hopsalotTiananmen Square Massacre
It should be interesting to see if his government will allow him to return to his thread now…
hopsalot[QUOTE=halloweene;2016332][QUOTE=hopsalot;2015906]
F-35A Cost Per Flying Hour Exceeds F-16 by 10%
Applesto apples? Yes and no. You wont need permanently a targeting pod on a legacy figher for ex. (air policing etc). So you wont buy and operate as many targeting pods as you have fighters, therefore reducing costs. No intend to argue.
There is nothing stopping a buyer from purchasing an F-35 without its EOTS, though I don’t expect anyone to do so. The actual hardware inside the aircraft remains modular and could be removed without any particular effort. (This wouldn’t be much different from how later Rafales have been delivered without an IRST.)
hopsalotJust to clarify for everyone… the flight demo this summer will not include the EPE engines, but their development continues and they may still be adopted.
But industry is also investing in other improvements to the aircraft that are not going to be demonstrated during the flights tests later this year. The most significant of those developments are General Electric’s enhanced F414 engines. In previous years, GE had touted versions of the F414 with either greater thrust or greater durability, but current developments are focused on combining both of these, Gibbons says.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-to-demo-super-hornet-enhancements-in-summer-384367/
hopsalotBy the same rationale USN evidently considers Super Hornet comparable to F-35. :rolleyes:
Lets try to elevate the maturity level a bit eh? The F-35 isn’t yet operational and is thus not really in a position to compete to fill a requirement that exists today…
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20100219/DEFSECT03/2190302/U-S-Navy-Takes-Aim-Fighter-Gap-
The Rafale meanwhile has been pushing for a sale to the UAE for years. It lost to the F-16 in the contest that resulted in the original F-16 block 60 sale.
A new sale of F-16s to the UAE wouldn’t rule out a purchase of Rafales or Eurofighters though so perhaps they will still buy another type.
hopsalotYou and hopsalot are the worst trolls on the forum.
Honesty is trolling?
You still wont remember that 2 F117 where engaged (one crashed) and that the modern F15 is hopelessly inferior to the modern Flankers (in basically all performance) and that since the era of the T10 the F15 has been kinematically inferior (with similar weapon and fuel load).
:eagerness:
Let me see if I have this right. One F-117 was shot down during an otherwise stellar couple decades of service in which it was routinely tasked with the most dangerous missions undertaken. Big failure… :highly_amused:
Meanwhile you have concluded that the F-15 is “hopelessly inferior” to the Flanker… :eagerness:
You can believe whatever you want, clearly. Just don’t confuse your beliefs with the real world.
hopsalotWe know that in tests modern ECM-systems have close to 100% succes rate against lock ons in trials. Assuming a one sided development is biased to say the least. Similarly we can say that against yesterdays decoys the latest missiles have almost 100% killrate in similar trials.
At the same pace the offensive systems develop we have a development on the defensive side. This is what development looks like. You make a move, the opponent makes a counter move. Usually the counter move is more efficient and puts the opponent slightly ahead of you. So in the long run it pays to be a slacker and waiting to see what the competition brings 😉
Once again, this is basically you just choosing to believe what you want to believe. ECM works when you want it to. Naturally Russian ECM will work against Western missiles. Meanwhile Russian missiles will work against Western missiles… :eagerness:
As for you “it pays to be a slacker” theory, nothing could be further from the truth. In the real world you competitor introduces a new capability and goes to work on something even better. You don’t sit around and wait for an opponent to defeat you, you keep advancing. That is what has happened with the AMRAAM. The US continues to regularly upgrade the AMRAAM to stay ahead of the curve.
This is also the case in the succesful trials in red flag. USAF brings a mixed fleet and the guests usually bring their latest toys. Naturally obtaining radar lock on them will be difficult/impossible if the enemy has ECM-systems that are brand new, or at least newer than the design of your radar. I know the entire SwAF Gripen C-fleet got an EWS/ECM upgrade within 6 months from the latest red flag. Did USAF do the same? No. And that is key. If time to market is shorter for you than for the competitor then you will come out with a better product faster despite starting at the same time. F35 has long time to market, the radar is (in comparison) already old. The Apg 81 is basically half a generation beind it’s latest competitors that will enter service at the same time (only +/-60 degrees scan vs +/-100 degrees from the competitors etc…). And that is how it goes.
War is a game where the person with the shiniest and latest toys usually wins.
Again since you didn’t seem to get it the first time, Red Flag is not some kind of aerial contest between participants. Planes participating at Red Flag fly against dedicated aggressors. It isn’t some kind of lame East vs West cage match where both sides are trying to “win.”
Nobody shows off their best countermeasures or counter-countermeasures, that isn’t the point of the exercise. The idea is to train.
hopsalotComparable in terms of avionics sophistication perhaps, but in that respect the Blk60 is also competitive with any other operational fighter today, F-22 included.
You also seem to be making the assumption that this buy will be in place of an order for either the Typhoon or Rafale although there seems to have been nothing so far to suggest this though.
Comparable in capability, that is what is really being considered when purchasing something like a fighter. Each has areas of strengths and weaknesses, but in the end it is about how an aircraft’s overall capabilities match the buyer’s requirements.
This purchase certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility that the UAE will go forward with a purchase of Rafales or Eurofighters, but it is certainly noteworthy that the UAE would buy more F-16s even after having had the opportunity to inspect the Rafale and Eurofighter. If they simply wished to expand their force structure they could always choose to replace 60 Mirage 2000s with 80 Eurofighters for instance. Now that they seem likely to purchase an additional squadron’s worth of F-16s I suspect at a minimum there is less urgency to replace the Mirage-2000s, and if a replacement happens the sale will likely be smaller than it otherwise would have been.
hopsalotAnd about the testimony in Australia…
They raised the exact same questions as the readers on the forum, none of which got decent answers.Here is one of the funny chapters:
The classified thing was the DIRCM that will work on the old missiles, but with updated dynamic filters the IR-guided missiles can adapt, just like the AMRAAM, to a home on jam-mode. Sure, it requires new software but its a fairly cheap upgrade. And the F35 does not have flares afaik.
The Amraam has a Pk close to 50% on targets that
A Dont use jammers
B Dont have warning receivers
C Dont take evasive action
D Dont use dispensers with chaffs
E Dont shoot backIn one case the target used evasive maneuvers, well within the NEZ, and he evaded 3 Aim120 (still not jamming, only maneuvering according to RAND) and got hit by one but still stayed alive and landed safely. Very few engagements have been succesfully attempted close to the max range and the longest recorded BVR-kill (against a fighter jet) that I have found is <22nm or <41km. This is well within the detection range of passive systems and the range where a Su35 should detect an F35 head on.
Lots of issues here. First off you need to remember that a 50% kill percentage, per shot, is actually a pretty darn good success rate under real world conditions.
Consider for a moment that with most Soviet/Russian SAMs the standard operating procedure calls for two missiles to be fired at each target. Even if you successfully killed every single target you engaged your kill % would still only be 50% and of course in the real world these weapons have never come close to that level of success.
The question isn’t simply one of “does a weapon always work?” or even “Does a weapon usually work?” The question is “Does a weapon work well enough to be combat effective?”
In combat all bullets don’t kill someone, all anti-tank missiles don’t kill a tank/vehicle, etc.
What the AMRAAM has demonstrated is that under real world conditions it works more than well enough to do its job. There are very few air to air missiles in the world today that can make that claim.
Another factor, as Spudman has already pointed out, is that it has been quite a while since an AMRAAM has been used in combat and the missile has been continuously improved in that time.
When it comes to jamming though I always tend to remember Red Flag 2008 where Indian Su30MKI had such effective jamming that the Apg63v2, a radar with similar performance to the Apg81 and way larger than the seeker in the Amraam, could not obtain a radar lock on the Flanker. This was 5 years ago with 8 year old tech. When the F35 enters service that platform will be 16-20 years old.
In these circumstances, does anyone actually believe that a Pk, even remotely close to 50% at long range, is possible with the missiles? I think that before we buy the hype the least we can do is check our history.
Red Flag is pretty much useless for a discussion of jamming effectiveness. Nobody is going to reveal the extent of their capabilities in an exercise.
hopsalot…the UAE is likely to buy 26 F-16 jet fighters…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-19/u-s-to-announce-10-billion-arms-sale-in-middle-east.html
Likely to push any Rafale/Typhoon order to the right?
At a minimum it suggests the UAE continues to see the F-16 block 60 as comparable to the Rafale and Eurofighter given that it is ordering more F-16s even after examining the latest versions of both the Rafale and Eurofighter.
hopsalotU.S. to Announce $10 Billion Arms Sale in Middle East
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-19/u-s-to-announce-10-billion-arms-sale-in-middle-east.html
The arms sold to Israel will include an unspecified number of V-22 Osprey tiltrotor transport aircraft, precision strike missiles, air defense radar and KC-35 refueling tankers; the UAE is likely to buy 26 F-16 jet fighters, and the Persian Gulf nation as well as Saudi Arabia will each buy precision missiles, said the official who provided the details on the condition of anonymity ahead of the deal�s announcement.
Another $10 billion, the Boeing/LM should send a thank-you card to Iran.
It is also interesting to note that the UAE is seeking to augment its F-16 Block 60 fleet even as it toys with replacing its Mirage 2000-9s.
hopsalotMy quotes paraphrased the sworn testimony given in front of the Australian Parliament. There are two PDFs available with all the testimony that would be advantageous for you to read.
I actual listened live to the testimony and was quite impressed by the testimony given by the MoD and their experience in testing the F-35 and its capabilities. Their “matter of fact” attitude basically made fun of RepSim/APA and basically said they were full of it and that their sim had no basis in fact.
Being outnumbered 4:8 does not sound like “advantageous set-up” to me
Did you see the RepSim “setup”…. Talk about unrealistically advantageous :rolleyes:
BTW, I am quoting direct, official, and sworn testimony… not “factless cheerleading”.
Again, see above
Just because it’s not A2A “optimized” like the F-22 does not mean that it will not do a good job at it. (Again, see the above sworn testimony)
btw, “Factless Cheerleading” covers anyone talking about the Gripen NG, F-15SE, F-18SE, Pak-Fa, or J-20 as they either exist only on paper or no public info has been released.
More is known and publicly released about the F-35 than all those programs combined (in addition to the 10,000+ sheets of data delivered to the JSF Partners EVERY MONTH).
You have to love how sworn testimony of actual experts is turned into:
“Parroting ambiguious, probably advantageous set-ups do not do the F35 cause any good and frankly i for one am tired of your incessent pointless and factless cheerleading.”
Naturally if some mindless critic of the program were trotting out the usual it would be treated as pure gospel.
hopsalothttp://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_04_18_2013_p0-570862.xml
The useful thing is to have an indication of F-35 cost per flying hour.
I have a feeling the Dutch will have a good idea what it costs them to fly the F-16. I’m also sure it won’t be $22,800+ (10/11 x $24,000). Countries bought F-16 because it was relatively cheap to purchase and fly.
I think F-35 probably costs at least $10,000 per hour more to fly than the Dutch pay to fly F-16, so I think each F-35 would cost at least $60 million more to operate than each F-16 over 6,000 hours.
Since Gripen is the most likely alternative to F-35, how would it compare with F-35 over 6,000 hours? All reports I have read put Gripen CPFH between $4,500-$8,000. If it were $7,500 CPFH, each F-35 would cost $99 million more to operate than each Gripen over 6,000 hours (Gripen would cost $45 million against $144 million for F-35).
I won’t bother playing silly games with percentages…
Actually you have things completely backwards. What matters is the percentage, because that is based on a real apples to apples comparison.
Operating costs are very difficult to compare because they are going to depend heavily on what you include, assumptions about fuel costs, labor costs, etc etc.
You can’t just take one number for one jet, with unknown assumptions, and compare it to another number for another jet calculated with different assumptions. It is a waste of time.
I would also note that for the F-35 to be within 10% of an F-16’s operational cost at this early stage in the program is quite an achievement. The F-16 is an extremely inexpensive aircraft to operate and it has decades of experience behind it.
The F-35 will also be replacing F-18s and other aircraft with higher operating costs than the F-16, meaning that at least in the US case the overall increase in operating costs will be less than 10%. (It also acts to undermine the argument for the Super Hornet as an alternative to the F-35 as its flight costs are almost certainly more than 10% greater than the F-16, and thus more than the F-35.)
When the AETD engines for the F-35 arrive in the 2020s, cutting fuel burn by ~25%, the F-35 will likely see its operating costs fall below those of the F-16.
All in all very good news.
hopsalot[QUOTE=bring_it_on;2015833]F-35A Cost Per Flying Hour Exceeds F-16 by 10%
[quote]The F-35A is expected to cost about 10% more to operate than the F-16 it is intended to replace for the U.S. Air Force and other international military services, according to U.S. government officials.
USAF Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, program executive officer overseeing the F-35 program, told Dutch government officials that the cost per flying hour for the F-35A, which The Netherlands intends to buy, is $24,000, according to Capt. Natasha Waggoner, an Air Force spokeswoman. Bogdan provided the data to Dutch legislators, including a “side-by-side comparison of flying hour costs between the F-16 and the F-35,” she says.
http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/awx_04_18_2013_p0-570862.xml
I think the DOD has taken an overall cost of an F-16 that is kitted with the same type of targetting options as an F-35, that is with a dedicated EW system, Dedicated IR Targeting system and modern radars and all other bells and whistles. Lockheed had been wanting a comparison that compares apples with apples i.e. two jets with similar sub-systems rather then a normal Fleet f16 without the sub system w/o which it is higlhy unlikely to go to war vs a fully kitted F-35A… Seems that the JO and DOD have taken a similar position….
The article was already posted above.
You are right that the key thing here is that this is actually an apples to apples comparison, the first time good data has been made available publicly.
A 10% cost increase isn’t ideal, but it is certainly manageable and far from some of the grossly inflated numbers some have been throwing out.
hopsalotGreat news on costs, the F-35 will only cost about 10% more to operate than the F-16:
The single-engine F-35A is expected to cost about 10 percent more to operate than the F-16 it is intended to replace for the U.S. Air Force and other international military services, according to U.S. government officials.
…
He provided the data to Dutch legislators, including a “side-by-side comparison of flying hour costs between the F-16 and the F-35,” she says.
She says Bogdan characterized the figures as “preliminary.” Though flight training has begun on the F-35A and testing continues, the data gathered is fresh and does not reflect an entire life’s worth of use. Ongoing durability testing will help program officials determine whether any parts or systems will require support that is not built into this figure.
It seems yet another bunch of doom and gloom reports has proven to be no big deal.
hopsalotWhich part of that don’t you understand?
I find it amusing that you have such strong opinions about something you understand so poorly.
For me it is that simple. My pocket doesn’t care if it has to fork out 7bn for 36 aircraft because they cost as much to make or because they only need diamond-plated screwdrivers to operate properly… It’s all the same and does not change a thing on my budget balance..
Of course you don’t know what any other proposal would cost either so all you are really doing is ranting about numbers that sound big to you.
I can see you are still very much focused on semantics. Then it surely did not escape your attention that I have said 100 aircraft built, not 100 aircraft delivered.
And while I agree that we can assume the 100th F-35 hasn’t been delivered yet, it has most likely already been built or is close to completion.
lol :p
Let me get this straight, You think the 100th F-35 is “built” it just won’t be “delivered” until sometime around the end of next year?
What do you think this 100th “built” F-35 is doing right now? Maturing in an oak cask? 😀 Perhaps you think it is on an ocean voyage to Australia and back like a bottle of Aquavit? 😎
Again, it really is kind of funny how hard you are willing to work to avoid just admitting that you are wrong.
First you claimed that over 100 F-35s had been “built already.”
I corrected you.
Then you showed me an article showing that the 100th F-35 was started on the production line “a month ago.” (actually from back in Jan, but as far as your errors go, small)
I corrected you again, explaining that on the production line does not mean completed.
THEN you claimed that if the 100th F-35 was in production back in Jan, that it must “already be built” by now.
I corrected you again, and pointed out that based on the F-35’s actual delivery pace the 100th F-35 won’t be complete until next year.
Now of course you come back to claim the 100th F-35 has been “built” just not delivered… 😀
Give it up dude, if you keep digging that hole much longer you will come out the other side..
I claimed no modern fighter had ever seen a drop in prices as large as Bogdan puts in.. Please not that I meant partner prices or exports, as always.. I have already implied that even if the LM managed to save cost on higher production rates, they would most likely use it to increase their profit margin on exports – logically export users would have zero use of this “advantage”.
Yes, I know what you said, and you were wrong on both counts.
The F-18 is one example of a modern fighter that saw its price drop a similar amount to what Bogdan predicted.
All F-35 program partners pay the same price as the US, so there is no opportunity for LM to make up any profit on export orders.
There is a way to prove me wrong – if LM sends out a revised proposal to my government which will have the price tag reduced from $190mil a pop to say $125-130mil (incl. spares, etc.). That will be exactly the figure that means anything, everything else is talking BS and using creative accounting to deceive me and make me pay more than I actually want to.
Again, you have to learn to differentiate between the cost of a plane, and the cost of everything associated with operating a plane.
This isn’t that complicated. 🙂
Have you? Where?
How many F-35s are built, then? Not delivered, built.
They deliver them when they are built dude. They don’t stash them in a hanger for a year or more.. :p
Drop the attitude like what? Humbly signing the $190mil export order because some hopsalot guy said it was cheap?
You are kidding, right? Do it yourself..
Don’t worry, your government has actual experts working on the issue. It isn’t that different from when your health service makes decisions in your best interest.
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