Wouldn’t it help if the MOD lowered their expectations of what hardware they can afford to buy? The present economic times reflects the economic climate of the 80’s that brought us hi-lo force projections, using appropriate force wherever necessary. Seems like they want gold-plated equipment and not really worried about how they are going to pay for it.

The gun upgrade for the Challenger is a good example. They can live with what equipment they have for several years OR they can buy new stuff and scrap what they already paid for in previous budgets. One choice gives them an affordable incremental increase in capability whereas the alternative blows a hole in the budget and throws out everything they’ve worked for prior to this budget. Just seems like they MOD is run by the companies begging for their business rather than it actually using sound decision making skills.

Same goes for the F-35B vs. the F/A-18 rumors. Why not aim for lesser size than the F-35/F-18 to begin with? If something more in the cost of a navalized Gripen fits the budget they they are focusing on the wrong solution. They could scale down the aircraft for catobar operations and be far better off operationally. The vtol carrier was a gold plated solution to a problem that doesn’t require a gold plated answer. Quite frankly, maybe the RAF should also be looking at some of Sweden’s used Gripens for the next ten years rather than always trying to afford the Typhoons that haven’t yet been built! Typhoon is just another overplayed gold-plated solution.

Scorpion82-

Romania couldn’t make lease payments on the F-16’s they have. How could they afford more F-16’s or the more expensive Typhoons?

It took four F-14D’s with their datalink and radar software synchronized together to double the APG-71’s useful search range. The MiG-31M has the same feature.

Ever hear of a European company named Rolls Royce?

And 15 to 40 years!? There must be a typo there.

Not at all if they tighten up the standards for the wing spars. Material technology has drastically changed in the past 15 years, long after the An-32 design was laid down. There is nothing outrageous about this SLEP proposal.

So does this mean they are arguing for the United States to station a fleet of the F-35B in Taiwan?

My wife shops like that. She’ll spend money out of the budget then declare, “But I saved 50% off. It was too good of deal to pass up!” Realistically you couldn’t even justify F/A-18F if you were retiring the entire GR4 fleet. The F-35 is the only purchase that makes sense.

Every time a crew handles the missile there is going to be some abuse. How much of the reliability issues were with flight time and not handling issues? Some missiles were so complex that they took more man hours of maintenance per flight hour than the airplane carrying it. (IIRC, the AIM-54A took 20:1, which was slightly worse than the F-14A at the time.)