Just few things:
#1. The question about bribery with defense deals is similar to a question about doping in professional sports. Of course, everyone says he is clean so it obviously doesn’t exist. Ask any bodybuilder whether he has ever taken Nandrolone, Sustanon or at least Oxandrolone or if he needs PCT from time to time. The truth is that even many recreational guys are already running on the juice. The same with bribery – the extent of corruption in defense is beyond imaginable and companies who don’t pay are like unicorns -everyone is talking about them but no one has seen one yet.

Bribery happens, but to claim that bribery happens all the time and to resort to that explanation for any outcome you don’t like is nothing more than conspiracy theories. Bribery is absolutely not the norm in Western Europe. It certainly does happen, as in Austria, but when it does it tends to blow up into a major scandal, as in Austria.

#2. I know exactly what prices apply and what don’t.

No, clearly you don’t, or you wouldn’t continue to confuse the price of a total package for a unit price. Someone who actually worked in defense would have no problem differentiating the two.

It is one thing to say, “we are spending $X.X billion on F-35s,” but when you intentionally or out of ignorance say “F-35s cost $XXX million each,” based on dividing up a package to obtain a unit price you are wrong.

Your fly-away figure does not, not even with follow-on orders as you erroneously put in. The only scenario I could somehow imagine for the fly-away application would be attrition replacement, which we don’t do, anyway.

Not only is it applicable to follow-on orders, it is applicable within a single order. Each F-35 is priced according to its delivery year. Even within Norway’s order not all the airframes will cost the same amount. Once again, something you would know if you were who you claimed to be. I can guarantee you that this number you don’t think is applicable is being tracked with great interest by many in your government and defense establishment. (and likewise within the governments of all F-35 buyers)

Even if it doesn’t represent the cost necessary to operate the F-35 it is the single largest component of that cost and allows straightforward comparisons of costs between years.

Introducing a raft of ancillary equipment into the equation makes it impossible to make a useful comparison. (As can be seen in the French offer to Switzerland that results in unit prices of: $150 million, $172 million, $195 million using your “method” of calculating unit prices. )

Are you starting to understand why no professional would attempt to approach the problem as you have been? Even on the same piece of paper the various French offers varied wildly depending on what was included in the package.

Unit cost is imperfect, but it is the best available basis for an apples to apples comparison.

#3. We already are operating on a shoestring budget. The whole Europe is. Wonder why that’s news for you.

Hah, tell that to the guys in Eastern Europe or the Baltic states. They wish they had a tenth of your North Sea oil.

#4. Your efforts to somehow squeeze the information about my origin out from me are childish. You can write Norway, Denmark or Luxembourg another two hundred times and you will not get anywhere closer than you are now.

I am going to stick with Norway, a lovely place by the way.

Start looking at the “correct” numbers and you’ll see that Gripen costs much less than “half” of most of the competitors (hint: LCC).

No, the Gripen really doesn’t cost “much less than half” of its competitors.

You can skew the numbers in Gripens favor as in the debunked Jane’s comparison by limiting operating costs to little more than fuel and other consumables, which heavily favors the Gripen because of its single small engine.

If you go with a more comprehensive cost estimate that includes things like maintenance, personnel, and facilities that eliminates a large portion of the Gripen’s advantage.

The Gripen is a cheap aircraft and I really do like it, but the “common knowledge” about its costs and capabilities is simply not accurate.

There is some good cost data here comparing Rafale to Gripen:

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120930/DEFREG01/309300001/Will-Exit-Clause-Doom-8216-Super-8217-Gripen-

Sweden’s preliminary partnership agreement with Switzerland covers the delivery of 22 JAS Gripen E/F aircraft to Switzerland, valued at 3.1 billion euros ($3.9 billion).

…

An Opening for Dassault? The controversy has provided an opportunity for Dassault, which has resubmitted an offer comprising four separate price options based on the delivery of 12 to 22 Rafale fighters.

“We have received an offer communication from Dassault, and it is being circulated according to our normal procedures,” Swiss government spokesman Andre Simonazzi said.

Dassault resubmitted its offer when a report covering the cost segment of the preliminary agreement with Sweden was presented to the Swiss federal parliament on Aug. 28.

“After learning of the Swiss parliamentary report, the Rafale team sent to the Swiss political authorities proposals in conformity with the competition,” Eric Trappier, Dassault senior vice president, said in a statement.

A Dassault spokesman declined to confirm pricing for four Rafale offers reported in a Swiss paper, Le Dimanche Matin, Sept. 23.

The report said Dassault had written a Sept. 17 letter to the Swiss federal council offering:

• 22 Rafales for $3.3 billion.

• 18 aircraft for $3.1 billion, including all capabilities requested by Switzerland.

• 18 Rafales, excluding air-ground and reconnaissance capability, and simulators.

• 12 aircraft for $2.34 billion, offering full capabilities and simulators with an operational efficiency that Dassault claims is comparable to 22 Gripen aircraft.

My nationality stays undisclosed. I have already explained the reasons before in another thread. I am working in the land defense sector and we are not exactly encouraged to post on public forums. I won’t do anything that could eventually compromise me. Respect that..

Sure whatever… 😉

And trust me, I know quite well what my country really needs. It’s no secret in the defense establishment that we don’t need most of what the F-35 can offer. The politicians know it, as well, but they have their own agenda to follow, mostly connected with significant commercial benefits, unfortunately.. If you really think that the F-35 wins deals by tech specs and not by political leverage / bribing / blackmail, then I feel sorry for you.

Ah yes, you who still struggles to grasp what a unit price is, and for that matter the basics of how fighters operate, but I should take your word for it that you know what your country (Norway) really needs.

Major procurements are always to some extent political… but bribes? Blackmail? If you really need to resort to such conspiracy theories to explain what you can’t understand then I feel sorry for you.

There is a good reason to have confidence. Gripen C has been tested and found sufficient for most needs. Unless SAAB really screw up by making the E inferior to C, then it’s a reasonable choice. Plus, the quoted price (incl. accessories) of some $95 million is pretty much the best you can find today (unless you want to import from China, that is)

The Gripen is a nifty little jet. I don’t doubt that it would be up to the task of patrolling the arctic and intercepting the occasional bomber. Of course that would reduce you to being yet another rider on NATO’s coattails, something your leadership would like to avoid.

First buy the horse for whatever deflated walk-away cost and then start to worry how to afford a barn and vet care.. Only idiots count like this…

In reality there is only two types of cost that really matters. System procurement cost (incl. horse, barn, saddle, harness) and total ownership cost (vet care, medication, chow). Everything else is bullsh!t for fanboys and politicians. Especially the very popular fly-away is a complete junk figure. No one counts like this..

You need to use the correct number for the correct purpose. :stupid: You can’t just take one number and claim it represents another and expect to be taken seriously.

If one already owns two horses and wishes to acquire another one, or if an operator crashes one of their horses into a hillside during a training ride and needs to replace it… unit costs matter. They also matter a great deal if you wish to track progress in a manufacturing program and need to make a meaningful apples to apples comparison.

If you were who you claimed to be this isn’t a distinction that would be difficult for you to make. There are times when total total package costs matter. There are times when it makes sense to differentiate incremental or operating costs from unit and/or infrastructure costs, and there are times when it makes sense to discuss unit costs in isolation. An inability or unwillingness to differentiate between these costs is the mark of an amateur or an idiot.

Bottom line, You can’t simply divide up a large package and claim that is a unit price. At a minimum you are being obtuse. If you actually worked in defense you would understand the distinction.

Since you don’t know where I come from, I take those F-16s as a theoretical possibility, only. And yes, our fighters fly supersonic relatively regularly. Especially when training for interception duties.

Sure, Mr Mystery country(Norway) makes a claim that of course can’t be checked because…. you won’t say where you are from… but wants to be trusted because so far he has been nothing but sloppy or deceptive with his previous claims. Sounds like a great arrangement.

Going back to your “theoretical” F-16s, (definitely F-16s since they are common to Norway and Denmark) I don’t doubt that they “regularly” reach supersonic speeds in training. What you have to differentiate is whether they are regularly reaching speeds of M1.5+, and they aren’t.

F-35 is completely unable to regularly operate at supersonic speeds, IMHO. No one with a sane mind would want to gain some 150 knots at the cost of double SFC. It just does not make any sense.

This if of course factually inaccurate. The F-35 is absolutely capable of operating “regularly” at supersonic speeds. As for your “theoretical” F-16s, they also suffer dramatically reduced fuel efficiency when operating at supersonic speeds so I don’t see what you are trying to get at here.

Definitely yes. A Gripen or a Rafale force would have better odds due to sheer numbers. I have already noticed that you have that weird 1-to-1 viewpoint when comparing aircraft but, again, only idiots count like this. Reasonable defense planners count whole forces, not individual capabilities of each piece of equipment.

I very much doubt it… You could get more Gripens for the same money, no doubt… but not enough more that it would make any particular difference. A quick look at the difference in numbers in the Swiss competition confirms this. The Gripen is cheaper, but certainly not half the cost. The F-35 also simply offers much more capability. (As one might have surmised by the fact that essentially nobody who actually does this for a living has come to the same conclusion as you and bought a bunch of Gripens.)

Complete BS. In the role I have described, the F-35 will offer moderate capabilities at horrendous procurement and operating cost. For my air force, there is no fighter type that would be less suited for the job than the F-35.

:very_drunk:

If you want to operate on a shoestring budget, fine… buy Gripens and be done with it. If you want to stay relevant in the 21st century then the F-35 is the way to go. (So far your leadership seems interested in the latter.)

hopsalot… in fact, what you fail to see is that the primary, if not only, real requirement for any country without projection will nor capabilities is an air dominance platform. nobody except a couple of nations needs an aircraft with plenty of gadgets including a coffee machine for the pilot… a small, fast and cheap to buy and operate interceptor is pretty much all that any country needs if they’re not looking to go to the other side of the planet to blow up remote countries for god only knows what real reason

“Air dominance,” I don’t think you are using that term as the US would. In the US that implies a high-end capability designed to defeat other high-end aircraft decisively.

What you are describing is air policing or air sovereignty missions where the objective is to maintain control of your air space in peacetime and potentially maintain a presence in areas of interest/concern. (The arctic in the case of Norway.)

The requirements for this type of mission are not demanding. As you say, any cheap 3rd or 4th generation fighter would suffice, though in some cases a longer legged platform would be preferable.

No question the F-35 is overkill for this type of mission, though I think the operators would appreciate its superior sensors and networking capabilities.

The issue is whether states wish to remain viable participants in NATO or if they would prefer to become freeloaders. On a long enough timeline you have to realize that a viable NATO is the best possible defense. Maintaining the ability to participate with NATO is thus a high priority for most NATO members, particularly those that can imagine coming into conflict with Russia. (again, in Norway and Denmark’s case in the arctic)

hopsalot@
Why do you use a larger portion of Your post to talk about which country other posters comes from?
What does it matter, is it important, So its much easier for you to put other posters in a Nice little Nationalistic Box.

Your last post is below average and its childish..

Absolutely not, if a poster is going to say:

Now, trust me, regardless of what you think, I know MUCH better than you about what my country -really- needs. And it is PRIMARILY an air dominance platform, with secondary strike role… Not vice versa.. You will simply have to accept this.

It is absolutely reasonable to ask where that poster is from.

He claims he knows better than his own defense establishment and that I just have to take his word for it? Absolutely not.

Nobody has to announce their nationality, but you can’t hide behind that to claim that only you know what your mystery country really needs.

You. In your post 343 in this thread you clearly state that kinematics is largely irrelevant. Just one page further it is suddenly a significant advantage. So, which one is it?

I said it was nice to have in that first post, and it is. Did you miss the part where the US ended F-22 production in favor of the F-35?

If you were designing a fighter around a pure air to air mission set, with a practically unlimited budget, then you would end up with something like the F-22. (that is essentially what they did afterall)

If you were designing a multirole fighter that needed to perform essentially every mission under the sun, including air to air, and you had to be able to produce it at a reasonable cost… the F-35 is what you would get. This isn’t fundamentally different from the F-15C/F-16 arrangement.

The USAF used F-15Cs as its air superiority aircraft, but most of the allies used F-16s for everything.

With unlimited money the US would have bought its 750 F-22s. Given that money is not unlimited and nobody could come up with a sufficient justification for that kind of a fleet, it switched its emphasis to the F-35 and is readying work on a 6th generation fighter in the 2030 timeframe when it might be needed.

Oh, not at all, they only want to steal a huge lot of my taxpayer money.

Oh those mean Americans! Selling your government a product that you don’t personally like! :dev2:

You seem to have very short and selective memory. It was some three-four years ago when this forum saw fierce debates in style future “Su-35 vs F-22”, where the US fans highlighted kinematic performance (SC speed of the F-22, to be precise) as a complete game changer leading to enhanced (own) missile ranges, reduced (enemy’s) missile ranges, capability to engage and disengage from combat at will and generally choose the optimum position for attack.

3-4 years ago? The F-22 has been operational since 2005.

…and its kinematic capabilities are awesome, and do offer it significant advantages. Who ever denied that? It is also important to remember that the US ended F-22 production at 187 aircraft because they just couldn’t justify more. The F-22 remains in service and will obviously do its thing if a war with a significant air to air component should become necessary, but the F-22 is a highly specialized aircraft that could never have served as a replacement for the F-35.

In those times the Su-35 was the prime Russian fighter, T-50 was an unknown paper project with only few sketches published and the news about F-35 not being quite up to expectations when it comes to flight performance only slowly started to emerge. A completely different situation than today. Funny how the rhetoric has been completely twisted in such short time.

That is the typical problem with you Yanks. You did not come here to discuss and learn, just to show all others that you always win. Frankly, it has become beyond tiring.

If you want to argue Su-35 or PAK FA vs F-35 for the hundredth time we can do that I suppose.

Yes, those planes are faster and more maneuverable. Yes they will also have significant weaknesses relative to the F-35 and are unlikely to be manufactured in quantities sufficient to matter any time in the foreseeable future.

Frankly, given the errors and mistakes you make in almost every post I don’t think you are one to talk about “discuss and learn.” You act like an F-35 engineer stole your girlfriend or something posting a never-ending mishmash of complaints about the F-35.

Well your post is quite a provocation in it self. The F35 will bring many great features and excellent combination of them too, but its flying perforaance is generally very much inferior to all the Eurocanards. The F35 is obviously ok under certain well selected criteras such a 2t load out with 2BVR missiles and subsonic at medium altlitute but your post is implying that this differance is irrelevant. I have to disagree!

Honestly, the vast majority of the time it is irrelevant. That isn’t to say that marginal speed and maneuverability improvements wouldn’t be nice to have, and the F-35 does have uprated engines in the works for instance, but even then the emphasis of the new engines is on fuel efficiency rather than pure power.

You can see the same phenomenon with the Super Hornet… it is currently among the slower fourth generation fighters, but does that concern the US Navy? Not particularly. There are dramatically more powerful engines available but once again the Navy’s main interest seems to be in reducing time between overhauls and saving fuel.

The last 30 or so years of air combat (from the Falklands to today) have shown us that while aerial warfare is common, air to air engagements are comparably rare, particularly in the years since 1991.

When air to air engagements have taken place they have increasingly done so at longer ranges. Even when combat has taken place within visual range it has not generally taken the form of the sort of slow turning fights that people around here obsess over. Finally, even when such fights have taken place, in training or wartime, other factors have tended to decide the outcome rather than pure aircraft performance. (pilot skill, situational awareness, better weapons/HOBS, better tactics)

Take all of those factors together and there just isn’t much of an argument for extreme kinematic performance. Not when investments in better long range sensors and weapons offers a much greater return. (Just look at the Eurofighter, thrust vectoring could be added, or uprated engines, etc, but instead the focus of work is on an AESA and Meteor. Uprated engines are supposedly also available for the Rafale, but once again the money is going other places.) On a longer timeline missiles will continue to advance and full spherical engagement capabilities will make entering into a turning fight a bad bet, regardless of the relative performance of the aircraft involved.

So while I am not disagreeing with you that improved kinematics would be nice to have I think you are overestimating how often those improved kinematics will actually carry the day in real world combat.