Spitfire9@Spitfire,
the AESA development is currently funded by the Industry and while a fully agree that more funds will certainly help, the partner nations signalled there willingness to invest at some point. Right now the industry is pushing ahead with the AESA development as they know it is crucial to secure orders from international customers.
Self funding does not equal full funding.
I just find it annoying that while everyone knows that it will be fully funded at some point, failing to decide when jeopardises the aircraft’s prospects of gaining further orders. The governments concerned are going to invest anyway, aren’t they, so why risk losing the extra tax take on increased production through prevarication? That’s simply stupid.
There’s another facet to this as well – if any of the 4 governments decide they have too many aircraft on order, some could be switched to export (a) saving government money (b) improving delivery time for the client.
Spitfire9It would have to land there anyway just to watch les miches de la boulangère.
Nic
Monsieur, I only know proper French so I don’t know what miches are. Any chance of you posting a few photos of miches de boulangère so I can see what you mean? 😉
Spitfire9Well wouldn’t that make it a “Breadrole” fighter;)
Except it wouldn’t just do bread roles. It would do all types of bread: baguette, baton, pain de campagne etc (remember it’s omni- :))
Spitfire9Also tired of the “Omnirole” blah blah blah marketing speak! In the rest of the world we say “Swingrole” which means exactly the same thing as far as I am concerned. All of the jets that competed were Swingrole capable, the Omnirole stuff is just boorish!
I fully expect raging Rafale fans trying to explain the wonders of Omnirole capability vs Swingrole…
What’s wrong with a little Latin? Anyway, omnirole is better than swingrole – an omnirole aircraft performs all roles (L. omnis=all). Rafale probably even has a secret compartment somewhere near the engine for baking baguettes, saving the need to land near a boulangerie twice/three times a day.:)
Spitfire9‘Eurofighter nations give fresh support to AESA integration’
Great news.
I suspect India is one of the main reasons why the Typhoon is recieving capabilities sooner and recieving fresh support from Ministers for the AESA radar, they obviously fancy the Typhoon’s chances for India. BAE Systems seems to rather do at least.
“If you look at the strength of conviction of ministers and chiefs of air staff, everyone is consistently talking about the capabilities of AESA, and radar integration. There is no wavering around that. It leaves us feeling very positive about the future upgrades that we need to meet export demand and that of the customer nations.”
ie we think AESA is great. No doubt about it!
But…
“We and Selex Galileo have got engineers on it, and they are working to a programme supported by the four nations. The funding for that is anticipated.”
ie the four nations have not agreed to fund (support) it.
Things tend to get done a lot faster when they’re funded. It’s good to hear that funding is anticipated. It’s been anticipated for years, hasn’t it? That’s why the Typhoon doesn’t have an AESA/near ready AESA.
The four nations can be as “supportive” as they like but without funding the thing, they are not actually providing support. I think India may have spotted that.
Spitfire9Thanks Jonesy.
I am wondering why SAAB needed to talk to the MoD about a project aimed at Brazil (and while they say India I think they missed their window there). There are only a two reasons I can see for needing to talk to the MoD. The first is that they need some sort of licence to set up a defence company in the UK and they have just got it, the second is that SAAB need access to IP owned by the MoD and just got an agreement to do so.
Plausible IMO.
As I said before I cannot see the point of this design exercise – to back this point up further I think it should be pointed out that the UK is not going to operate three different types of fast jet, that even if it did it cannot afford to maintain reasonable sized fleets of each type, so even if the Sea Gripen met all the KPI of the JSA I cannot ever see the MoD having the cash to operate a mix of Typhoons, F-35C (as Tornado replacement) and Sea Gripen.
I can’t clearly see the point of this either but SAAB must have their reasons. I noticed the report mentions that there will be 10 (yes, ten) staff in the office, so whatever they are doing may not cost much – even @ £100,000 pa each would only incur £1 million pa in salary costs. Can’t see the need for on-site supercomputers etc to navalise an aircraft.
I can’t see F-35C and Sea Gripen being ordered by the UK but I can see it would be useful to have an alternative to F/A-18 in case F-35C fell through or both were considered unaffordable.
Plus I cannot see them getting enough sales of the Sea Gripen to justify the development costs – no expert but I be surprised if this project made sense on anything less than 150 Sea Gripen sold, and there is at best a market for what – 60 world wide, possibly more if the F-35B is cancelled?
Perhaps SAAB are hoping a naval version might tip the balance in their favour when Brazil comes to making a decision and that in addition either Spain or Italy or UK might not order F-35.
If one is to believe SAAB’s claimed cost of $3000 per flying hour for the Swedish AF to operate Gripen, it would be much, much cheaper to operate than the twins available. A smaller carrier equipped with Sea Gripen or similar may be affordable for a number of states where nothing else is.
Looks to me like designing Sea Gripen (and perhaps building a demonstrator) might be a low cost gamble with the potential to keep Gripen in production for quite some time.
Spitfire9Unless you believe that Sea Gripen will be able to STOBAR hop from a short deck carrier with any more than the ability to carry a matchbox the length of a football pitch!
Would buddy refuelling overcome the problem? How practical would that be?
Spitfire9F35C is flying. Gripen N isn’t even on a drawing board. F35C is much lower risk, regardless of track record.
I think there are big, recognised risks in continuing the F-35 program. It’s a program where the costs have risen again and again with no realistic certainty about how much more they will rise. To quote Sens from the F-35 thread May 24 on the forum:
Senior members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee last week instructed the Pentagon to come up with alternatives to the jet fighter of the future, the F-35, with the project facing massive cost overruns.
“We cannot sacrifice other important acquisitions in the Department of Defense investment portfolio to pay for this capability,” Levin said.
I understand the point that is being made: overall capability of the US forces will be reduced unless projected F-35 procurement and operational costs are reduced. This applies to export customers, too: either increase your defence budget or reduce the number of F-35’s to be acquired or cut other capabilities to pay increased F-35 costs.
Spitfire9Gee, politicians worried about a projected (incorrectly) 30-year cost of $1 trillion…. Where the hell were they when the Big O spent a trillion in ONE year for “stimulus”?
Spending $1 trillion to provide emergency funding to rescue the USA from its gravest economic crisis since 1929 was wise. The alternative: probably deep recession for years. Pursuing 1 failed defence procurement where its management and cost are out of control (could reach $600 billion / $800 billion / $1 trillion, who knows? Nobody) – is not very wise. The alternatives are there: further developments of F-15, F-16, F-18. Not good options but the financial risk of completing F-35 development, building it and operating it remains very high. Some of those holding the purse strings are saying too high.
Spitfire9The Swedish company announced its plan following a 24 May meeting with Ministry of Defence officials in London
Is the UK preparing a plan B to lower the cost risk of equipping and operating its forthcoming carriers? For those who can’t conceive of costs mattering where defence is concerned, the UK is building 2 carriers but plans to operate only one because of the COST.
If by abandoning F-35C in favour of Sea Gripen the UK could afford to operate 2 carriers instead of 1, the UK would have a far greater naval aviation capability. It would make sense to me for the UK MOD to fund SAAB to complete the design of the Sea Gripen in order to know how much such an alternative to F-35 should cost.
I would like the UK to dump the F-35 in any incarnation because I think it could prove prohibitively expensive to operate. LM has an abysmal track record of failing to meet F-35 program deadlines and cost predictions. SAAB’s track record with Gripen has been exemplary.
Saab has described its Sea Gripen as an “ideal replacement for existing fleets and new [aircraft] carrier nations”…
I presume that if the UK government funded Sea Gripen development, it would receive some royalty from SAAB on sales of the aircraft. I wonder how many Sea Gripens could be sold to “new [aircraft] carrier nations”. What new carrier nations might there be in the next 20 years?
Spitfire9The rafale wasnt proposed due to the beleive that Japan would never go for a non-us plane…
Some time ago Eurofighter declined to respond to a S Korean request for fighters since they thought S Korea would only buy US materiel.
What is different where Japan is concerned?
Spitfire9Not too sure about all of this interesting article:
“Both aircraft are true 4th generation fighters although their multi-role capabilities are not widely accepted but may have proved themselves during the field trials. Neither comes with an in-built operations-ready AESA radar although the Eurofighter will have a Captor AESA Radar (CAESAR) by 2012 and the Rafale also plans to introduce the Thales RB-E2AA AESA system soon.”
Spitfire9F136 engine development to be revived by GE/RR?
It looks like GE/RR are prepared to fund continuing development of the F-35’s “alternative” engine even though the program has been terminated.
“We believe so strongly in our engine and the need for competition in defense procurement that we have committed to self-fund F136 development costs for this fiscal year and next. Competition is vital to rein in defense spending and will produce long-term savings,” said General Electric Company CEO Jeff Immelt.
This is the third time the FET [Fighter Engine Team] has offered proposals to drive acquisition reform. The first two proposals involved fixed-priced concepts for early production JSF engines. Leaders of the House Armed Services Committee have recognized the unique opportunity that this self-funded F136 development program presents in driving meaningful acquisition reform, and the Senate Committee on Appropriations has called the F136 engine a “near model program.” This is in sharp contrast to the performance of the other JSF engine, which has had $3.4 billion in cost overruns.
Spitfire9But again for emphasis DACT does not prove which aircraft is best, they are scripted exercises.
Isn’t DACT an acronym of dissimilar air combat training? If it is, then by its very nature one side may be put at a (perhaps very severe) disadvantage to the other. If the side with one or both hands tied behind its back “loses”, what is “proved” is that with certain disadvantages, one side “lost” on the day concerned.
The other point I’d like to make. BAE Systems revealed in February that changes have been proposed to the Saudi Al Salam programme to supply 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to the Royal Saudi Air Force. Initially 48 Typhoons were due to be assembled in a new facility in Saudi Arabia. Apparantly they’re now going to be assembled in Warton. I’m not a “conspiracy theorists” or anything like that but maybe this has something to do with the Indian MMRCA competition? After all, the market in India is a hell of a lot bigger than it is in Saudi Arabia and maybe BAE Systems would prefer to move some of their facilities to India than they would Saudi Arabia? Funny how they didn’t or haven’t revealed the full details of why…Just a thought.
To avoid the RSAF ending up with 1 Typhoon squadron until locally assembled aircraft became available, organisation of local assembly needed to start years ago. I guess Typhoon assembly in SA probably just did not get organised. If it had got organised, would it not have turned out to be assembly in SA with a load of people from BAE doing the work? Correct me if I am wrong, but I’m unaware that any aircraft have been assembled in SA in the modern era.
I don’t think that the possible choice between assembling Typhoons in India or SA was a factor. Assembly in India would be an infinitely better choice simply on grounds of local know how and costs IMO.
Spitfire9Originally Posted by J-20 Hotdog
because those 3 are improvements of aircraft conceived in the 1970s
the two winners are aircraft conceived in the 1980s…if it makes you feel better, it simply means that IAF chose the less obsolete aircraft.
Flaming
It is the case, though, isn’t it, that the 2 aircraft were the latest designs? If the latest design of all is the least obsolete of all then you could say the F-35 is the least obsolete of all. However, if the least obsolete doesn’t do what you need at a time when you need it at the price you need with the sovereignty you need, so what if it’s the least obsolete?
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