I disagree completely. The first few LRIP batches were quite small, 2, 12, and 17 aircraft for LRIP 1, 2, and 3 respectively. As you can see from the table already posted the concurrency cost per plane fell rapidly after those first few batches and is now well under $5 million/plane. In the context of a program the size of the F-35 these costs aren’t significant and it ensures that every plane is brought up to the full production standard specified by the project with no orphan planes.

Consider for comparison that the Eurofighter program produced ~150 Tranche 1 Eurofighters out of a total production run of around 600 jets…

You are ofcourse right about the ratios, i.e. 150 out of 600 Typhoons vs maybe 300 out of 3000 F-35. There is a flaw however!

In the case of the F-35 we are talking about the costs of retrofiting aircraft to rectify deficiencies which stem from ramping up production while the aircraft was still largely untested and immature. In the case of Typhoon we are talking about aircraft that are in service for quite a while already and which are naturally affected by obsolescence. Obsolescence likewise affects all technology driven projects, incl. the F-35! It’s just a more recent aircraft so it will have some more years left before obsolescence kicks in and becomes more severe. IIRC Block 2 and 3 aircraft already sport some new hardware as well opposed to the earlier examples.

To cut a long story short we are comparing apples to oranges here. To be fair however, the Typhoon has also been subject to concurrency just not as much as the F-35.

Same can be said for other types.

As far as annual production rates are concerned the European manufacturers produce aircraft at a rate that is comparable or even lower than the F-35’s LRIPs 2 and 3. Yet they were able to keep the price stable over years, ofcourse that also leaves little to no room to get the price pushed down.

One correction Toan there are 8 IPAs in total! Germany built one as part of each tranche. IPA8 has yet to fly however.

I’m not convinced. While it will be good to have dedicated air defence units how supportable are these aircraft going to be 10-15 years form now. Surely they will be the low hanging fruit to cut away for cost reasons in future SDRs given their orphan nature?

Will the existing radar and other systems be upgraded at all or will the T1s remain in their current state and all upgrade funding go to the T3s?

Quite a number of electronic Tranche 2 and 3 LRIs of the AVS and UCS have been retro-cleared for the T1 fleet as fit, form and function alternatives to the T1 equipment. More clearances are likely to be obtained, but there is some equipment that require more changes, i.e. to the avionics tray and also some wiring changes and this has been avoided thus far on cost grounds. We will likely see a step by step implementation and clearance of additional T2/3 equipment by some customers, others may even opt for a more extensive upgrade to a T2/3 equivalent standard as far as the AVS, UCS and FCS equipment is concerned. The feasibility of this has been proven.

With only 24 T1s in the fleet, parts obsolescence becomes a critical issue. I hope they can execute a lifetime buy of spare parts to keep the old jets flying until 2040.

It already is a problem as T1 equipment is out of production for some years now. Spares exist, but problematic are repairs as components for these LRIs are out of production as well. There are few LRIs that remained unchanged, some of them could be upgraded to newer standards via a return to works programme. For the remained, see above reply to Ozair.

What does the part in bold mean?

That identity data from different sensor sources are fused to produce an unambigous platform type and allegiance declaration.

Displaying only the best track of the correlated ones, identity fusion two name two examples.

Its 3 years behind as of now.. Clock is ticking

What the hell is so hard with ripping out an old anlouge FCS and putting in a new fully digital one, do some re-wire and then start program it as test flight goes on, they had three flying F-15SA prototypes flying for freakin years now??

The Russians did they very same thing when they launched the Su-35BM(PakFa) program with its spanking new FCS, which at the time,
they had one old flying testbed(Su-30) and the two 901 and 902 protoypes in which the first took flight back in 2008 February.

Safe to say Sukhoi have progressed quite successfull… just do the math..
Sukhoi did also integrate the TVC into the FCS, and that at a level that we have not seen before.. anywhere.
Nothing is easy, but such things does not get done because its easy, but because the different AF need the extra capability.

Now SAAF feel they need the new F-15SA with a fully digital FCS, so there we have it.

Seems to me Sukhoi allways had a small lead in the FBW/FCS development, if we go back to Flanker history. They lost ground through the 90’s allright, but it seems they made good in the last decade.

Sukhoi started with the development of a full digital FBW back in the 80s onboard the LMK testbed, progressed with the Su-27M, then Su-30MK in its two major iterations and then there was the advanced FCS control law development with the former Su-37 before the current Su-35 was eventually launched! So fact is Sukhoi took an evolutionary approach that lasted more than 20 years, whereas Boeing attempts to make that jump directly. And as far as full TVC integration is concerned the F-22 was the very first aircraft for which this could be claimed!

Btw what have this to do with Typhoon!?

The last part states the delayed contract signature and the until then limited development activities on behalf of the industry as the reasons for the 5 month delay and cost growth. The radar they are talking about is the configuration envisaged by GAF. It’s not the export version on offer to prospective international customers.

The trials campaign demonstrated the potential but bringing the AMK into servixe requires some more extensive testing, including trials with various stores configurations and that’s expensive and time consuming. There are furthermore more important priorities as the aircraft’s performance is already quite good.