re-calculating them according to the same criteria. Without this, there’s a grey area (10% or so, I’d suspect) that makes comparison difficult.

But you can sometimes compare old costs for a specific programme with newer ones (though not when the basis on which costs are calculated is materially changed, as in the UK Typhoon programme).

And there is scope for a soft and ‘fuzzy’ comparison.

For years, we’ve had French Rafale fans boasting that Rafale was significantly cheaper than Typhoon – somewhere around 25-33% cheaper. €40-45 m rather than £40-45 m (€60-65 m).

Instead, we learn that the Rafale programme will cost €35 Bn = £26 Bn

With a programme of 294 aircraft that gives a unit PROGRAMME cost of £88.435 m each.

That compares quite closely with the UK Typhoon – £19 Bn for 232 aircraft = £81.896 m each.

The Assemblée Nationale cost estimates are equally interesting:

€52.8 Millions Euros for a Rafale C is £39.22 m – significantly cheaper than a Tranche 2 Typhoon (£42.42 m) if it’s a unit production price.
€60.8 M for a Rafale M is £45.17 m – a tad cheaper than a Tranche 1 Typhoon, seemingly rather more than a Tranche 2 Typhoon.

But these prices are within our 10% grey area, so I wouldn’t claim that EFT has a cheaper unit production cost (though that’s what the figures indicate) any more than I’d claim that Rafale is cheaper than Typhoon on the basis of marginal unit production prices.

TMor’s detective work DOES NOT prove that Rafale is more expensive than Typhoon (though a simple calculation, dividing total programme cost by the number of aircraft to be procured, would seem to show that) and no-one should use the figures to claim that Typhoon is cheaper than Rafale. I’m sure that it isn’t.

But it does indicate that the prices of the two aircraft are in the same part of the same ballpark, and are similarly priced, and that Rafale IS NOT SIGNIFICANTLY CHEAPER THAN TYPHOON.

It also makes one wonder whether, in a particular campaign, EF could not offer a lower price than Dassault – or at least a very closely comparable price, and it does make costs of ownership an even more significant factor.

The KC-767 is a smaller, lighter aircraft than the KC-30. That does mean that there are some taxyways that it can use that a KC-30 can’t (though that’s more often down to wingtip clearance from obstructions than surface strength) and there are hangars that it can get into that the KC-30 can’t.

But people assume that the KC-767 can use a larger number of airfields, assuming that it can use smaller fields with shorter runways. This is a fiction that is repeated again and again. And it’s wrong.

The KC-767 can’t use shorter runways. Because of braking requirements, the KC-767 actually requires a greater balanced field length than the KC-30. The KC-30 can operate from shorter runways than the 767, in other words. When the RAF was first looking at new tankers as part of the FSTA process, it quickly became apparent that there were very few RAF and regular tanker FOB/FOL airfields that a fully-fuelled 767 tanker could safely operate from – including some of the vital expeditionary bases in the Middle East.

The KC-767 offers two things to the US. It will provide/safeguard more US jobs. It will have a lower up-front unit purchase price.

But overall, the KC-767’s through life costs are likely to be higher, and mission costs certainly are – the A330 can offload more fuel, further from base, and it can do so for a lower cost per pound of fuel transferred.

But the benefit to US industry is an important and valid concern, and there would be nothing wrong with selecting the aircraft on that basis.

The Russians caught up in many areas within ten years (MiG-29/Su-27), but in other areas still have not done so.

The Europeans caught up (Mirage 2000, JA37 Viggen, and, with obvious caveats, Tornado F3) years ago, and have now over-taken the F-15.

1) To my advantage? The fact that Rafale costs more than I thought it did will make little difference to me, personally. It will make the French state less wealthy than otherwise – but since France is a key member of the EU, that’s a disadvantage for me. It may mean that the AdlA and MN will receive fewer aircraft than planned, or that much-needed improvements and enhancements won’t happen. France is a key NATO partner, so again, that’s not in the UK’s interests.

While we thought that Rafale had a much lower unit programme cost than Typhoon, Rafale was a great example of ‘how to run a programme’, and a great stick to beat Eurofighter GmbH with. It’s still a good case study in programme management, and I’ll continue to use it as one, but it is a shame that we can’t still ask EF GmbH: “If Dassault can produce Rafales that cheaply, why can’t you produce Typhoons at broadly the same price?”

You might say that it will improve Typhoon’s chances of winning export orders, and that since the UK contributes about a third of every Typhoon, by value, the UK will do better as a result, and that will be “to my advantage.”

Except that I don’t think Rafale was any more likely to take orders from Typhoon in existing competitions because of its lower price. Except perhaps in India.

It does confirm my suspicion that unit programme cost is in the same ballpark as Typhoon, and that earlier costs were under-stated, as I suspected, and in that it’s nice to be right, that is pleasing.

When a pillar of Rafale fans’ claims have always been that the aircraft is significantly cheaper than Typhoon, the revelation that Rafale’s unit programme cost is actually 10% higher, and that unit production cost of both aircraft is within a few per cent, then that’s news for Rafale, on a Rafale thread, and for Typhoon.

This increase in known costs goes a VERY long way towards explaining some of the deletions from Rafale’s planned equipment fit, and the motivation behind some of the cost saving efforts.

2) VAT and money paid by industry still contribute to the overall total. Typhoon figures include them, as well. They’re relevant when comparing figures.

3) The figures are extremely interesting, and you’ve done well getting them (it’s not easy, in France) but they’re ‘informal’ from Dassault, and they are not specifically dated.

2) Deploying for combat ops with a weapon would dictate not only that pilots could train with that weapon, but that they had trained with it, and had reached a demonstrated level of competence with it. I suspect that AASM training has not been a priority for EC7, thus far, or that while the weapon remains some way short of full clearance, training has been judged impossible or pointless (or both).

5) Not so. The guidance unit could fail altogether – meaning that the AASM (like any other powered weapon) could miss by a much greater distance than a freefall bomb. This is a factor common to all powered or glide weapons, and if the French envisage using Rafale to support ‘troops in contact’ it will be a consideration.

It’s also why the Paveway II is sometimes selected in preference over the Paveway III, which flies further.

There does not need to be any linkage between Nimrod R and Nimrod MR replacement, indeed such a linkage is unhelpful since the two requirements are quite different, and since integrating the Nimrod R’s equipment into the MRA4 would be no more easy than integrating it into an A300 or A330. There would be the task of mapping and locating the antennas (especially the DF kit), but in other ways, the extra space available and the cargo door would make matters rather easier.

Moreover, the MRA4 is perfectly well suited for its intended role (or will be once the problems have been sorted out) and since the MRA4 airframe/engine combination is MUCH better suited to the MR/ASW role than a 737-based airframe.

It’s all very well to blithely talk about the ASW/MR role from the comfort of our arm-chairs, and to accept that any MR/ASW platform will be able to undertake all of its task from medium level. The Nimrod MR2 replacement will simply have to “come down”. Medium level is great for transit, and you can locate the general position of the target, but you simply can’t prosecute an ASW engagement from medium level. You can’t fly the MAD patterns required, you can’t do accurate reactive buoy drops, and the end result is that you won’t catch and kill the enemy submarine.

They may be “developing a whole range of stand-off drop-sensors and winged torpedoes” for the P-8A, but its much better to use the proven, existing suite of ASW weapons, and to build on these for your new generation of weapons, rather than having to solve the whole new problems of getting buoys and weapons into the water safely and accurately from extreme altitude (by ASW standards).

The USN has gone down the P-8 route because it’s quick and cheap. But you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the VP community who doesn’t think that it’s a compromise and that the P-7 wasn’t a great deal more promising.

NB: That the problems with MRA4 are primarily and predominantly about integration and systems rather than with the airframe and performance.

It’s already widely known as ‘Dave’, ‘The Dave’, or ‘Dave B’ among current RAF aircrew. Officially it will be the Lightning FG.Mk 1

“The correct results?”

The correct result is for air power to be wielded by a specialised organisation that actually understands air power, that is able to use and exploit it, and for whom air power will always be a funding priority.

Not to give the responsibility for CAS to an organisation that has proven incapable of maintaining and supporting complex aircraft types, or that misuses its air power assets whenever a senior officer needs an airborne taxi (the Army Air Corps).

Nor to an organisation that regards air power as being so unimportant that the career progression of its professional aviators depends on them leaving any air-power related post in order to waste time driving a big grey ship around. An organisation that has failed to recruit and retain enough high calibre aviators to meet its manning commitments in either Joint Force Harrier or Joint Helicopter Command.

And Air Power remains a crucial, war-winning capability, arguably more important than sea or land forces. I’m not silly enough to suggest putting the RN under RAF Marine Branch command, nor to put forward the idea of absorbing the Army into an enlarged RAF Regiment – though such ideas would be no less barking than the anti-RAF nonsense that you’ve been spouting, Lawrence.
:rolleyes: