Oh, such innocence!

You don’t get it, do you?

And then, once you’ve signed up, the fun begins. It doesn’t matter what agreements are made, the USA can (& sometimes does) renege on them. Congress does not feel itself bound by any agreement made by the administration, & can (& sometimes does) block things that have been agreed.

Indeed. The US Congress does appear to think it is above the law of contract where a contract concerns the supply of military hardware to another country. The result is that it is risky to depend on a contract with a US supplier. Ergo don’t buy F-16 or F-18 unless the arguments in favour outweigh the risks against.

On that basis I would not order F-18 if I were in India’s shoes since a good alternative is available. I would buy Rafale instead. Its performance is broadly similar to the F-18. It is likely to cost less. With full ToT for weapons integration, India can decide what weapons to stick under it and pay for the integration locally.

I think that India should decide how its MMRCA be used rather than the legislature or head of state of the country that supplied it.

You can bet if India selected the Typhoon or Rafale. She would have to foot the bill for much of the future upgrades and integration on either type.

I don’t see why India would have to foot the bill for much of the future upgrades. The governments that funded the Rafale and Typoon projects would be upgrading the aircraft themselves over the course of decades.

Integration of weapons that India wanted to use, yes, India would doubtless have to pay. But that would be done in India since India would have access to the code required (at least with Typhoon). That’s in stark contrast to the problems the UK had in persuading the US to agree to release codes to enable the UK to integrate weapons on the F-35. You may recall that the only Level 1 partner in the project had to threaten to cancel its order if the US did not honour its undertaking to release such codes. Would India want to find itself having to contend with that sort of behaviour by dealing with the same supplier and the same dishonourable government? I use the term “dishonourable” since when you sign an agreement you can either honour it or dishonour it. The US made it clear that it would dishonour the agreement it had made with the UK if it could.

Agreed…………….Yet, that only supports my claim that the Eurofighter Partners will not purchase more Typhoons. Then when budgets allow more Lightnings would be ordered.

Budgets? Each F-35 will cost more than a Typhoon at current $/euro exchange rates (F-35 @ >$US80 million each on average). I have for a long time thought that F-35 price will rise to be in the region of $US100 million each on average. I don’t see the Typhoon ever reaching that price. It’s in production and customers required that the production price fall over the course of the program.

From defense-aerospace.com:

“Davis conceded he gets many questions about the F-35’s cost — expected to be $80 million to $90 million, depending on the variant — and delivery schedule. And if fewer aircraft are built, each will cost even more.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first official acknowledgement from either the Pentagon or prime contractor Lockheed Martin that JSF unit costs are higher than the $50-$60 million previously admitted. It is vexing that M.G. Davis only acknowledged these higher prices on the eve of leaving his position as JSF program manager.)

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/cgi-bin/client/modele.pl?session=dae.44278617.1232363092.5F@QK38AAAEAAFs4Q-kAAAAg&cat=3&prod=101452&modele=release

So the price according to the man in charge of the program is going to be 50%-60% higher than the figures that have been put out up to now… assuming the number is not cut in which case the price would rise even further.

Imagine only half of the european cunstomers chosing one of its european competitors, what would have been the COST for developing it for the US then?

Historicaly it is an international programme since the venture UK/USA.

It wont change much since Europe have payed for a large part of its developement cost already…

What is JSF development cost? OK, nobody knows but how about $US 40/50/60 billion as a guess? The European contribution is $US5 billion or so, I think. Not such a large part of its development cost IMO, but true, money that could have been spent on other projects.

Is the F-35 a waste of time? I don’t think so. I think that it is very risky for export customers’ defence budgets. I believe it is an order now at an indicated price then pay much more on delivery aircraft.

Eurojet are WAY OFF SNECMA’s developement and production stage for M 88 upgrades, this also mean that funding have been limited.

Table does not show M88-ECO dry thrust. Has this been increased to get the engine closer to EJ200’s dry thrust-to-weight ratio? The M88-2 is inferior in that respect.

IIRC Eurojet was asked to design an engine with potential for a 10% increase in thrust. If that has not been requested why would they be doing it?

if you order a plane, and the developent snails for years, the technological evolution will caught up with the requirements. I think i would be proper to rewise the requirements in itrations for the plane to be up to date.

Yes and no IMO. Was the MCA not intended to be a MiG-21 replacement? If its specification gave it sufficient capability to do this using the “low performance” Kaveri then it should have gone into production with the Kaveri IMO. As I understand it, it was forward “capability creep” that resulted in the Kaveri needing further development which has not been attained.

Do correct me if I’m wrong.

I would rather have the Gripen win it if the F 16 won’t. Single engined jets mean less maintenance. And it probably will be cheaper than Rafale and Typhoon as well.

Probably? 100% probability.

Waste of time: yes and no. Many years late, cost much more than it needed to. Waste of money: yes. The Europeans should have developed one twin-engined fighter but that would have required some compromises: the French to accept that the rest of European aviation manufacturers were not going to become sub-contractors to Dassault, the British to accept that the design needed to be suitable for operation off carriers.

The upside is that there are two European industrial entities capable of making technologically advanced aircraft (and Saab as well). That means that the Europeans do not have to simply accept whatever the USA chooses to offer at the price it chooses to charge.

I suppose there is another advantage insofar as it is reputed to be a better A2A aircraft than the US teen fighters. Perhaps it’s not such a waste of time after all.