You might have missed that Eurofighter test pilot has claimed the F-35 stood no chance against Typhoon… Something tells me that he’d know much more about it than you..

A Typhoon pilot that had flown an F-35? You have a source for that? (yeah yeah… that sources thing again…)

I, for one, am not sure if F-35 is stealthy enough..

Rest assured Lockheed Martin will give your concerns all due consideration.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-why-denmark-is-holding-formation-with-f-35-425326/

The Danish evaluation ignored on purpose the informations suplied by the “supliers”!
Mark my words, in three years time, there will another Danish document in wich the acquisition costs went up between 25% and 50% and the sustainment will go up 100%.

This of course disproves MSphere’s claim:

In other words, they have based the whole “evaluation” on LM’s PowerPoint slides.. We know how that usually ends up… 🙂

Seriously though, that line reads like something got garbled. Why ask the suppliers for responses to a thousand questions and then ignore them? I suspect what they are saying is that the values provided weren’t taken at face value… that Denmark did its own cost calculations, etc.

And how many of the countries I mentioned as examples have decided to purchase any of those as their “fighter”?

Those were just examples; there are many other countries who want something more than a Super Tucano, but does not see the need for an F-35.

I am surprised that you seem to believe otherwise.

Of course there are countries that will be happy with super tocano, but that’s another story.

We can probably split into tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 and tier 4 countries. Tier 1 countries will go for F-35, J-20, PAK FA, (or if those are not available, Rafale, Typhoon or SH).

Tier 2 will typically be Gripen E/ F-16V

Tier 3 will be second-hand F-16, Mirage 2000, or Gripen C

Tier 4 will be the Super Tucano crowd.

“there is a lot of space at the bottom” 🙂

I never said there wasn’t a market for 4th generation fighters… only that it is going to be an increasingly challenging market. Most high-end customers will be able to buy an F-35 for less… and even among those who the US won’t currently sell an F-35 to, there are a variety of very inexpensive low-end options.

Energo at Norwegian forum “milforum.net” says he believes the huge differences between Norwegian and Danish life cycle cost estimates are because the Danes have made calculations using “present value” whereas in Norway they use an estimate which is adjusted for inflation instead. In 2008 Norway also used present value, and at that time the figure was 145 billion NOK (which corresponded to 254 billion NOK when adjusted for inflation).

Another theory a heck of a lot more plausible than a conspiracy or rigged competition…

The implications are in any case that Rafale, Typhoon, and SH are doomed to lose any competition moving forward (unless politics strongly favor one of the 4.5 gen)

This has already been happening. The only places where we see them continuing to compete are places where the F-35 hasn’t been offered. (Middle East and India basically)

However one interesting thing to note when looking at the Danish evaluation is that if one ignores the “high threat” scenarios, perhaps one could conclude that a 4.5 gen would still be adequate for the job. E.g. countries like Brazil, Switzerland, Austria, etc. Such countries would probably look more at the price tag. This probably explains why Saab is modestly optimistic regarding the future of the Gripen E. For countries looking at a low-cost solution that can handle anything but the most demanding scenarios, the Gripen would probably be the way to go.

Dassault, Eurofighter and Boeing will probably focus their sales efforts on the ME moving forward…

True, but in a low threat scenario we can start to talk about Air Tractor, Super Tucano, Scorpion, etc. It is awfully hard to justify spending >$100million/jet if you aren’t worried about operating in at least a medium threat environment.

What? How can you be so misguided? You should read through the bucketfuls of posts by someone called hopsalot in which he explained that all development programs encounter problems and the JSF program is no different. Fiasco? hopsalot went to great lengths to assure readers that was not the case IIRC. 🙂

If you can’t make an argument without lying about someone else’s position then you don’t have an argument.

Agreed. Dumb. Time to shut one or two or three down IMO.

All four will be shut in a few years. There just isn’t a place for a fighter like the Eurofighter anymore.

Hops mate,

Forget all that tosh….the F-35 will (eventually) work out just fine for the US within the way it operates with a $600 billion budget and hundreds of tankers.

The questions being asked might hurt because they are challenging and to give a honest answer might not help and be even damaging to say LockMart (by the way

good strategy to operate plants in 40 states to spread a little bit of that pork barrel spending)

Please just answer the question……if you don’t know say I don’t know!

Why are the Danes using half the life time operating costs of the Norwegians? If there are valid reasons to use this assumption what are they? Thanks.

Could be any of a lot of things… things as simple as how you calculate the costs of personnel and facilities. Without the details of both I really don’t know.

What I can say is that the report the Danes released is one of the most comprehensive to come out of any fighter selection to date. Can you name an equivalent document from a previous competition?

The level of detail and specificity of this report, combined with the multiple audits by independent consultants, strongly suggests that the reflexive whining about supposed cheating and conspiracy on the part of the fanboy brigade are unfounded.

BTW, brilliant strategy on the part of the Eurofighter consortium. Running four redundant final assembly lines within the confines of Europe was obviously an excellent plan.