If you going to bribe people, why not bribe the one making the decision?
Its much more effective…and its not 200 bribes just 1. Easier getting away with, and cheaper. On the policial side it seems also easier due to no need for hard data on why the decision is made in that direction.

So…
who have been bribed who? 😉

Again, I suggest people stop making such accusations, unless they can back them up with some cold hard facts.

I don’t think Saab has payed bribes in Brazil, and also I don’t think that Dassault has bribed the Brazilian president.

Well well well… it doesn’t bode well for the Rafale at the moment; I think it will come down to cost and to how many people Saab bought in the FAB and in the brazilian industry.

Nic

It does not reflect well on you to accuse Saab of bribes.

It is also pretty a serious accusation. It is also clear from what you are NOT saying that you have absolutely nothing to back that accusation with.

Saab seems “clean” to me. In the Norwegian competition nobody ever even hinted at corruption from any of the companies. In Romania Saab pushed hard to have transparancy rules etc. enforced. Does not sound like a company with a culture for bribes, does it.

Corruption has always been widespread in the arms industry — I probably don’t have to remind you of that. Dassault have been involved in some of those cases, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agusta_scandal. However I now see a lot of signs that it is improving, in many parts of the world.

I have no information that indicates that any of the competitors in Brazil have used corruption to win this contract.

The Russians are claiming a frontal RCS of .5m^2. Provide a link where they’re claiming a better RCS figure than the F-35.

Do you really believe that the russians will build a brand new a/c with internal weapons and settle for an RCS of 0.5m2, when they already some years ago managed to reduce the Mig-21 to that level?

I am not saying that the T-50 will have a lower RCS than the F-35; I simply don’t know. I am guessing that F-35 will probably have lower RCS since the US has spent such huge resources into RCS reduction that they should be significantly better than the Russians in this field.

However if it’s really true that the eurocanards are in the 0.1-0.5 m2 RCS range then I find it very hard to believe that PAK FA will not be at least one order of magnitude below that. If not it seems like a failure to me; they should have developed the SU-35 a bit further instead then…

:p with 2.4 tons of fuel? :p

Nope, it’s more than that. Max external for Gripen C I believe is 3300 litres (some 2.6 tons or so). Add to that the internal fuel.

More on the increases in costs:

Defense Department officials have told Congress that the already ballooning costs of the F-35 joint strike fighter are likely to soar much higher when new estimates are completed in the summer.

In the Selected Acquisition Report for the F-35, a detailed document sent to Congress on Thursday, the Pentagon said it expects that cost studies now under way will produce estimates dramatically higher than those used in recent months to prepare the 2011 defense budget request.

Based on figures in the document, the average cost of one F-35 — $62 million when the program was launched in 2002 — could rise to $115.5 million, not counting inflation, by the time all 2,457 planes that the U.S. plans to buy are built.

Including inflation, the government now expects each F-35 to cost an average of $133.6 million. But even that figure could swell to more than $150 million when revised estimates are completed in June.

The report was obtained by the online news service InsideDefense.com, which reported it in a story posted on its Web site Wednesday. The Star-Telegram obtained its own copy of the report.

It shows that Pentagon officials now estimate that the average cost of one F-35 has risen 57 percent before accounting for inflation. It predicts that the next round of estimates could show an increase of up to 87 percent, again before inflation.

Further cost increases, coming on top of a wave of recent revelations about rising costs and lengthy delays on the part of contractor Lockheed Martin in getting planes built, will give additional ammunition to defense spending critics in general and F-35 critics in particular. They could also further delay purchasing decisions of potential foreign buyers, who are already nervous about the rising costs.

“The sticker shock for the F-35 is just now beginning to sink in; more sticker shock is to come as future revelations and developments continue to drive up the unit cost,” said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information and a former Senate committee staff member.

But Lockheed Martin spokesman Chris Geisel said in an e-mailed statement: “We can foresee no scenario in which F-35 unit costs are even close to the projections … cited in the Inside Defense article.”

The F-35 program has been the subject of much scrutiny and internal analysis since Pentagon officials conceded late last year that earlier, more optimistic predictions of costs and progress were hopelessly out of date and unrealistic.

The latest cost analysis indicates that the figures Pentagon officials used in preparing the 2011 budget and submitted to Congress still understate the likely cost of building the F-35s that are planned for the Air Force, Marines and Navy.

The new analysis says the Pentagon’s earlier report was developed largely using cost projections by the F-35 Joint Program Office, which works directly with Lockheed and has consistently been too optimistic.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Feb. 1 that he had replaced the F-35 program office manager, Marine Gen. David Heinz, after reviewing the cost estimates for the 2011 budget.

In the report submitted to Congress, the average cost of an F-35 was estimated at $97.1 million before inflation, a 57 percent increase over the original estimate.

The total cost of the program was originally estimated at $178 billion. The latest estimate puts that figure at $328.25 billion, including inflation projections. That number was made public last week.

But language in the full report indicates that figure could rise by $40 billion to $50 billion.

When the public cost figures were released last week, Wheeler said they would prove optimistic. He said the projections in the detailed report are worse than he expected.

Geisel said the actual cost of building airplanes is now trending lower than expected. “We believe the final price per aircraft will be well below the independent estimates the government has adopted.”

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/04/06/2094443/cost-estimate-for-f-35-to-soar.html

So LM still claims that they will deliver… Interesting.

InsideDefence:

April 6, 2010 — The Defense Department is warning Congress that the price tag for the Joint Strike Fighter program could rise as high as $388 billion by this summer, a recalibration that could raise fundamental questions about the affordability of the Pentagon’s plans to buy 2,443 of the Lockheed Martin-built aircraft.

http://defensenewsstand.com/newsstand_latest.asp

Ooops. And still a lot of testing to be done.

Thanks Vishnu, that’s very interesting.

I thought 4 of the 5 a/c that tested first in Leh had some issues? Sounds from your post that it’s now 4 of 6…?

Gripen is a very nice a/c, no doubt….

That’s funny it described as the U.S. Air Force Multirole aircraft (primary-air-to-ground) to replace the F-16 and A-10 and complement the F/A-22 on the JSF website.

Well I think the F-16 has been a quite good fighter both a2a and a2g. If the F-35 could become the “F-16 of the future” then it will be a good fighter.

It remains to be seen if that really happens, we shall see.

How will you resolve the jamming problem with those UCAVs? Synthetic intelligence? I think once we start rely on SI (or AI) then yes UCAVs would be as good and perhaps even better solution than the F-35. But that’s still at least 20 years if not more into the future.

As for SC, as said before I am all for it, but stealth should reduce the impact of not having SC. How will the Su-30 find and target the F-35 in the first place? If you are facing a 4/4.5 gen with F-35 you will know where they are but they will not know where you are, until much later.

And again, what about the SAMs? Unless the Growlers are much more efficient than what I think they are, you would need the UCAVs to take out those. Has that been demonstrated yet? The value of manned stealth bombers have been demonstrated on a number of occations.