We may as well stop making planes and imagine what we can do to counter terrorism with an F 35 sized budget.

No. Keep the budget, use it for other equipment. CAS, Recon, more ground support, better infrastructure, better equipment and quicker introduction of new equipment on the ground, better education on local customs and languages, long-term infrastructure projects in occupied areas.

Wishful thinking that Satorian. WW1 was considerd the war to end all wars. 🙂

Perhaps by quasi-religious ideological nutters. I’m talking about money here.

How globalized was economy in 1914? How globalized was economy in 1939? How globalized is it now?

The point is that today Russia and China would hurt themselves if they hurt the US. Why should they do that then? Besides, China doesn’t need fighters to pressure the US. They don’t even need bombs. They’ve got something far better: $700 billion in US bonds. Imagine those flooding back at once. How are you going to fight that with weapons? Yet why will they be reluctant to do that? Because they’d hurt themselves through hurting their biggest export market and losing a lot of money in devaluation. And where would the US get cheap products and parts from? How would that lead to spiraling costs? They wouldn’t want to just throw that away either.

Follow the money.

The subject was that Sweetman and Kopp questioned the F 35 qualities, before all.

I don’t think that is what Sweetman did. In my assessment he rather proposed to think about whether a well-developed 4.5th gen fleet would make more fiscal and strategic sense.

Kopp is another matter (or mad-hatter).

I think it will be suicidal for the Europeans to **** off Americans in a bigway at a time when Russia is resurgent.

I’m actually not afraid. I don’t see a war between US, Europe, India, Russia or China happening in any configuration. The age of symmetrical warfare is over as far I am concerned.

Every party sophisticated enough to wage a symmetric war on eye level with us, is so economically interlinked with us to suffer when we suffer and prosper when we prosper. The US’ well-being is in the interest of Russia and China. Same for the EU’s well-being. If the current economic crisis shows one thing, it is that we all are in the same global economic boat.

The only potential enemies left are irrational parties, and those are usually far away from being a threat in symmetric warfare.

On a general note, I think all that fear-mongering against Russia is complete nonsense.

Typhoon – $80-100mil, Rafale $70-90mil, Super Hornet $70-90mil. These would be typical prices for average customers buying two-three squadrons.

Are those prices PPP corrected? Many people claim how expensive Euro equipment is–in USD. Which shows the difference between price and cost. And cost becomes even more relevant in native purchases when the government figures in the amount of taxes they are getting back through their own industry and workforce.

As for the “to each nation/continent/trade zone its own”, I don’t necessarily agree on all accounts. I assume that with extensive cost calculations (corporate tax returns, individual taxes, people being employed instead of relying on welfare or pushing other people into by replacing them, cash flow taxes) native products actually cost less. The difference between price tag and actual cost could very well be something like 20%-30%, perhaps more, perhaps less (just guessing, but then again we are known for harsh taxation and social fees).

But, now, if there was a trusted foreign weapons system as capable, yet still cheaper than that, I would go for the foreign system and put the savings to some other use.

With that, the fiscal realities aren’t exhausted though. Buying foreign systems means neglecting the native industry, which can mean increasing dependency on foreign systems in the long term. And dependency raises prices. Which in the long-term could become unfavourable again.

So, summing up, given equal capability everyone should procure the weapon system that’s going to be cheapest in the long term. For high-tech frontline equipment that needs a higher development pace and quicker technological transformation (e.g. fighter jets, tanks) where a foreign dependency could be expensive down the line, this probably works out to procuring native products. For less sophisticated equipment, like things being used in the support structure (e.g. tankers, transport planes, trainers, transport vehicles etc.), this could work out in favour of foreign equipment if keeping a native industry structure while having an abundance of choices would be too expensive.

It’s all about the money. I’m a harsh materialist there.

may be India would choose its own version Tranche IN. but considering that IAF needs birds quickly, they might just order Tranche 2. BTW will RAF possibly loan Eurofighters to IAF if selected, just to fasten the induction pace.

Customization is of course in the cards. If India wants AESA and TVC right off the bat, they’d get an upgrade deal on top of T3 spec baseline.

As for the loan deal, I think other consortium members would probably accept slower deliveries and redirect some planes towards India. Austrian birds were destined for the German Luftwaffe if I recall correctly, but were diverted to Austria. As for outright loans, I’m not educated enough on such deals in history. I honestly don’t know, but I guess most members would be reluctant to hand off the planes they already paid for and need for their purposes.

so if India selected the types the next tranches will probably have a lot of Indian inputs.

That I don’t know. Depends on whether there will be more tranches (which I would currently consider unlikely). T3 has to be signed off this year already, which probably would be too early for India to have influence on. If there’s going to be an MLU, they could possibly influence that.

1) Too costly
2) Too costly
3) Too costly
4) Too costly
oh and TOO COSTLY..

That depends on how much money flows back and how life cycle costs add up. Figure the offsets into it (especially in case India becomes the fifth consortium member) and the former will be somewhat mitigated. As for the latter, EF GmbH expects to be quite competitive there.

apart from that their is also the issue that in no circumstances would the eads guys allow you to put on a AESA radar.. would make the IAF more advanced then most of the European AF for the next half century!

I would come to a different conclusion here. The AESA is available as a customer option and there’s no reason India would be denied this. I don’t think anyone would stand in the way of that.

Oh and it would delay induction of the MMCRA even further! which the IAF cannot afford.. what the IAF needs now is something that is available off the shelf and FAST!

Yes, everybody wants everything to be cheap in price, excellent in performance, and available yesterday. I got the impression that ToT, industrial offsets, corporate networking and geopolitical positioning are as important in this deal as the plane itself, so I wouldn’t put as much emphasis on immediate availability personally. Especially with something like the radar, where an upgrade deal could be put in place beforehand.

Well, we’ll see. 🙂

Again, cheap diversion. Because, regardless the way LM or EF calculate the costs, the more they built, the cheaper the unit price.

I think his point here was manufacturer promises as demonstrated by cost projections.