Although the comment was not aimed at me – and I trust that after a lifetime of writing my spelling and syntax give little cause for complaint – I am happy to accept the invitation.

Sorry to hear your reaction.

Personally I do not think that “dev” is at all confusing. Far more confusing are acronyms which can be impenetrable for the uninitiated – CAS, UPC, VLO etc
I suggest that the full phrase be used first in any post and thereafter the acronym eg

The unit production cost of the F-99 is $50 million. The UPC of the F-100 is lower.

In what way? You hav to add in the cost of the additional supply chain, training, and support. Not to mention you STILL have to keep the C-5 and C-130 support structure in place (they suggested replacing only the C-5As not ALL C-5s). I guess I don’t see a compelling reason for the A400 rather than just more C-17s.

IIRC it can operate out of airfields that the C-17 cannot use. It fills the gap between C-130 and C-17. If C-17 production ceases, what else will be available? Point taken about additional supply chain etc

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/20100219.aspx

The strategypage.com article says that France has a customer for Rafale.

“February 19, 2010: After a decade of effort, France finally has an export customer for its Rafale jet fighter.”

Unfortunately, it does not say who it is!

It also says the Rafale is a 28 tonne aircraft!

On Feb. 15, the German defense ministry said junior ministers from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey had submitted a proposal to Airbus’ parent company EADS.

They suggested the hi-tech transport plane, which is three years behind schedule, be built first in a “basic” version that could be certified as air worthy, before then delivering a military version.

Full Story

I don’t see the point. Why should customers pay a supplier to build an aircraft that won’t do what it is designed to do simply to prove that it is airworthy?

Assuming that the A400M proves to be airworthy, what happens after that? I guess Airbus Military will say that x billion more euros than first agreed will be needed to produce a useful military airlifter. At the end of it all, I suspect that the overall cost will be even higher than the cost which caused Airbus Military to threaten to back out of the project in the first place.

Note that in its last report in 2004, the Cour des Comptes published figures with VAT, and i see no reason why it would have changed.

The rules on VAT (TVA, BTW etc according to EU country) regarding goods and services are fairly simple if I remember them correctly:

a) goods/services for export are not subject to the tax
ergo if you export from an EU country, the customer is not invoiced for the tax

b) goods/services sold within an EU country are subject to the tax at the rate for sales of those particular goods/services in the EU state concerned
ergo if Dassault imports widgets then sells them to the French government, I would expect these to be subject to the tax

For the purposes of comparing prices of different aircraft, including the tax is misleading. For example, if the tax on fighter aircraft is 20% in France but 10% in Italy, an aircraft costing 120 million inc tax in France will be no more expensive for an export customer (100 million) than an aircraft costing 110 million inc tax in Italy.

Now lets see some real hard data…

You’re not supposed to do things like that. 🙁 It runs the risk of turning this from a faith-based debate to fact-based debate. 😉

I was talking about manned fighters.

I think the Swedes did something on time and on budget a few years ago. That was a manned fighter. Ooops, sorry, I think I was lying there – I think it was under budget.

That fighter lost out to a US fighter in a Scandinavian competition a year or so ago. Among the reasons cited was cost.

Considering the huge numbers to be produced ,the final price would certainly not be higher than F4 standard of Rafale or Typhoon with AESA..

I’m not so sure that economies of scale make it that much cheaper to produce 2000 of a type in 20 years than 1000. I have heard that as a very general rule of thumb economies of scale start becoming marginal after about 500 frames. If that is more or less the case, I don’t see that a reduction of a few hundred F-35A would make a great difference to its cost of production, so I don’t go along with those seeing a reduction in USAF requirements resulting in a “death spiral” of increasing price/increasing reductions in requirements. That would apply more to reduced quantities of F-35B and F-35C, I guess.

As for the fantasy $58 million per F-35A, I think it is a healthy sign that the fantasy has now been abandoned. I still think that the price of F-35A will be near $100 million, so I go along with your view that Rafale, Typhoon and F-35 prices will be in the same ball park.