The government is very good at making friendly gestures with tax payers money. Its all well and good, but there are much better uses of money.

What I meant was that selling this ship now, that we can do without, and for two or three tens of millions less than it’s worth, might gain a long-term reciprocity from Australia.

It shows good-will, that we make good stuff (hopefully), and renews our commonality/interoperability (a bit) – if this influences Australia’s decision to jump aboard GCS or/and OCPV (markets with a lot of competition) then that’ll make all the difference for our own procurement, development costs and export chances… it might pay for itself many times over.

I’d just like to clarify:-

When I was mentioning cost earlier, I was talking about the light-medium fighter-sized, sophisticated, stealthy UCAVs planned (X-47C/Taranis/nEUROn etc)… which will make Global Hawk seem cheap, right? I mean realistically?;

‘Twas cost vs cruise missiles, not vs manned planes (they’re two separate arguments, both of which inform the topic);

By having a controller each, I meant in everything but basic transit (penetration, loiter over enemy airspace, engagement etc).

For a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate, would each such UCAV needing to successfully accomplish 100-400 sorties, to cost-break-even vs cruise missiles, sound about right (depending upon optimism and generosity of assumptions, 400 being by no means worst-case, and assuming an average of two ‘cheap’ munitions [each 0.25 the cost of a cruise missile] dropped per sortie)?

Say 225 sorties per uber-UCAV, being optimistically realistic? This assumes that all of the necessary infrastructure would have been there anyway, it is an exemplary piece of procurement, doley X-Box-heads are doing the controlling for their dole-plus-a-tenner (thus favourably massaging the unemployment figures), there’s no in-flight refuelling, or necessity for expensive flying control-motherships (your satellites will be fine etc), and lifecycle multiple and $ per flight hour are 0.75 that of a similar sized fighter, the stealth being zero-maintenance of itself.

It also assumes a decent-sized buy to get the unit-cost down, but it’s (on average, and allowing for minimal losses) 225 sorties per all uber-UCAVs (of that type) bought to break-even vs cruise missile costs, so it pretty much requires WWIII throughout the airframe’s life (but a nice WWIII where your datalink satellites don’t get zapped, datalinks jammed, or airfields bombed etc) for break-even?

[No axe to grind, I’m just asking if this seems about right, as a baseline to build upon?, for this, narrow, aspect of the argument only.]

MadRat: They’re part of the blockade (with a light carrier and everything!), but politically unwilling to drop bombs on Libya (I am assured by an Italian on another forum).

Edit to add: Should probably clarify that I mean that the top Italian leadership is (I am assured) politically unwilling – not the entirety of the Italian people….

Only a couple of minor quibbles with your post:-

… pilots reduced to a supervisor role, checking the stats on multiple UCAVs at the same time, only intervening if something goes wrong or to give mission updates or tactical advice.

Wouldn’t it be mandated that each UCAV carrying live ordnance would need an individual controller? I would really hope so….

My point being, it takes decades to develop a stealthy, proven aircraft, but it takes only years to upgrade a SAM system with more capable radars, never mind the generation of optical sensors we can expect for the near future (if the F-35 can detect and track targets visually, why couldn’t your basic SAM with 2020 technology?).

But there’s still the attacker’s advantage: cheaper to procure a new class of LO penetrator than it is for the target to upgrade its entire AD network (cf B-2 vs SU).

OTH, I wouldn’t be surprised if some cheap, light and easy CM to most LO turns up fairly soon that laughs in the face of most LO=survivability (one of my big gripes against the hubristic ‘5th Gen’ thing – we’ll see…).

Yup – thanks very much.

Beast indeed!:cool:

Cheers again AlphaZulu!:)

Yeah I meant links to illustrations that already exist – I wasn’t expecting you to spend a few hours making me a nice rendering or anything….:D

Maybe France just does these things differently – I’m used to aerospace companies getting the artists in for every single little idea that they might have, however fanciful… I’m thinking of one particularly wacky concept here, which I won’t name for fear of starting another fight… but maybe you can guess which one I mean….;)

I just guessed that with the French artistic flair, they might be up for that kind of thing themselves (as they do for ships, by the way).

And as has been mentioned elsewhere, if this marketing-BS-gen system had always been in place, then F-4 would have been 4th Gen, YF-12 5th Gen etc.

If it’s now measured by human generations, then the F/A-XX’s ‘2025’ will of course be 2040 at the earliest, so it’d be 7th Gen….

Nah, it seems that the only killer app on F/A-XX is that it’s intended to be either manned or not, according to mission, with slightly more advanced propulsion – the rest’s incremental, as it should be sensibly: a consolidation upon mature ‘5th Gen’ tech, rather than another ‘pushing the envelope, but still affordable [and they’re using that word again!, for shame!]’ procurement horror.

Which I’m sure will be the Japanese approach too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the ‘6th Gen’ BS actually backfires – does the US have the stomach for yet another procurement nightmare? ‘5th+’ or ‘5.5’ would probably be safer from a marketing point of view (and more accurate, from the looks of things).