nocutstoRAFSorry to post another message straight after the last one and I am sure some of you have read this already but it seemed the right place to fit it into the thread – an interview with some Harrier pilots:
As you might expect, pilots are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the F-35, as Tremors explains: “There are very few aeroplanes in the world that can fight on their own – you’re talking Super Hornet and F-15E, aircraft that can genuinely smash their way in, do the job and smash their way out. That’s exactly what we’re going to be able to do with the F-35.”
Whether it should be the STOVL F-35B is another matter – Abi adds: “From a personal point of view, I’d like to have the most capable jet.”
“I think Abi’s correct, you want ‘bang for your buck’,” says Tremors. “We don’t have that many bucks any more, and if you are asked to choose between carrying fuel, weapons or a lift fan, the answer’s got to be fuel or bombs.” Tremors suggests that the F-35B’s austere basing capability could be traded for the longer ‘reach’ of the F-35C. “If you want a single aeroplane across the spectrum, not just naval aviation, it has got to be the F-35C,” he says – “You could replace every fixed-wing platform other than Typhoon.
“What you don’t want to be is the guy who turns up at a ‘Red Flag’ in 2018 and the Americans say there’s no point briefing because we’ve all brought the F-35 – you have to stick your hand up and say ‘Sorry, we’ve brought the ‘B model, we can’t go as far as you, we can’t take as many targets, we’d like to go last and come back first and have more gas on the tanker.’ This is the last manned aircraft and we don’t want to buy the wrong one.”
So there appears to be a difference of opinion between the Ministry of Defence’s procurement team and the pilots who will fly F-35B. Assuming both the aircraft and the new carriers survive the next Strategic Defence Review, it could still be possible to change to the US Navy specification F-35C, and that’s something that would certainly go down well with the men and women destined to operate it.
http://www.key.aero/view_feature.asp?ID=45&thisSection=military
nocutstoRAFOr see SH as a stop gap purchase until the Next Generation Air Dominance project (NGAD) kicks off in 2025ish – after all if I understand it right the idea is that USN operates SH and F-35C’s alongside each other then it will replace the SH with the NGAD (Boeing is already started the PR for this competition). I will admit I am not clear on if the initial gate is set for 2025ish or if that is the target in-service date but either way buying SH then being a development partner for NGAD might be the way to go (assuming the US let us).
EDIT: According to the Boeing presentation on Strike Fighter Evolution the TD for NAGD for USN has started and production is expected 2023/24 assuming they undertake LRIP during the EMD phase
http://www.boeing.com/farnborough2010/presentation/fas_gss.pdf
nocutstoRAFThanks Sen I think I get it.
I expect Boeing to do very well from the Silent Eagle and Super Hornet International – there is even a suggestion that Israel will buy both Silent Eagle and the F-35 if it persuades the US not to allow export of the Silent Eagle to any Middle Eastern countries who might be interested.
While the F-35B makes sense in the context of how the carriers were planned, and is a perfect fit for our current plans, it makes just as much sense to buy a joint RAF/FAA fleet of F/A-18 Internationals to replace Harriers and GR4’s if they really are going to retire the GR4’s by 2015, as it should be fairly easy to integrate the needed A2G weapons, where they are not already integrated, on the F/A-18 International and use the F/A-18’s as the UK’s primary strike and ISTAR platform and keep the Typhoon as the UK’s primary A2A platform. Plus if they got the first squadron of F/A-18’s up and running by 2015 there would be no need to spend money needed now to make sure the Typhoon could use the full spectrum of A2G weapons
nocutstoRAFThanks!
nocutstoRAFHere the logic does not work. The main cost of producing something is the related manpower-cost or the work-force in need. All the items produced for the F-35 are not built by plants set up for that purpose only. LM is just one of several customers only.
You run in problems only, when LM is your single customer and has demanded a fixed capacity per year over a given period. When doing so your are overstaffed, when your customer orders less than demanded. For the USA it is claimed that every producer get the intrest rate of x% for every military item built and that there is no problem to adjust the work-force in short notice.
I agree in general that it takes some time to find the related sub-contractors to do the real work in need to ensure the extra profit for the main-contractor. :diablo:
Presumably a lot of the components for the F-35 are unique and will require some sort of tooling or new plant, otherwise there would not be such a high projected cost for re-starting the F-22 production line?
My illustration with washers was attempt to get a handle on why whenever there is mention of the UK either buying 1/3 of their original F-35B buy or abandoning the F-35 completely there is always talk here and on other forums of it killing of the F-35 programme.
nocutstoRAFThanks for taking the trouble to explain why each F-35B should cost more to build if the UK does not order its projected 150.
The impact on the F-35B project of the UK not buying 150 F-35B is only really felt in those components which are unique to the F-35B and I cannot understand why when ever it is mentioned that the UK could potentially not buy F-35B that someone always comes along and acts like it is going to kill the whole F-35 programme. The US will still buy F-35B’s, it might price some of the export customers out of the market (like Italy) but it will not kill the programme – in-fact is it not one of the benefits of having such a high level of commonality between the three flavours of the F-35, that cuts in numbers of one of the types will not result in such a large increase in the costs than if each was a separate programme?
nocutstoRAF
the stable multi year price starts with the production, this will then further fall as the years go by till it reaches its lowest cost, the annual numbers ordered also impact on price
the total costs of the usa program has nothing to do with the price UK pays
they and other partners always buy at flyaway price, non partners buy at FMS
Okay – I think we are talking about the same thing that at peak production when they are building the most number of F-35’s per year the costs will be relatively speaking at their lowest then the price will start to increase towards the tail end of production.
nocutstoRAFI understood the stable price is achieved at peak production so buying in the peak will lead to the cheapest price but as I have said before in another thread the only way to know how much a plane costs is when the programme has completely finished – not much use in this context 🙂
What we debating is based on the premise that rather than the suggestion on the move to F/A-18 being clever manoeuvring by the RN to protect the carriers or some sort of brain storming idea never meant to be in the public domain it is a serious idea and I guess we are all trying to understand it. It has got so much mileage because a) the F-35B is not in full scale production and b) because the F/A-18 could do the job if we are strapped for cash but it is not clear if there is any significant savings from going down that route (and personally I have spent time on this thread because I like speculating and if it involves numbers so much the better)
Saying all that I think a reduced buy of the F-35B is what is going to happen unless something major occurs in the next few months as the whole carrier strategy is based on F-35B in the first instance with a switch to CTOL only ever meant to occur in the event the F-35B was cancelled.
nocutstoRAFHi JackJack – while some people talk about figures normalised to a set date when they want to compare prices this is not very useful in the context of the presumed discussions that the mysterious source reported to the Times as the talks are about what the UK will actually pay in 2016 for its planes to fly of the QE and realistically it would be very hard for the MoD to plan its purchases if it did not use some sort of compounded inflation.
Almost certainly the £100 million a plane is the working figure that the MoD has calculated it will actually cost them, as it is all about them costing options within a set budget for the next five years.
It is also an issue that buying early in the F-35 programme is going to see you pay a lot more in real terms than customers who buy later – though this is true of all programmes and one of the reason that F/A-18 can be so competitive on price. IMHO, if the UK delayed buying the F-35 until the mid 2020’s it would get the mature platform with the weapon integration they wanted at a steal compared to buying them in the next five years.
To give it a LM context – having just read the Aviation Week piece on the Israel F-35 purchase there is a quote from Robert Stevens where he said “… the unit recurring flyaway price at peak production for the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant is about $60 million, though today’s challenge is the high price of early aircraft rolling off the production line ” the bolding is mine to highlight the key point which supports my previous paragraph 🙂
EDIT: Just been reading another forum on this post – three observations – 1) we very polite on this forum compared to the other forum, 2) that the general consensus on the other forum is that even not knowing who your enemies are that the F/A-18 will do the job but the F-35C would be better, and 3) given the future uncertainties of the MoD budget the only reason to buy the F-35B is the fact that in the past the through life costs were lower – i.e. the order of preference of the posters (over the 190 odd messages) on the other forum was F-35C then F/A-18 then F-35B!
nocutstoRAFI think you did a typo and meant to put 6%. As far as I know the plan is for USMC to receive ~400, UK to receive 150 and Italy ~60. Reducing the F-35B total from ~600 to ~450 would be ~25% reduction and I think a reduction of that magnitude would be bound to raise the unit production cost of the B model.
😮 My bad, yes 6% not 0.6% 😮 – to be fair the only way I can see it raising the cost is based on the fact that when the suppliers and LM calculate their costs they have to depreciate any capital expenditure (new plant and toolings for example) over the number of planes built – take a stupid example – say that supplier A is making special washers that cost them $1.50 to make in raw materials, and labour and need 1000 per F-35B or 550,000 for the whole production run, but to make the washers they spent $1.1 million on new plant and they have a 10% profit margin then they will agree a contract with LM for washers at a cost per washer of $3.85 (the plant capitalisation cost of $1.1 million divided by 550,000 washers = $2 per washer plus $1.50 = $3.50 plus 10% profit margin gives $3.85 a washer).
Now if LM changes the order to 400,000 washers then Supplier A now has to charge $4.68 per washer (plant capitalisation of $1.1 million divided by 400,000 = $2.75 a washer plus $1.50 = $4.25 plus 10% profit margin gives $4.68 a washer)
nocutstoRAFoh, so is thats why the UK 2011 LRIP F-35b ordered at a cost of $129 m usd is going to be higher than the production one at about 100m ?
The answer is military inflation which runs about twice normal inflation and the fact the UK will be buying the planes around 2016/17 – so $128 million dollars in 2011 using a compound 4% inflation becomes in 2016 $156 million and in 2017 to $162 million – that’s £97.7 million and £101.8 million respectively.
Of course I have read (but like bloody usual cannot find again) that military inflation is running at closer to 8% currently and you can see that even with the savings of moving from LRIP to full scale production it does look like that for the 2016/17 period that a £100 million a plane is a realistic price..
Does anyone know a good source for military inflation and for the usual reductions on moving to full scale production?
In an absence of good source and to try to start a reasoned debate:
Assuming that a F/A-18 costs $62 million today (a value on Wikepedia 😮 ) then in 2017 it will cost $81.6 million using 4% compounded interest or £51.3 million and using 8% compounded interest which brings the price to $106 million a F/A-18 or £66.8 million.
Going back to the F-35 and looking at say a 20% reduction on the 2011 LRIP price and then add compounded 8% interest the in 2017 its $175.5 million a plane, and if the price drops by 50% of the 2011 LRIP price and you add compounded 8% interest you get a price of $109.7 million or £69 million.
Therefore does anyone know is the reduction in price in moving to full scale production closer to 50% than 20%?
Still this is all irrelevant as the real issue is through life costs of comparing a STOL platform with lower wear and tear, lower training regime on a carrier, and the requirement for less ground crew which happens to have a higher capital purchase price to the CTOL platform with its lower capital purchase price but higher running costs (training and ground crew) and with likely a shorter operational life
nocutstoRAFStill puzzled – how can the UK not buying a 150 F-35B’s effect the price of ~2400 F-35 purchased by the US more that by a small margin as in effect the total number of aircraft purchased would only drop by ~0.6% and that does not take in effect the other export sales.
nocutstoRAFSurely it only effects the price of the F-35B as the UK’s proposed purchase was only ever a few % of what the total proposed programme 150 versus 2, 400 for the US alone (based on pre-credit crunch numbers)?
nocutstoRAFAlso according to this article on Jane’s http://www.janes.com/news/defence/jni/jni100726_1_n.shtml there is already a space set aside for EMCAT so it would not need any structural changes for EMCAT, to quote the article
“The EMCAT is designed to fit in the space envelope that has been allowed within the aircraft carrier for a catapult. The intention of building and designing a small electromagnetic catapult and then developing the technology so that it could be scaled up was always a de-risking exercise in case the MoD did not choose the STOVL aircraft or it was considered necessary to launch other types of aircraft from these ships. The option would then exist to fit a catapult and operate conventional carrier-borne aircraft,” Dannatt said
– 😀 almost like they planned to fly the Harrier’s until 2018 (as they have stated) then be able to either fit EMCAT and fly F/A-18’s or not fit EMCAT and fly F-35B’s – whatever turns out to be the official policy after the Treasury finishes slashing the MoD to pieces.
Does someone know how to do a poll on this forum then we could vote on how likely we think it is that the MoD will be unable to afford F-35B so buys F/A-18’s (or insert your favourite alternative here) 🙂
nocutstoRAFHere is a video of a test from October 2009 by Converteam UK of their EMCAT system that they are working on for the MoD:
http://www.converteam.com/majic/pageServer/1z0404015m/en/index.html
It does not seem all that far along not withstanding the story recently on Jane’s which suggested they were ready to scale up the system to full size.
EDIT As I got the link from the Converteam site rather than Converteam UK site I suspect actually the test was for the DoD not the MoD!
nocutstoRAFI do not know enough to comment in general but for example the British Apache’s need a service every 300 flying hours which takes the Apache out of service for 5 to 10 days:
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