Spitfire9Dassault view on the competition :
For the record Dassault CEO said during lattest Paris air show conference that he expect the difference in price to be around 60%
I think he may have spent too much time in the hospitality tent. 🙂
Spitfire9Perhaps Eurofighter will be only too happy with slimmer margins. The Germans are making sizeable cuts to their procurement programme and are expected to announce such measures shortly. Berlin now wants to buy 140 instead of the contracted for 177 Eurofighters, they may attempt to emulate the UK-Saudi deal of Spring 2009 (which allowed the former to sell on part of its surplus contingent), with India.
This would save the Germans billions of Euros in penalty payments.
With so many variables, the dynamic of this race changes by the week! EADS’ hand is much stronger (imho),
But Eurofighter did not know of the forthcoming plan to reduce German Typhoon numbers when preparing their bid, so the bid price would not have reflected that. Of course, if Typhoon is selected but above the “reasonable” price allowed for by the IAF, then Eurofighter would be more inclined to lower the price.
Re: penalty payments, Eurofighter would not be paying them. The German government would but I can see that the German government would have a big incentive to help Eurofighter as much as possible to get India to take its frames.
also M2K’s upgrade cost was a massive miscalculation by Dassault and doesn’t bode well for Rafale’s lifecycle cost in their L1 bid.
Again, was the price of this known when the Dassault bid was put in? I can see the problem being that when the Dassault bid is evaluated the assessors raise the lifetime costs from those Dassault estimates presented in view of the M2K update cost.
Spitfire9Janes recently mentioned the costings will be assessed as the lowest bidder under the Verifiable Cost Model (CVM) – calculated over 40 years or 6000 hour service life. CVM is further broken down to:
1) Direct aircraft costs including spares and weapons
2) Two year warranty
3) Royalties for local manufacture
4) Technology transfer
5) Initial training costs
6) Operating expenses such as fuel, etc
Under this calculation model, does (1) reduce the cost of weapons in the case of Rafale because the IAF already has an inventory of weapons used with Mirage 2000? I don’t suppose so since the M2K’s are going to be around for a long time.
Spitfire9You’re right. The IAF will benchmark the prices based on what it has available data for. So, what might be the first problem could be that the IAF’s benchmark prices could be lower than those that Dassault or EADS have offered for this competition. If that happens, then the lowest bidder will most likely win outright but before final price is settled, there will be hectic price negotiations.
The figure of $US10.4 billion that has been cited for so long: I never found that figure credible for 126 Rafales or Typhoons + all the associated costs. But I forgot that most would be assembled locally.
If I remember correctly, Hawks assembled by HAL were about 25% cheaper than those assembled by BAE. For a much more sophisticated aircraft, would that percentage be likely to increase or to decrease?
Spitfire9They should be opening the financial bids in few days, if they haven’t opened it already. This is based on the news reports from about 10 days ago.
Thanks for that. Is opening the bids a waypoint that would be announced? I don’t suppose it matters much since no information about what is contained in the financial bids would be released, I imagine, until they had been scrutinised.
Am I right in thinking that the remaining steps left are:
– open bids (say November)
– check/evaluate bids (say 1 month needed)
– start contract negotiations with the supplier offering the lower cost (say 1-3 months needed)
– sign the contract (Q1/Q2 2012?)
My guesses as to time required to reach contract signing.
Spitfire9I can’t remember where we are on the MMRCA selection process. Was it mid-October that a move forward in the process was anticipated?
Does anyone know the current schedule, please?
Spitfire9Still bad bad tiffy fans.
Would be bad for for Eurofighter if they were found to be involved in this scandalous piece of hacking but somehow I don’t think they were involved.
Spitfire9And the manipulation of a poll has exactly what to do with the MMRCA competition itself? :confused:
Not a lot. Unless the selectors take livefist polls into account in making their selection! 😉
Spitfire9HAL Chief Test Pilot Found Dead. Suicide?
A big setback for Indian Aviation.
Very sad to hear. RIP.
Spitfire9Norway is allocating funds for the purchase of 4 F-35 aircraft for training and familiarisation in its 2012 budget.
“For the four JSFs, Norway is budgeting around 4.9 billion kroner [that’s US$800 million +], although the money will not be spent until later years. The aircraft acquisition is to “ensure training and education of relevant personnel so that we have instructors ready to train new personnel as the main delivery of the F-35 is scheduled to begin in 2018,” according to the Norwegian defense ministry.
The budget allocates 8 billion kroner for material investments, including projects such as F-16 and P-3 upgrades, as well as other purchases.”
This is the sort of scenario I have foreseen for years for non-US customers: because of the many years’ delay in the program, they may have to pay to upgrade their F-16 fleet, a cost they would have avoided had they not chosen F-35. The irony is that the company that is responsible for this unplanned hit on their military budget (LM) is the very company that will benefit financially from the need to upgrade F-16’s due to its (LM’s) failure to adhere to the F-35 development schedule.
Spitfire9In the case of privatization, if the guys don’t work and give results he will be fired and penalized. Nothing of that sort have been happening in the PSUs. In short no accountability.
…
My personal opinion has always been against privatization of national assets and will remain so. What we need is to have accountability & proper management.
I also would like to see the retention of national assets in state ownership. Unfortunately governments are not good owners of businesses. The success of national assets that are businesses is generally compromised by state ownership and control. Decisions are taken too slowly; the success of the business concerned is not always of primary importance when decisions are made; if funded by the state, funding may be inadequate and too late; good performance by the personnel in the business is not adequately rewarded while poor performance is not adequately penalised… I could go on. The long and the short of the matter is that business A owned by the state will generally not be able to compete with a similar business B which is not owned by the state.
So while I would like to see a nation’s assets owned by the nation, I regretfully accept that the state is unsuited to ownership of businesses.
Spitfire9IIIIFFFFF… Japan is interested in Eurofighter (I would assume they would also get F-35 at a later date to go along with it)
what type of participation would be realistic / desirable enough to motivate them to go that route?
IMMEDIATE development is only half of the picture, I think, a MLU 10 years down the road would be half of what is desirable about EF.
I could in fact see co-development of both an engine upgrade/re-engine for EF, and buying into the F136 program.
I’m unaware of the health of the F136 program. Last thing I heard was that the life support system (funding) was going to be turned off.
Spitfire9Whereas the Rafale is coming out AESA equiped in 2013 max, ( could be sped up ) so it depends on the IAF’s sense of urgency.
I actually see Rafale AESA as a weakness. It may be available years before Typhoon’s but Rafale size constraints should mean that the Typhoon AESA will be a better AESA. If you are going to fly an aircraft for 20+ years, why chose an aircraft on the basis that it will have a better radar than the alternative for 2/3/3+ years? Furthermore, it is hardly as if Captor is not a good radar, so you would be severely handicapped until AESA was available.
As you say, it does depend to some extent on the sense of urgency. I just don’t think that is a winning point where AESA is concerned. Perhaps I’m wrong and the selectors will see things differently.
The flyaway price is just one thing concerning cost. Theres much more to it than just that alone.
I agree with EELightning’s comment here. For example. what does it cost to update a Mirage 2000? What will it cost to update a Rafale?
Spitfire9While your at comparing IOCs and delays, you might look at the fact that the JSF’s IOC plan calls for going IOC with more capability than the Eurocards CURRENTLY have even thought they are many years POST-IOC.
Good point.
Am I right in thinking, though, that what has accounted for most F-35 delay is not the multiple systems built into it but problems with the basic airframe? Weight, structural problems etc
Spitfire9JSF did not suck the money out of Europe. They never had it to being with.
Here is the development cost caps for the JSF project.
<br />
Table 5-1 (In TY U.S. Dollars)<br />
Participant Maximum Contribution<br />
Australia $0.690B<br />
Canada $0.551B<br />
Denmark $0.33B<br />
Italy $0.904B<br />
The Netherlands $0.586B<br />
Norway $0.33B<br />
Turkey $0.690B<br />
United Kingdom $0.952B<br />
United States $16.843B<br />
Max US input $16+ billion. Sounds way short of US R&D costs for F-35. I stand to be corrected but I thought that BAE Systems was investing $2+ billion.
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