nocutstoRAFso swerve, please forgive me for being ignorant, but can we use your last post as an effective benchmark for the relative cost of each aircraft?
If so, there is not a huge difference between each aircraft?
Also is the figure you quoted Swerve for the F-35A or the F-35B? If it is for the A do you have a good figure for the B?
nocutstoRAFIt can, the RAAF’s HUG F/A-18A/B Hornets use JHMCS with ASRAAM. However, there would be software modifications required to integrate ASRAAM onto Super Hornet (which is why the RAAF’s new Super Hornets have AIM-9X instead).
Thanks Phaid it is always a good day when you learn something new – I guess if the mythical F/A-18 purchase story is true then this will be another cost the MoD will have to stump up!
one thing:
France, for its navy pilot’s training has a program where the candidates train on CAP 10 aircraft (aerobatic school aircraft with 180hp) and then, they are sent for two or three years to the US Navy training center. When they get back, they only have to be qualified on their combat aircraft type (rafale or super etendard).
Basically, if RN wanted to train with the french, it would be a very short syllabus… 😀
… unless you mean they should buy rafales and have a common OTU with the french on it? 😉
Well then it sounds like the UK will have to go to the US to train as well.
I doubts about buying the Rafale mostly because the poor pilots who fly both the Rafale and Typhoon will always be under pressure to say which they think is the best – one word the wrong way and Anglo-French relationships might hit an all time low :D:D:D
nocutstoRAFMy guess to your question Mad Rat is:
1) yes to assembly if we order enough to make it worth their while;
2) no to EJ200 derived engine but I would be surprised if we wanted that as it would take serious cash to develop an engine and integrate;
3) possible to PIRATE as the current F/A-18 does not have an integrated IRST system and the road map for the SH has one being integrated in the nose;
4) The F/A-18 has the Raytheon APG-79 which is an AESA radar and is one of the strong points of any potential F/A-18 sale – that the fighter already comes with an AESA radar;
5) I would imagine it would not be cost effective to integrate BK27 as it would require integration and testing (especially if there was a difference in weight or weight distribution);
6) The UK will obviously want to integrate the weapons it wants use rather than go with what the SH can use now – so expect Storm Shadow, Brimstone and Meteor;
7) The SH also has helmet cueing currently – the Joint Helmet Cueing system, allowing both the pilot and the WSO to cue the AIM-9X, however I am not sure if this could be extended to cue other missiles such as ASRAAM.
nocutstoRAF750 troops is too little…
A single battalion deployment is not enough even for a serious disaster relief operation, let along for any military operation more complex than Operation Barras against the West Side Boys.The strategy you outline is my favorite one, however, and is what has been named “Strategic Raiding”.
While I agree 750 troops (a battalion) is too little I bet good money that is what we end up with – the ability to deploy a single battalion from sea or land.
I assume it would be battalion of commando’s or light infantry, with all the support elements tagged on – light or medium towed artillery, engineering, logistics, medical, recce / forward fire control, air defence and head quarters – as I have never paid much attention to the army I cannot say what it would look like as an expeditionary force structure.
I would hope they provide enough tactical and strategic air lift and enough helicopters to move the entire battalion in country, or parachute entire battalion in or enough amphibious ships to beach head from the sea.
I nicked most of my ideas from a RUSI paper which talked about strategic raiding – sounded like a good plan when I read it and still sound like a good plan now.
nocutstoRAFWell I looked the flyaway cost up on Wikipedia (which I know has a bad rep for accuracy but still) and as of 2010 for the F/A-18E/F it was $60,300,000. I’m not sure if the E and F cost the same. E/A-18G was $73,000,000. Whilst for the F-35 and this is for no specific variant it was $191,900,000.
Now lets suppose the FAA opts for the following number of aircraft – 68 of which 36 are single-seaters evenly divided between two squadrons, we’ll call them 800 and 801 RNAS’, 8 two-seaters are used in the roles of Tanker/ECM at sea and 12 more two-seaters are trainers ashore 899 RNAS. The remaining 12 (including a pair of two-seaters) are attrition spares. Only one carrier is operational at a time, the other in refit/reserve its aircraft operating ashore. Each of the front line squadrons are subdivided into two or three flights and in an emergency one of these flights from the reserve carrier can join the operational carrier in a surge role.
That means that the combined F/A-18 buy is £2,646,125,000 a saving of £7,243,250,000. I can easily imagine someone desperate to save the carriers from the axe going to George Osborne armed with these kinds of figures and saying much the same thing. Even if the costs of operating CTOL carriers are a little higher. Not to mention arguments about cross decking with US and French carriers.
Just a couple of points – the saving will be a lot smaller as you have to take into account that we will be buying them around 2015/16 and inflation for military equipment, particularly in the US seems run twice as fast as normal inflation (though this is contested: http://www.rusi.org/go.php?structureID=articles_defence&ref=A4A379678AA082)
4th round LRIP of the F-35A seems to be around $80 million currently from what I have seen, but as I do not pay all that much attention to the F-35 maybe someone could give a current LRIP figure for the F-35B, and given that full rate production should see some costs come down even with inflation I think the cost be a fair bit lower than $191 million.
Still your point is valid and it seems to me that the amount of up front savings is key to working out if this rumour in the Times has any substance.
The only other comment is to ask if two front line squadrons are enough?
No, your assumption is not correct… the Royal Navy (RN) fighters are counted SEPARATELY FROM the Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters (this is not the 1930s, when the RAF owned the aircraft flying from carriers… the RN owns its own aircraft, and has for decades).
That “less than 200 RAF fighters” means just that… <200 fighters in the RAF ONLY.
The RN fighters, be they F-35B, F-35C, or F/A-18E/F, will be a completely separate set of aircraft, over and above what the RAF gets.
Well according to the Telegraph it is 1914 🙂 … assuming you are still reading after that slightly sarcastic come back – thanks for the correction! I will admit I was assuming that as a) the public does not understand the distinction and that b) the newspaper knows they do not so it would not bother to make the distinction and that when it said less than 200 fast jets it meant the total fast jet force both FAA and RAF and lumped the FAA under RAF. Personally I am happy if what you say is correct and that my assumption is groundless as that means two additional fast jet squadrons.
I have to ask though – can the FAA provide enough pilots if they maintain current crewing levels to fly 4 squadrons plus an OCU. The reason I ask is this is a figure I have seen floating around on the various service rumour forums (ARRSE and PPRuNe)– I thought they where having to going have to use RAF pilots to fill the seats and that was one of the reasons why the F-35B was selected.
nocutstoRAFit does seem that we are finally moving away from the idea that the SH is going to be cheaper to operate than the F35B (all things considered).
You may not like the idea of the F35B (because its got one engine, its american, its not french, its untested, its not got enough range, or because some people rave about it), but I think we can agree that the selection of the F35B is not something which happened over night.
However the Sunday Times article that starting this debate off, probably was written overnight after one too many bottles of wine…
Surely the question that is being debated for the most part is if you buy a certain number of F-35B and there through life cost consists of the purchase costs plus the operational cost, and if the purchase cost is now higher than predicted a few years ago at what point does the cost of the same number of F/A-18 (or Rafale, or whatever) plus their higher operational costs work out cheaper and is that situation likely to occur.
Lots of people float around figures between $100 and $130 million for the F-35B at point of purchase then try to work out what the F/A-18 would cost at the same point in time, lets say that the F/A-18 will cost $80 million (my guess is good as anyone else’s). Say that it costs about £10 million a year more to go CATOBAR with F/A-18 (and presume Sterling will strengthen a lot so that means $20 million year) then if you look at a 20 year life span the difference in the cost between 92 F-35B would be (92 x 100,000,000 = 9,200,000,000) and 92 F/A-18 ((92 x 80,000,000 = 7,360,000,000) + (20,000,000 x 20 = 400,000,000) = 7,760,000,000) . This is obviously illustrative as I have no idea of the costs of the F-35B or what the F/A-18 will cost in 2016, but is shows in this example that the F/A-18 would work out cheaper, obviously longer the operational life, smaller the cost difference between the two options, and higher the operational costs for the F/A-18 over F-35B more it favours the F-35B.
What is therefore needed IMO is a bit more information on how much the price difference has to be between F-35B and F/A-18 before you end up with higher costs over the whole life of the F-35B and you are forced away from an economic argument to one based on how crucial the F-35B is to the “purple”, joined up role envisaged for it when the MoD decided to go ahead with a carrier programme.
nocutstoRAFI not normally more optimistic than you but if I was going to guess the future then most of what the Telegraph said I would count as true, I would also start putting money on four squadrons of F/A-18’s, plus an OCU and attrition spares being the shape of the naval strike element – as nothing anyone has said to me can convince me that Liam Fox can get the Treasury to understand the implications of the change (F-35 to F/A-18), and that all they will see is that F-35B is looking more and more like it will be in the region of twice as expensive to buy as an F/A-18.
I would expect to see maybe 6 C1’s and 6 – 8 C2’s and that the rest of the 1:1 replacement of the 22 escorts will be a top end of the proposed C3 design, with minesweeper fleet rolled into this force (so technically it is a cut 🙂 ). I expect the SSBM replacement will come out of core MoD budget and therefore the cut will be closer to 10% not 20%, and that they will replace 4 SSBM’s with 3 smaller SSBM’s on a stretched Astute hull with minimum number of Trident missiles – say a 4 or 6 VLS block.
I would be surprised if they do not postpone or cancel FRES utility and a lot of other Army equipment will be brought in reduced numbers, later than needed with the UOR system being formularised as the method to buy of the shelve equipment as and when the Army needs it for operations.
Still saying all that the MoD is meant to be presenting it’s finalised plans to the National Security Council and the cuts should be in line with the NSC and some of the cuts might change or be rescinded, plus there is a feeling that if the MoD generates enough public backing George Osborne will back down.
If I was on the NSC I would base the UK strategy on being able do home defence, protect the South Atlantic, and then for expeditionary operations move to be able to deploy one small force of say a maximum of 750 troops, with sufficient vehicles, sea or air lift, helicopters and fighters and refuelling/replenishment if needed for the basis of humanitarian missions, protection of British civilians in conflict zones (i.e. embassy protection), and for stabilisation missions with a maximum duration of 6 months, but make it clear that the UK will not be involved in large scale deployments outside the UK or our overseas dependencies for the foreseeable future and if another Iraq or Afghanistan comes along we can join in with the US to kick down the doors (i.e. carrier strike, use our new Joint Commando Force to hold an port or airfield for a week or two) but once that is done someone else can go and hold the ground.
nocutstoRAFMy only (well main) complaint about the loss of MoD budget and capabilities is that unless we end up in another cold war scenario once they are gone they are unlikely to be replaced – I would be surprised for example if they reduce the fast jet fleet to 199 (which meets the description of what the Telegraph said would happen) that it will ever go past 199 in the future. About the only area where I expect to see numbers go up is in the RN escort fleet, but I think it quite likely that the total number of frigates will go down and that RN will embrace the use of OPV’s/OGPV’s for all the less glamorous jobs that need presence, a small boat and a helicopter but do not need a full frigate.
nocutstoRAFMore gist for the rumour mill. According to the Telegraph the RAF will shrink to less than 200 fighters with 107 Eurofighter’s meaning at most that RAF will have another 92 fast jets, which assuming this includes the FAA means that it looks like 4 front line squadrons of 12, 1 OCU squadron and a pool of attrition aircraft.
Just to put this in the correct context you would have an extra 100 crew for aircraft launch and recovery teams…salary costs alone at an average of £15,000pa will equate to £1.5mn a year. Then you have logistics and support costs for those personal afloat and ashore. Then you come to support costs for the emals and arrestors…..arrestor cables will need to be dumped overboard after so many traps just as with current ones and will have a recurring cost and you’ll have usual sparing and training costs with the major subsystems. That doesnt even touch the aviation training, attrition and the cat cycle airframe lives across a small fleet. Whole-life F35B will be cheaper and far more operationally efficient.
Assuming that we would never want to fill to the gill’s the carriers with fighters unless at war can anyone tell me what the costs might look like between the two options being discussed in this thread – 92 F-35B (the original plan) and 92 F/A-18’s say split 62 E’s and 30 F’2.
For example do you need 100 additional crew if you normally only embark 12 fighters on the carrier and your normal surge would be 24, as per Jonesy’s post?
How serviceable is each option, over on ARRSE they keep claiming the F-35B will need to be returned to the European service centre for its services as all the sub-units will be sealed, is this true?
Would the UK get the source code from Boeing for the F/A-18 so that they use a third party for weapon integration, and how easy would it be to maintain the F/A-18 in the UK without Boeing (i.e. place a contract with BAE for example)?
Does the RAF need to buy Goshawks if it goes down the cat and trap route to train its pilots or can it source all its training between the US and France, and if so how does this effect operational sovereignty in the future?
nocutstoRAFRadar has been around for 70 years, in countless mutations. It appears that LO technology has significantly thwarted it’s effectiveness. Speculation, yes.
Forgive me for being thick but I understood even VLO designs reflect a small amount of radar back to be detected – I assume currently the return is so low that it is lost in the noise. If that is the case then almost certainly more powerful computers will be developed to allow real time processing to be able to detect the small radar return in the clutter – and given the rapid growth in processing power I would imagine that processing power will solve the problem within a decade.
nocutstoRAFHmmm a CATOBAR recovery from a pilot who’s never done one or a STOVL recovery from a pilot who’s never done one?. Who’s got the easier task?.
Fact is there are numerous instances of RAF Harrier pilots simply going straight into a carrier landing unpracticed and very, very few mishaps. A situation utterly impossible without STOVL.
The BBC had a video where their journalist flying the F-35B simulator landed vertically on a carrier as the F-35B has an auto landing system (have no idea of its proper name) which does most of the work – so the only time a pilot is going to have a hard time landing is if he comes in with damage!
nocutstoRAFNo it isnt – officially. Its one possible option that is being evaluated along with all other possible options in the review. Those options will include everything from ditching Carrier Strike as a requirement to every permutation of airwing.
If we accept that we are too far along with the project for scrapping-on-the-slips to be likely then its a matter of aircraft and operational technique downselect. F-35B has already won that competition several times. Nothing, not even cost to any significant extent, has changed since the FJCA downselect.
The bottom line in every event is that CATOBAR costs more whole-life. Airframe lives are shorter, training is vastly more difficult and costly for both the aviation and the ship sides, ship impact is considerable with, conservatively, 100 extra crew required to man the ship and with catapult tech that isn’t going to be mature by ISD anyway. All this for an extra 150nm on the combat radius and the ability to stow a bigger bomb internally???. Its a nonsense.
You gents can enjoy speculating on ways to try to make a CVF into a Nimitz or putting an airgroup of your favourite fighters on its decks as much as makes you happy, but, the ship is going to be completed in a STOVL configuration unless F-35B dies. Simply put anything else will require a complete rebuild of RN and RAF operations as they currently exist and no-one wants that.
In an ideal world I think no-one would argue with your point (which is awfully similar to the same point I have seen on several other forums discussing this, that over it’s life F-35B makes the most economic sense and meets the RN and RAF requirements for interoperability and is part of coherent strategy rather than a whim) but have you asked yourself that given the level of cuts being proposed are ideological and that there appears to be little understanding by the Treasury and George Osborne of defence, what happens when Liam Fox presents his plan which includes his preferred option ~ £6 billion for 70ish F-35B, simulators, spares and maintenance against his alternative plan of say ~£4 billion for same number of F/A-18 (or what ever the alternative is), plus £0.5 billion for EMCAT and an increased annual costs of say £250,000 for additional training and ground crew?
Personally I have little belief that the Treasury will plumb for the preferred option (F-35B), and given that if the MoD do not agree their cuts with the Treasury, the Treasury can ask those departments who have agree a settlement to decide what is cut in some sort of star chamber scenario, you could end up with a situation that what happens to defence spending makes no sense in the long run
nocutstoRAFhi nocutstoRAF,
you managed all that without mentioning Naval Tejas!:)
Thought about mentioning it but would have just confused the point I was trying to make which is F-35 first then F/A-18 second (then anything that will fly of the carriers third 🙂 )
nocutstoRAFRe: Invictus_Slo
After thinking about your post a bit, I think I am going have to disagree with you.
I am sure others will pick up on the F-4’s and fitting them with RR Spey’s and the issues it caused.
You only to look at how much opposition has been generated here to the switch to see that abandoning the F-35 will generate some negative feelings, however it will be a lot harder for the US Government and the US press to bad mouth UK’s decision if we buy F/A-18’s instead. Obviously if we buy F-35B there is a good chunk of it made in the UK compared to F/A-18 and but even so I am not sure why you think a purchase of 70 ish F/A-18 is going to have a big impact on UK aircraft and naval industry.
On top of potential political fall out, it would appear that the F/A-18 is cheaper than the Rafale, and there is a large number in service in the US (compared to Rafale-M in French service) and given that currently the F/A-18 is expected to be in service until 2030 so you can guarantee that Boeing will be able to support the F/A-18 in an economical manner until at least then which will help with through life costs.
In addition, Boeing is so keen to keep the production lines open that they may agree to some changes to keep the British Government happy which provides benefits to UK industry (expect this to push the cost up and lets hope they do not play around with the engines).
Sea Gripen is a lovely idea but high risk as it is, to then drop the GE414G and add a RR engine would likely push the costs up.
On a less serious note it would be dangerous to buy Rafale as then every pilot who flew both the Typhoon in their career and Rafale would need to sign a confidentiality agreement as otherwise any comments they make on respective performance is going to upset somebody 🙂
nocutstoRAFThe only way I can see the sanctions being lifted is if Iran stops enrichment and if it does that then it does not have as much urgency to acquire new fighters and it has the leisure to develop it’s only fighter plane design, bring in consultants as needed and if need be buy any components (such as engines).
It really needed to buy a good number of top spec fighter’s a few years ago and I wonder if the only reason it did not was that doing so would likely precipitated an attack on Iran before IRIAF could take delivery and change the dynamics of the Middle East (after all SAM’s are defensive while a modern fighter gives Iran strike capabilities).
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