I really like to understand the maths behind that estimate.

12 F-35A x $40,000/hr x 180 hours = $87 million.

Is $87 million all that the Norwegians can afford to spare out of their budget of $7.2 billion?

Israel spends a little over twice as much and operates hundreds of aircraft (including AWACS) to be joined by several squadrons of F-35s. Similarly, I’ve never heard it said that Singapore with its $12 bn budget can only operate a grand total 18 F-35s (in addition to all its F-15/16s).

1. Currently Norway is scheduled to purchase 52 (48 + 4 training) F-35A. This number may be revised downwards, but by how much, nobody knows as of yet. I don’t see us go down to 12! Denmark on the other hand… may have to go below 24 unless they want to gut other parts of their military.

2. 87 million for 12 35A? It’s a bit more than that I would think.

We have not even started operating yet, and are already spending significant amounts on the F-35, every year. And everything seems to be more expensive than what was “estimated”.

Increased funding will be required to improve facilities at the Norwegian Air Force’s air station at Ørland to serve as the main base for new F-35 aircraft. The cost of the air base modernization will run to $190 million. The first F-35s are scheduled to arrive in Ørland in 2017.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/budget/2015/04/30/norway-budget-increase-russia-ukraine-baltic-air-defense-nasams-leopard-tank-f35/26661873/

Since then it has become clear that we need to add “hundreds of millions” of NOK to the upgrade of the airbase, due to the higher noise levels and a few other things.

An Air Force without a sufficient number of fighter aircraft means that we must drastically cut down on the level of ambition compared to today – even with the new and modern fighter that can do more than present. Therefore it is important that we get at least 24 new fighter aircraft to replace the 30 F-16s, which is operative in the Air Force today; a figure that was initially 58 and later was cut down to 48.

F-35 is a one-engine ultra high-tech fighter aircraft, which is designed to strike first to penetrate the opposing defense lines and destroy enemy fighter aircraft and air defense – the first day of the war-fighter, as the Americans call it.

It is also designed to be invisible in the opponent’s radar; a very expensive quality, technological development, however, more or less outdated. It is a completely untested fighter who has not been in action and actually first fully developed within 5-10 years, which means that the plane very quickly be upgraded.

There are built about 120 copies of the F-35 in three different variants, which has never flown a single combat mission. The development of the plane has been characterized by long delays and cost overruns of more than 100 billion, which has been in getting the US Congress to cancel the project.

That notwithstanding, the F-35 named the favorite in Denmark and more or less bought sight unseen by countries like the United States, Norway, the Netherlands, Britain and Australia, which will begin receiving their aircraft in the coming years. As recently emerged Danish pilots have not been allowed to test fly the F-35 and will probably not be allowed until the signed purchase contract. Is it fair and reasonable?

Denmark does not need a first day of the war-fighter like the F-35, which remains a development without security for the future costs. F-35 was originally intended as a good and cheap substitute for F-16 aircraft, but has developed into a very expensive and complex aircraft whose history must get the shivers down the spine of any Danish politician who some of the recent, major procurement scandals fresh in the memory, for example. IC4 train and EH101 rescue helicopters.

We also do not need a Dogfighter ‘as the Eurofighter, which is expensive and lag behind technological development.

Therefore, it is time to reconsider the myth of the F-35 as the favorite in the Danish combat aircraft and to look to the F-18 Super Hornet, which may not be the sexiest choice, but who can deliver what Denmark needs, to a affordable price.

Google translated from: http://politiken.dk/debat/kroniken/ECE2795725/joint-strike-fighter-er-maaske-bare-ikke-det-rigtige-fly/

The 3 authors are former pilots with a total of 100 years of experience(!)

If they really want to go cheap why don’t they consider new F-16 instead? Or the Gripen NG, which will also come in a 2-seat version?

Anyway my guess is still that they go for the F-35 — perhaps 12-14 of them?

No doubt the F-35 would have several huge advantages in most scenarios against the Su-35.

For the Su-35 the question becomes how to try to reduce those advantages.

Imagine someone built a very crude jammer; simply creating very loud noise in the whole X-band, in all directions. If one also jammed the frequencies used for communication, would this not neutralize of some of the main advantages of the F-35?

1. the advantage of the advanced LPI AESA radar
2. the advantage of the superiour data link
3. the advantage of very sensitive electronic emission sensors (that normally would be able to detect and localize e.g. Link 16 communication)
3. Sensor fusion effectiveness is also reduced because of 1, 2, and 3.

The advantage of this approach brute-force is that it should be able to jam even the most sophisticated AESA, since it makes no assumptions about the signal it is jamming, it’s just drowning everything in noise.

Of course the F-35 still have the IR sensors (but so does the Su-35). And the a/c with the jammer would be the obvious target. Red would only be able to “blind” the F-35 until the a/c with the jammer was taken out. If blue is the US then of course red will lose in any case; but imagine that blue is not the US, but, say, Finland or Norway. Imagine that blue has no anti-radiation missiles available to easily target the jammer (AFAIK neither Norway nor Finland have such missiles today). How would this affect things?

I think the F-16 would be the most suitable of the buys and would, without doubt, bring new capabilities to the Finnish AF.

The Finns disagree with you; they have not even mentioned the F-16 as a potential candidate!

If you look around, you’ll see that in the last few years, the F-16 has participated in very few competitions; and in those cases where it was invited it was not shortlisted. (e.g., Indian MMRCA; competitions in Switzerland, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Norway, Belgium, Canada, etc.)

The Western fighter jets that keep getting invited these days are: F-35, SH, Typhoon, Rafale, and Gripen (mainly E).

the fact is that in Canada, LM did just that: they refused that the F-35 be compared to other aircraft in a aircraft-to-aircraft real life comparison.. they basically told the Canadians: “you’ll have to believe us on the aircrafts qualities”

source?

If you have one Su-35 emitting only, and sharing the picture with the other Su-35, flying with their emitters off. If that Su-35 is also jamming; now if the jamming is effective this could cause some issues for the F-35; they can easily detect the emitting Su-35. But how can they detect the silent Su-35s without using their radars? IF the F-35 radars are successfully jammed then they would not be able to find the silent Su-35s until they get at “IR detection” range.

However jamming the F-35s will probably be very difficult, in particular jamming all of them.

The F-35 likely has a longer range than the F-22 and not a great deal less than the PAK FA and J-20. Had they made it much bigger it would have been unaffordable to everybody but the US and Japan. And with the economies of scale melting away, unaffordable to those two as well. For extended range strike they have to have to rely on the B-1, B-2 and LRS-B. Plus F-35B/Cs & UCLASS from forward deployed carriers/LHDs.

Good points — however F-35 still needs to demonstrate “affordability”. It will be interesting to see how many will be bought by small countries like Norway, Denmark, etc.