Next month will make it three full years since the Rafale was declared the preferred bidder. Each side was probably waiting for the other party to crack. The MoD now has a frantic IAF tugging on its hem, on the other hand Rafale’s export prospects have never looked weaker for Dassault. Can’t say either side has ended up with improved leverage. All the same, going by history the Indian MoD will probably buckle.

Sooner or later (sooner) they will need new airframes. The really stupid thing about all this is that it is totally self inflicted. The entire process has been a byzantine mess from the start. They would have been far better served if they hadn’t tried to do so much with one contract, tech transfer, local production, etc etc. They should have kept MMRCA as close to an off the shelf purchase as possible and left the LCA as their indigenous/foreign effort.

@lookielookie: you are mixing up total cost with unit cost

No, the press were using various numbers themselves.

The idea that if Gates had “listened” to the press he wouldn’t have stopped F-22 production is transparently idiotic. Most of the critics campaigning against the F-35 today were campaigning against the F-22 at the time.

“It makes anyone angry who is concerned about the real defense of the country and not abusing the taxpayer,” said Pierre Sprey, the man who designed the F-16 and A-10 fighters. “This is the opposite.”

Sprey was one of three men who made up the so-called “Fighter Mafia” in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sprey, along with John Boyd and Col. Everest Riccioni, helped revolutionize American aircraft design, challenging many of the notions under which the U.S. military had operated for years.

He said the F-22 is a near-perfect example of what the “Fighter Mafia” told the military to avoid.

“The F-16A, as it was in 1986, can whip today’s F-22,” said Sprey. “You’d think the F-22 would be able to whip some antique.”

Sprey said the Raptor is too heavy, reliant on sensors and other technology, slow, and too reliant on stealth to be useful in today’s combat environment over rough terrain against a relatively unsophisticated, guerilla enemy. That combination creates a “double whammy” for taxpayers: a less effective, more expensive aircraft.

…

Defense analysts, however, said Chambliss is wrong about the savings to taxpayers, on two levels. First, the Government Accountability Office, in a 2006 report on the multi-year contract proposal, said the contract is actually more expensive when all factors are considered.

Secondly, because the jets aren’t necessary, the government could have saved the entire $6.2 billion by not buying these 60 planes.

“It’s too puny of a force, and it will not fly often enough to have any influence on any major conflict whatsoever,” said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Strauss Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. “Al Qaeda doesn’t have an air force and wants us to have things like the F-22 for us to waste our resources on.”

Even with the latest contract, the Air Force is buying a total of only 183 Raptors, after spending more than $60 billion to develop the fighter.

Wheeler said the Raptor isn’t designed to perform an air-to-ground mission (which has been the primary role for the Air Force in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq), and the small size of the force (the Air Force originally asked for more than 700 of the jets) would make it relatively useless in an air war against China, widely considered to be the only nation capable of engaging the United States in a conventional war.

…

The government watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste called the F-22 the biggest pork barrel project authorized in the latest defense budget, and the federally funded Government Accountability Office said in a 2006 letter, “the Department of Defense has not demonstrated the need or value for making further investments in the F22A program.”

With proposals being floated to create a radically altered F-22 as a bomber (the F-22B) and a debate looming in Congress about selling the ultra-advanced fighter to U.S. allies such as Japan, Israel, and Australia, the experts agree the Raptor debate (and its price tag) is not going to go away.

Proponents of the program argue that the Air Force should buy more Raptors to flesh out its existing squadrons. Opponents suggest that improvements to the venerable A-10 would better serve the U.S. in fighting 21st century wars.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/f-22-continues-abuse-taxpayers-critics-say

:stupid:

Here is another question then (because working out the B’s internal weapons capacity is abit of a dark art isn’t it):

If the B is carrying PWIV or SPEARIII type weapons does it have to choose between AMRAAM or ASRAAM? Or does the carriage of A2G weaponry preclude the use of larger AAMs?

For the UK there are mock ups of Meteor/ASRAAM and SPEARIII floating around but how long till then become a reality if at all?

Its for this reason that I question whether Stormshadow will ever hang under a UK F35 wing.

None of the air to ground weapons announced thus far would preclude the internal carriage of the two internal AMRAAMs.

They have also announced that the F-35B can carry two clipped fin Meteor missiles per bay(without an air to ground weapon). What isn’t clear to me is whether an F-35B can carry a Meteor and an air to ground weapon in the same bay.

In a further demonstration of the synergies that operation of the F-35 will bring to the US and UK…

The Royal Navy may ask US squadrons to fly off its new aircraft carrier following delays to its new F35B fighters, BBC Newsnight has learned.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30209960

On the broader subject of the media versus the experts, lets just remember that the media has the luxury of landing on both sides of every single debate and generally never having to be held accountable for any of their positions after the fact. Critics in the media have argued for and against the cancellation of every major defense program going back decades.

Yes, I am aware that my “forum Etiquette” is improper , I have been subjected to such critisism before, both for the capitalization and puncuation. Thank you for pointing that out yet again.

Sad that ones merit in their points and posts would be judged even partially on simple puncuation or use of capitalization to enhance ones point. I shall at this point remove myself from this sorted discussion. I simply found it ironic and humourous that so many posters would assume that Israeli politics would be anything even close to resembling the farcical state of affairs in the USA, or Canada for that matter, without even the consideration that so many variables where different.

An unwillingness on your part to exert even the minimal effort necessary to make yourself easily understandable indicates a fairly fundamental disrespect of those you are engaging with.

Your laziness requires others to make the extra effort necessary to make sense of your posts.

Israeli Panel Rejects Proposed Increase Of F-35

http://aviationweek.com/defense/israeli-panel-rejects-proposed-increase-f-35

That cabinet has now had its “jump the shark” moment.

That’s right, he ignored virtually the entire SDD test program to date, JPO documents and went with public info that was between 6 and 11 years old.

It isn’t just that he seems to prefer old information to current information, what does it say that he is ignoring the expert advice of his own military who are actually intimately familiar with the F-35 in favor of a magazine?

A new “NATO fighter” design would cost money.

So you can pretty much forget about it.