Spitfire9Typhoon has dropped bombs in a combat zone!
The UK has given the historic first offensive use to the Eurofighter Typhoon, with two Royal Air Force aircraft having dropped precision-guided bombs on Libyan targets on 12 April.
Spitfire9I haven`t seen a clear-cut explanation of the basis of a $1B increase, is anybody familiar?
I would assume that extending the negotiation window means extending the production window,
and so the extra money would be for covering inflation, etc, that all producers are subject to. …Or something completely different?
Well, in business it is normal to quote and to make the price firm for a limited time eg you quote for some goods with price firm fo 90 days. If the goods are ordered wihin 90 days, the supplier is obliged to hold firm to the quoted price and to supply what’s in the quote. After 90 days the supplier has the option to decline to supply or to alter the price.
But that’s “normal business”. I once quoted the UK MOD on a computer system. After a couple of months I gave up chasing them to see if they wanted to order it. About 6 months later I opened my post and discovered an order in response to my quote. By then the computer equipment involved in the quote was no longer in production. I was asked to re-quote. I declined. I wasn’t interested in dealing with a customer where a deal that would normally be completed in less than 2 weeks was going to take anything up to a year and a half with the risk that after that time I would still not have an order and would have to re-quote yet again.
A not entirely dissimilar situation obtains with MMRCA – the competitors submitted their tenders; they were not dealt with in a timely manner; the suppliers agreed to an entire year’s extension of their tenders; again the buyer failed to process those tenders in a timely manner; now the buyer will have to pay perhaps $1 billion more. Quite unnecessarily. Quite avoidably.
I know I come across as very critical of the way in which defence procurement is organised and executed. It is because the people and processes involved are not up to the task. The whole system is awash with complacency. Those involved are not good at what they do; they are exceptionally bad at what they do. But what do they care, the taxpayer funds it all and will carry on doing so!
Spitfire9I am simply amazed that the people “organising” this allowed themselves to miss another deadline. Yet again by the sound of it. I quote from the defense-aerospace.com article:
Industry sources told FE that “the government is planning to seek extension of the validity of the commercial bid expiring on April 30 as none of the vendors have received any indication from the ministry of defence (MoD) about being down listed nor has the price negotiation committee been set up.”
Last year, the ministry had extended the commercial validity of bids on India’s 126-aircraft MMRCAbid by a year to April 28, 2011.
If the cost has just increased by up to $1 billion dollars due to the inefficient and incompetent management of this procurement, whose heads are going to roll?
Inexcusable incompetence IMO. A bit like taking 30 rupees from every Indian citizen and throwing it away. Or a bit like building sufficient Tejas’ to equip 1-2 squadrons, digging a big hole in the ground and burying them.
I repeat my earlier comment:
A piece of advice to them all: don’t announce deadlines unless you are going to adhere to them (barring extraordinary factors – fire burns factory down etc) ie instead of talking about something happening by a certain time, make it happen by that time.
Spitfire9AoG in 2018, and no tranche 3B before 2020, it seems difficult to see any cheap aesa on this bird before its mlu !
In which case Eurofighter’s paticipation in the MMRCA may not be over but its prospects of being selected are not too promising. Why select an aircraft that
(a) hasn’t got AESA sorted (existing or with concrete development plans)
(b) hasn’t got a carrier variant sorted (existing or with concrete development plans)
when there are 2 types on offer that have these sorted?
Spitfire9CAPTOR AESA involves fitting a new front end, not a complete new radar.
I am aware of that. It does not make it any less ridiculous wasting millions of euros through failing to be organised properly.
Let’s just imagine that you were a trucking company. Your trucks currently have an overhead valve engine but you want future additions to your fleet to have an overhead cam engine – something your supplier can design and supply, providing a go ahead for the ohc engines is placed early enough. It would be incredibly wasteful and expensive to buy trucks with an interim ohv cyinder head then to subsequently take the ohv heads off all the trucks, throw them away and replace them later with ohc heads simply because you as the customer had not given the go ahead for ohc engines soon enough.
CAPTOR AESA involves fitting a new front end, not a complete new radar.
Does it matter that you are only paying twice for the front end and once for the rear end? Of course it does. You should be competent enough as a buyer to only pay once for the front end and once for the back end.
Spitfire9It looks like there might be two Libyan AF MiG-23’s attacked with one still smoldering??!!
Looks there are also 3 helicopters and 10+ trainers/ground attack aircraft on the apron. How come these were not destroyed as well? Or were they destroyed after the photo was taken?
Spitfire9No, the governments have told the industry that they are not going to invest any more money in that project.
They don’t exactly say that in the article:
“No one is saying yet how the next phase of work will be paid for but as the budgetary situation has continued to decline in Europe in the last year, analysts here reckon industry may have had a key role to play on funding this time round as well.”
The way I read it is that Euroradar have committed to the next phase of development and may have funded it all themselves. Whatever, Eurofighter partner governments may commit to funding future stages of development.
I find it stupid that those governments do not commit fully to AESA now since some/all of them will end up ordering it. Delaying full support for AESA just jeopardises the prospects of extra export business for those countries (and extra tax takes for the governments concerned) while increasing cost. What you don’t want to do is pay for Captor then throw it away a little later and pay all over again to buy and fit an AESA radar.
Still, such stupidity seems to be par for the course where military materiel procurement is concerned.
Spitfire9Frome the Sunday Guardian article:
On 10 March, ACM Naik had declared that the MoD would shortlist the MMRCA from amongst the six competitors by end-March
The shortlist is due to be declared in the first week of April…we’ll see..
Whatever the day, week, month or year may be, it seems that some individual or organisation pops up reporting that the shortlist will be declared the next day, week, month or year. Why do all these IAF personnel, IAF, MOD, politicians and government agencies keep giving out information that subsequently proves to be incorrect? Don’t they see that it makes them look like a bunch of disorganised amateurs?
A piece of advice to them all: don’t announce deadlines unless you are going to adhere to them (barring extraordinary factors – fire burns factory down etc) ie instead of talking about something happening by a certain time, make it happen by that time.
Spitfire9brazilian prices shows rafale at same gripen price, lower than the upgraded F18
If true, you have to ask why Dassault was reported as initially quoting IIRC $8 billion for a deal covering 36 Rafale if the price has now dropped to Gripen level of perhaps $4 billion for 36 aircraft.
Assuming a flyaway Rafale price of $75 million each, 36 aircraft would cost $2.25 billion. How could extras (simulators, spares etc and weapons, if included) possibly hike the deal price by $5+ billion? A bit of profiteering was going on there, n’est pas? Perhaps Dassault has now decided to drop the cost of extras by 50% or so given that Lula’s support has gone.
Of course Dassault could reduce the price of the aircraft to half that of Gripen or even $1 a piece, provided that the profit on the rest of the deal was high enough. It’s the price of the deal that matters, not the price of the aircraft.
Spitfire9surely quadbike you could have looked at Rafale in Afghanistan over the past years and got excited about its A2G capability? Its not news that the Typhoon partner nations have hindered the deployment of A2G weapons.
But Quadbike, you wouldn’t be buying your Typhoon now, you would be buying it in a few years time, and everything will be hunky dory by then.
What guarantee is there that everything will be hunky dory with Typhoon in a few years time? This project has been characterised by the partners failing to agree to fund full functionality of the aircraft in a timely manner with a view to supporting their military aviation industries through additional production for export. Singapore excluded Typhoon because if its more or less non-existant A2G capability IIRC. Several years later its A2G capability is still not there. Storm Shadow, Brimstone etc are still years away.
As for existing customers, the UK, German, Italian and Saudi air forces already have a comprehensive A2G capability in the form of Tornado, so the absence of A2G capability in Typhoon is not of critical importance to them. Austria had no need for an A2G capability. Export customers, however, are likely to want what Typhoon is touted to be (but is not): a multi-role combat aircraft.
Spitfire9If you drive round the UK motorways as much as I do, it was clear that something has been going on as I have been seeing RAF trucks and vehicles all week and you hardly ever see them at all normally
Sounds like the UK government has been setting up the logistics in the hope that there would be a NFZ resolution passed. I wonder if the UK will be ready to start operations first. It will be interesting to see if the UK starts the show rolling with Typhoons patrolling the skies over Libya. But what happens if they are threatened by SAM units? Do they then have to call in Tornados to deal with the threat?
Spitfire9The BBC are reporting the French government saying “airstrikes will begin in hours.”
France would have been in an interesting quandary if Libya had bought Rafale and a few had been delivered by now. Apart from anything else, there might have been a few Rafale (France) v Rafale (Libya) confrontations.
For the NFZ, I recall that when there was a NFZ over northern Iraq, Iraqi missile units locking onto allied aircraft on patrol were attacked and destroyed. I presume that will happen here, too.
From the BBC website:
The resolution imposes a “ban on all flights in Libyan airspace”, with aid flights the only exception.
It authorises member states to “take all necessary measures” to “protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack”, including in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
The way I see this is that if Gaddafi’s forces start moving artillery/tanks towards Benghazi or other towns in rebel hands, those weapons convoys will be attacked from the air.
Spitfire9Assuming that the NFZ is approved by the UN and the resolution allows for “all necessary means” to be used to protect civilians in rebel-held areas, the incumbent regime has serious problems.
Spitfire9Shooting down a few of Gaddafi’s obsolete aircrafts is not going to change the situation on the land.
True but the psychological effect of a military jet over one’s head, able to strike where it wishes, when it wishes, is a powerful one.
Spitfire9Report: Germany offers Croatia 20 aging F-4 Phantom fighter jets
Not so useful if they only have a couple of years’ use left in them (according to the report). Better idea would be to lease some Gripens for a few years (gives the option of updating to NG later if the budget allows). According to the report as well, the MiG-21’s in use have even less hours flying in them, so something has to be done quickly if Croatia wants to continue operating fighters.
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