But the report’s biggest surprise is the ballooning cost of F-35 Operations & Support costs, which have more than quadrupled in a decade (see table below). And, the report notes, buying fewer aircraft will not only increase unit acquisition costs, but will also increase O&S costs, from €167 million to €194 million per aircraft, which is unlikely to sit well with the public and with parliamentarians.

…
Italian taxpayers are beginning to realize that the F-35 acquisition costs are far higher than previously acknowledged by the government, while promised industrial benefits have not materialized so far.

National Armaments Director Gen. Claudio Debertolis acknowledged, in an interview published Oct. 16 by the web magazine Analisi Difesa, that the first F-35As for the Italian air force will cost $127.3 million each, while the first F-35Bs for the navy will each cost $137.1 million (both refer to Unit Recurring Fly-away costs).

These figures are about 50% higher than those that Debertolis had stated in testimony before Parliament’s defense committee on Feb. 7, when he had assured committee members that the first F-35As would cost $80 million each.

In the interview, Debertolis added that, as production volumes increased, unit prices should drop to $90.6 million for the F-35A and to $118.8 million for the F-35B STOVL version, and even further after the 50th production aircraft.

However, even these figures are very rough estimates, as one the one hand production is not increasing enough to lower production costs, and Italy’s decision earlier this year to reduce its planned F-35 purchase by nearly one-third, from 131 to 90 aircraft, will necessarily increase production costs.

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/139745/f_35-faces-new-hurdles-in-netherlands%2C-italy-and-canada.html

Seems both Holland and Italy are surprised?

Do you know very much about the F-35?

Do you know “very much” about Gripen? It’s Gripen you know, not ‘Griffen’.

Probably you know very well how to spell Gripen but are just trolling.

Also, it seems you are rather clueless about how this works. The Danish competition will not be determined by some technical parameters (I will not even comment on whether your numbers are “right” or “wrong”) but political and industrial/economical considerations.

I cannot predict what will happen here but will repeat my best guess; if they go for new fighters at all (and they may not…) then they will most likely go for F-35. Political considerations will most likely dictate this. Economical considerations will most likely dictate that the Danish number of F-35 will be very low, and that they will postpone the purchase as much as possible in order for the price to drop further.

Do you really think that a few Danish F-35 would be able to stop a Russian invasion? Let me tell you a secret; they will not. What will stop a Russian invasion on the other hand is NATO and Denmarks close relationship with the US, cemented by the purchase of F-35.

They can also buy SH or F16V but the political and industrial benefits may not be the same.

I strongly recommend you to do some more reading before spewing more nonsense on this forum.

aussienscale,

If you think the APA “analysis” is garbage, why on Earth do you link to it?

Don’t you have anything better to contribute?

claims made by…?

I will try to find the source — if memory serves (and it may not!!!) I think I read it in either a Flightglobal or aviationweek online story.

However I think this was discussed also on this forum. Perhaps Jackonicko can remind me of the source…?

oh, deserted SAM sites? in that case, can you tell me why the US forces had to wait for the cruise missiles to clean things up a bit before sending their aircraft in? After all, it is a big waste of money to shoot cruise missiles when a simple LGB would do (deserted SAM site doesn’t fire back, does it?)

Several claims have been made; one of them was that initially the Rafale fighters were operating in “safe” areas where no SAM threats had been identified. Libya is after all a big country.

It would be very interesting to hear a refutation of those claims!

Comparison of US legacy fighters vs 5th gen fighters on a strike mission:

http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/ac164/1w4kar/Legacy_vs_5th_gen.jpg

A Rafale will do better than the legacy F-15/F-16, but how much better?

But the difference between a Hornet or a Viper and the Raptor isn’t just the way you turn or which way you move the jet or what is the best way to attack a particular problem. The difference is how you think. You work totally differently to garner situational awareness and make decisions; it’s all different in the F-22. With the F-22 and certainly it will be the case with the F-35, you’re operating at a level where you perform several functions of classic air battle management and that’s a whole different experience and a different kind of training.

SLD: When you’re in a classic tactical aircraft, basically somebody else is doing the battle management in an AWACS or CAOC or somewhere. With this aircraft, with the F-22 and certainly the F-35, you’re really moving from a classic air battle management approach and that’s got to be a whole different experience and require a different kind of training.

Lieutenant-Colonel Berke:It absolutely is. The irony is that when you talk about distributed battle management it is based on how the F-22 and F-35 provide for situational awareness. With an F-18 or F-16, you have federated sensor systems; the information is stovepiped and the pilot must fuse the information in his own mind.

You basically receive a lot of data and you’re trying to shape that data into usable information. In the Raptor, the data is already fused into information thereby providing the situational awareness (SA). SA is extremely high in the F-22 and obviously will be in the JSF; and it’s very easy for the pilot to process the SA.

Indeed, the processing of data is the key to having high SA and the key to making smart decisions. There’s virtually no data in the F-22 that you have to process; it’s almost all information. There’s a small amount, but it is presented to you clearly and it takes very little effort to process what’s going on. The fused data is so easy to absorb and it’s so easy to use. A huge amount of brain cells, a huge amount of pilot effort is necessary to do that in the Hornet. You just don’t have to do it anymore in the Raptor and the JSF. Ironically, that takes some getting used to. The SA in a fused cockpit is so incredible that it takes time to adjust from a legacy mindset, but once you do, the payback is exponential. The best SA I ever had in the Hornet pales in comparison to what the JSF will do for me.

…..

Lieutenant-Colonel Berke: People throw out those terms all the time, “the paradigm shift”, “a game changer”, “an evolutionary leap”, all those things, but it’s all true. It’s all accurate. And I can tell you from the perspective of a guy who has flown over 2,000 hours in a Hornet. I was a TOPGUN instructor. I was really at the top of my game. I was as competent as the Marine Corps could’ve taught me to be.

In spite of this background, it was a challenge and a major mental leap for me to go to the F-22. It takes time to turn the corner with 5th Gen thinking. But once you do, there’s no going back. Your SA and your ability increase dramatically. Truth be told, you’re always going to have limits in any legacy platform, for many reasons. There’s not a pilot in the Air Force that’s flying Raptors right now that will not tell you the exact same thing.

But what they’ll also tell you is that the first class that flew the Raptor straight from flight school was exceptional. They were surprised at how good they were at optimizing the airplane as a sensor. The guys with no experience did extremely well; and I think a huge part of that has to do with them not bringing old habits or a lifetime of thinking a certain way.

Changing the way you physically move is one thing, but changing the way you mentally think is very difficult to do and it takes time. When the concepts just don’t apply anymore and you’ve leveraged those concepts for 15 years, it’s not an easy thing. This will be a challenge for all pilots transitioning to the JSF because it’s going to force them to think differently than they ever thought before. But doing so is crucial to the shift in air operations. Once the mindset shift occurs, the true capability will be understood.

As I said before, once that happens the results are exponential. In just a few years, we’re going to have STOVL JSF operating from forward bases. Aside from all the operational and strategic implications, the tactical significance is huge. A single F-35B pilot will have more SA than anyone flying a Marine aircraft ever has. And he’s going to be directly connected to the entire supported force.

When you consider the fused cockpit of a JSF, you begin to understand just why all those descriptors are really accurate. It’s an evolutionary leap. It’s a paradigm shift. It’s a game changer!

http://www.sldinfo.com/discussing-fifth-generation-aircraft-with-the-usmc-pilot-of-the-f-22/

If we limit the comparison to US 4th generation designs… But even these are being upgraded and integration of their sensors is improved. The USN has just launched a programme to implement sensor fusion on the Super Hornet.

What fighters have currently sensor fusion similar to F-22 and F-35?

Also we should keep in mind that sensor fusion is just a part of it; the other parts are the quality and quantity of the sensors; the VLO; the MMI etc.

Keep in mind the leaks from the Swiss competition; in terms of avionics even the mythical Rafale and Typhoon were roughly on par with the Hornet, which is presumably a bit behind the SH block II, which is far behind the F-35 and F-22.

Whatever you consider as “real” sensor fusion… Whether the sensor fusion will be any better than that of other modern types remains to be seen. When everything works as advertised at some point fine, but even then only those sensors which can contribute to the task are of relevance

“The processes to prepare a pilot to perform in that aircraft are very similar,” Berke says. “While there are some unique characteristic that the two aircraft don’t share, the preponderance of those things in terms of how the pilot interfaces with this fifth-gen platform are very similar.”

The most obvious similarities are that both aircraft incorporate sensor fusion, where data from multiple different systems such as the radar, electronic warfare systems, infrared cameras and data-link are correlated and displayed to the pilot as a single, easy to understand picture. By contrast, in fourth-generation fighters like the Lockheed F-16 or Boeing F/A-18, both of which Berke has previously flown, sensor data must be fused inside the pilot’s brain. “That concept was pioneered by the F-22,” Berke says. “The concept of how that fusion-information is presented to the pilot is very similar between the two aircraft.”

Perhaps the biggest change from the fourth to the fifth-generation fighters is the change in mentality that accompanies the transition. Pilots have to think in an entirely different way in the two fifth-generation machines. “The concept of becoming a fifth-gen aviator applies to both the F-22 and F-35 equally,” Berke says. “That’s a difficult transition. It takes a little bit of time to get used to that.”

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usmc-hopes-to-leverage-usafs-f-22-experience-when-deploying-f-35b-374565/

In 2007, I was able to fly a full-motion simulator for the Lockheed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in both air-to-air and air-to-ground roles. The F-35’s helmet-mounted display and large forward panel-mounted 19.6in x 8in display offered a wonderful palette to display truly fused tactical information.

Engine and aircraft system information – readily available and automatically presented when needed – does not clutter the cockpit. The F-35’s level of integration and sensor fusion was a generation ahead of what I experienced in the Block II Super Hornet and Block 60 F-16 simulator sessions.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/testing-the-next-generation-super-hornet-359262/