nocutstoRAFIf UK ditch F35B for Super Hornet, then the costs it must pay should include:
1. All of the investment it has paid for JSF in the past ten years with no return.
2. The costs for Super Hornets.
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/dae/articles/features/SAR_April2010_table.jpg3. The costs for upgrading CVFs in order to operate the Super Hornets (catapults, arrestor wires, etc…..).
4. The costs to train the RAF/RN pilots and sailors for CTOL landing and taking-off on the modified CVFs.
Will the costs mentioned above in total really be significantly cheaper than the cost of just finishing the F-35B projects ??
1) The couple of billion of development costs for the F-35 programme have secured work share and from what I have read the workshare is not dependent upon actual orders
2) The table shows programme acquisition costs which includes R&D costs, the price to the UK would be different to this, unlikely to include any of the US R&D costs (though likely include new development costs for weapon integration, the new engine proposed for the F/A-18 International if selected and for the development of the new cockpit)
3) I have seen costs in the region of £0.5 billion extra to add EMCAT to both QE and PoW but they were someone’s informed estimate so they could be to low or to high.
4) Training are highest additional cost taken over the life of the plane, and unless I misunderstand how these things work (and I often do) going to SH would move the capital costs into the current budget cycle as you would need some fully trained pilots operating from QE from day one to make sure that all your systems worked including the EMCAT system, so you would need to equip a squadron at good amount of time before the QE was ready for trials.
On top of this I assume that they would have to set up a simulated carrier deck (i.e. section of runway configured to practice high angle of attack arrested landings) which is going to be an additional cost.
Plus the way I understand it you would have to retire your SH earlier than the F-35B so you would have to depreciate your capital costs over a short operational life and re-capitalise earlier with the SH than with the F-35B.
nocutstoRAFExcept the cost bit…
True – but I am sure they will just buy less F-35B’s rather than switch to Super Hornet and fit EMCAT but in the mean time I going to continue to speculate 🙂 .
nocutstoRAFJackJack – I think the RAF never had any plans for a F-35A purchase and that UVAC is what they were looking at but that is mostly going on comments I have read in speeches and news paper reports in relation to the SDSR. I know that I was corrected when I said I thought that the F-35A was what they were going to replace the GR4’s with when the GR4’s went out of service in 2024. If you have link or a reference (if it was in a magazine) that suggests that a F-35A purchase is part of the UK plans then I would l grateful if you could share it as it would be interesting to read.
nocutstoRAFNot exactly. This $7 bil is an expected maintenance and support cost for 20 years of service. $9 bil is the cost of aircraft/support systems/staff and pilot training/weapons package an so on. ~60% of this $9 bil should be the actual cost of the aircraft. And remember that this is expected cost in 2016.
Yes they are apple and orange comparisons – I added 20% to the SH price to cover inflation and integration costs and did not add anything to the Canadian F-35 figures even though the price of the F-35B is likely to be significantly more than the F-35A.
Nocutsto RAF. Well in real terms it might be out of date well within the aircrafts service life as they wouldn’t start flying from the CVF’s until 2016 anyway. By then the F35 will have been flying 10 years and the F18 SH maiden flight 25 years previously 🙁 I am not sure that anyone who buys a fighter at the end of its production run gets true value for money…………….
The UK could get some extra mileage going for the F/A-18 International with the central weapons pod, conformal fuel tanks and the new cockpit. I think that the F-35B makes more sense from the point of view of keeping training costs down but at the end of the day it might be seen better to buy cheaper plane now and accept higher costs over its service life, especially as Boeing is rumoured to off mid-life buy-back (so we could possibly operate the F/A-18 Internationals to say late 2020’s and then buy the NGAD fighter the US Navy wants from mid 2020’s).
I’d count ca 40% higher buying price for F-35B (both due to increased complexity and far lower numbers planned) and ca 30% higher support contract (again higher complexity and very likely higher price of spares specific for this version). That makes ca £7.78 billion for the planes and ca £5.62 billion for the support, together £13.4 billion.
Compared to projected £8.6 billion for Superbugs this makes savings of roughly £4.8 billion. These are only estimates but I’d say they are close to actual numbers than figures for F-35A
As I said to Exec my figures were apple and orange comparison based on the information in the public domain and are not the best comparators – I am sure others will argue the percentage increase or push the SH price up. I note that even LM does not know the life-cycle operating costs for the F-35 as they are currently gaming them out:
http://defensenews.com/blogs/farnborough/2010/07/24/lockheed-gaming-out-f-35-lifecycle-costs/
nocutstoRAFNocutstoRAF,
I think you are comparing apples to oranges here. The Canadian offer is for the F35a, i believe.
The plane RN is looking at is the F35b, a plane i believe will be close to 2X the cost.
There is a problem with your calculation. Canadians didn’t buy B models. The -B will be by far the most expansive.
One compromise could be to switch to the F-35C and fit cats to the carriers.
I agree with both of you, however I could not find a reliable cost for the F-35B to compare the F-35B to the Super Hornet. Also I think the support contract for Super Hornet would be lower than for the F-35B and the support contract for F-35A would also be lower than for the F-35B so in all likelihood the savings are greater than 12% that I calculated.
EDIT: I agree with your reasoning as well Super Nimrod, but 20 years of usage is quite a long time for cat and trap aircraft.
nocutstoRAFLets look at the figures based on information available: For the F-35 lets use the Canadian F-35 purchase as a yard stick which had a total contract price of $16 billion Canadian Dollars for 65 F-35’s split as $9 billion for the aircraft and $7 billion for the support contract this equates using xe.com as £5.56 billion for the planes and £4.32 billion for the support contract, giving a total of £9.88 billion for 65 F-35’s.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10667633
To get a handle on the F/A-18 E/F lets use the latest US multi-year purchase price of F/A-18 E/F’s which is for 2010 $1.9 billion for 22 planes, working out as £55 million per plane then add a cautious 20% to the price to cover integration costs and inflation to bring the price to £66 million per plane and then assuming the support contract costs are roughly the same (£4.32 billion) then 65 F/A-18 E/F’s to RAF/FAA standards would cost a total of £8.61 billion (65 x £66,000,000 + £4,320,000,000) which is a saving of ~12.8% on the F-35.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64D6LB20100514
Obviously this is all ball park as the UK has not stated to negotiate a contract for either plane as of yet.
RE: Hot_Charlie – I understood form what I have read and been told that the STOL issue was more about the ease of moving between carrier ops and land based ops, I admit I emphasised the austere airfield issue as if you believe that the future is mostly going to be counter-insurgency operations against lightly armed irregular forces in countries lacking vital infrastructure then the ability to operate from austere airfields seems like a good idea. Obviously the other way to go is to keep QE or PoW on station and run your CAS operations from the carriers until the Royal Engineers can get in-country to build a full air strip but I am not sure logistically how easy that would be.
nocutstoRAFYeah once the SDSR is over and I have moaned a bit I am likely to end up lurking as most of the other threads are fun to read an all but require lot more facts that what you get from trawling the net looking for the latest SDSR gossip in the daily newspapers.
nocutstoRAFWhile logically the UK should get the F-35B – not for its VLO or LO abilities but because the RAF is committed to operating just two fighters the Typhoon and the F-35B and this strategy was based around the flexibility of a STOL fighter being able to operate from the carrier then from austere airfields, combined with the fact that it is easy for a pilot “certified” to launch and land from an austere airfield to land on a carrier, meaning that it is easy to move the F-35B on and off the carriers as operations require.
If they go for the F/A-18 E/F (which is possible as Jane’s reported that Converteam UK has being working on an Electromagnetic Catapult for the carriers) then is a lot more training involved maintaining the skills of the pilots to fly from a carrier, plus they lose the ability to operate from austere airfields, and would likely end up being a dedicated carrier force.
I might be making a gross generalisation but assuming that smaller lighter aircraft like the Gripen NG or the LCA have shorter minimum take off and landing distance than say the F/A-18 E/F it would make more sense from the point of view how the envisaged operating the F-35B to go for the Sea Gripen or the LCA (N) MK II. Of course the Sea Gripen does not exist and the LCA (N) MK II will likely be another 4 – 5 years away and the LCA (N) is meant to replace the Sea Harriers in Indian service and might not have the range or payload to be able to fully carry out the role that F-35B was envisaged to fulfil (after all the Indian’s have the Mig-29K’s to fill the strike role).
Sorry JackJack the RAF will not get both the F-35A and the F-35B as the current head of the RAF has stated more than once that the RAF cannot afford to support the logistics of more than two types of fast jet, and while the A and B do have a high level of commonality there will be some differences. While I agree with your sentiment, the RAF could not afford to operate four types of fast jets and are struggling to operate three types of fast jets currently and things are only going to get worse.
EDIT: They are discussing this very story here, http://www.arrse.co.uk/current-affairs-news-analysis/138705-r-n-buy-fa-18f-instead-jsf.html, if anyone is interested.
nocutstoRAFDannat won’t get the defence job. He’s just quit as a government adviser
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299401/General-Sir-Richard-Dannatt-quits-Government-defence-adviser.html?ito=feeds-newsxmlAt least he’s being consistent, he’s always been anti-carrier. Seriously some of these Army guys are a threat to national security trying to grab all the goodies for the army to be ready for the time when we’re just pulling out of Afghanistan. Thankfully I believe Fox is on the ball to the threat of this.
Fox is more powerful in the Tory party than you think, Cameron & Osborne may not like him but they know they need him to keep the right of the party online.
Interesting that Sir Richard Dannatt is going now, especially as the SDSR is not finished yet and yet he infers it is. It makes you wonder if the list of cuts mentioned earlier in this thread are accurate and that the outcomes from the SDSR are being kept quite until they prepare the political ground for what appears to be a bunch of rather arbitrary cuts – for example cutting Tornado, retiring the earliest Typhoons (without A2G caperabilities) and cutting Tranche 3B seems to me perfect way to guarantee you never have enough Typhoons to provide air cover for the army.
Then there is the proposal not to build PoW and I guess renegotiate with the ship yards who will miss out on PoW to build Ocean Going Patrol Vessels as there is a lot rhetoric that the UK needs a new fleet of Ocean Going Patrol Vessels in recent news stories. (Though I would actually argue they need both carriers and the Ocean Going Patrol Vessels)
Then there is F-35B – according to different stories I have read the numbers to be purchase according will lie somewhere between zero to 70, and I guess we will be lucky if they just in the first instance buy 50. More and more about converting the carrier(s) to CATOBAR or using STOBAR configuration both of which would be a knee jerk reaction so that the MoD can reduce the initial cost of the aircraft needed to operate of the carrier(s) rather than a considered reflection on how they want to operate the carriers and why.
nocutstoRAFMore SDSR news from the Telegraph:
This story gives a bit more on the move by the treasury to move the nuclear deterrent into the MoD’s core budget:
And in this one Sir Richard Dannatt politely says that because the F-35 is so expensive we should cancel the carriers (and infers we should get rid of our current carriers as he wants to axe harriers and Tornado).
He basically says the RAF should only have Typhoon:
Maybe the other day when I flippantly suggested that the UK look at LCA (N) Mk II if it secured Typhoon sales to India might turn out to be a kind of weird prediction 😉 – not I think that actually would be all that cheap option, as by the time UK paid half of the engine integration costs to guarantee the engine of its choice, decided that it wants a Salex AESA radar, its own EW system and integrated ASRAAM, AMRAAM, Meteor, Brimstone, Paveway IV, (and Storm Shadow if the LCA (N) will actually launch carrying it).
Of course the above comment is due to a slightly weary depression setting in at the idea that due to Treasury policies defence is going to be completely wrecked and that Liam Fox does not have enough political clout to stop it and if he quits then Sir Richard Dannatt is likely to get his job when he is raised to the House of Lords, and Sir Richard already in his mind wants to savage the RN and the RAF to support the Army. 🙁
nocutstoRAFHow about sonar’s that are new but not in the same class as AN/SQS-58, say the EDO MFS-7000 used on the Type 45 destroyer, would it have been able to detect a submarine in littoral waters before it launched a torpedo. I know this is not really related to US carrier vulnerability but the Type 45 is designed to escort the future UK carriers and operate in littoral waters so I thought I would ask the question.
nocutstoRAFThanks – I thought it was strange selection of planes and wanted to know if they reflected future or potential customer’s requirements.
nocutstoRAFThe fact is that cruise missiles aren’t trusted for this role.
And it is understandable, since air defence systems as advanced and effective as the Russian S300 are spreading rapidly, including in Iran which is trying to acquire the system, in China and so along.The Tomahawk (and similar weapons) wouldn’t make it far against S300, and even developing a cruise missile with better performances the risk is to see air defence systems improving even more and soon making it outdated.
The truth is that cruise missiles are in any case far easier to contrast than ballistic missiles of the Trident league, and it risks being only a few years before your supersonic cruise missile gets outdated, surpassed by the performances of relatively cheap (in comparison) air defence batteries. (take the S500 in development in Russia as example)
While I have no doubt about what you say, it does not make sense for them to not evaluate the costs of submarine based cruise missile system based on performance, as the looked at both aircraft based cruise missiles (which would need a new stealth bomber or at the very least a lot of creative engineering to fit a short ranged nuclear missile in the F-35’s internal bay) and ship based ballistic which is clearly no good for a retaliatory strike again an enemy who just launched a nuclear strike as it is lot easier to find a large ballistic missile cruiser than a SSBN. It is almost like they are scared the through life costs for submarine based cruise missiles would be cheaper and if the show this then the Government would be railroaded into go with nuclear cruise missiles even though they have poor penetration against layered air defence system.
I have attached the table from the White Paper which shows the through life costs for the 4 proposed systems (air-based cruise, land based ballistic, sea based ballistic and sub-sea ballistic)
nocutstoRAFJust skimmed the white paper you recommended – interestingly in terms of full costing of options they only compared aircraft carried cruise missiles, land based ballistic missiles, ship based ballistic missile and submarine based ballistic missile. The reason not to include submarine and ship based cruise missiles is not really explained directly but rather by an indirect comparison showing that current at time of publication cruise missiles had about 1/6 the range and were sub-sonic. All of this is rather surprising and is almost suggests that they need to double check the costs of ship and submarine launched cruise missiles.
nocutstoRAFThanks – someone else on the forum mentioned he stopped updating his web-site because he became too depressed about what was happening to the Royal Navy and the direction it was heading in.
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