thats works out to be $100m delivered for their f-16
our fa-18f worked out to be $129m delivered
both in year 2007 dollars
http://www.dsca.mil/pressreleases/36-b/2007/Australia_07-13.pdf

These are just games with numbers in order to make the F-35 look affordable. Yes, LM can sell you 100 airframes for $60mil a piece and then strip you down on maintenance, support and training. Or they can sell them for $140mil a piece and provide all support free of charge. Who cares?

The fact is that if you want to introduce a 100 unit F-35 force into service, you need to pay roughly $13-14bil dollars + plan additional $10-11bil for next 20 years. In order to introduce the same number of F-16 Block 50s, you need to pay roughly $6-7bil and plan roughly $5bil for next 20 years. This is what cold facts look like. And now you can return to your non recurring flyaway BS which doesn’t change squat because it’s only shifting numbers from one column to another without any impact on overall cost.

it’s a shame for you that these numbers come directly from canadians which makes your claim about them not agreeing with me look quite peculiar.

ok taking the top price thats 25 billion for 100 f-35a over 20 yrs
or 250 million each but the flyaway is $60 million

it was the same with the 24 Super Hornets we just brought
the cost is $6bn or $250 million each for 15 yrs but the flyaway price is $50 million
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/pilots-buzzing-as-super-hornets-arrive-20100706-zyhk.html

the f-35 costs virtually the same as the super hornet only you get an extra 5 yrs for free with the f-35

Included in the additional $7bil spares-and-maintenance deal, not in the $9bil purchase price which I am talking about.

Not quite. These are estimations based on something, call it educated guesses. Contrary to us, folks on the forums, the govt people negotiate with LM officials and their figures are based on what they get. While I am quite sure that these numbers will be a bit “bloated” so that there is something to cut from later, nobody with sane mind would announce $140mil price if he had a $70mil signed tag on the table, especially not in political climate which does not play in favor of increased defense spending.

This is just another indication about the real F-35’s price being way over $100mil, twist it how you like…

the 9bil probably include infrastructure, sims, weapons, pilot training and a host of other stuff on top of the 60m for the f-35a flyaway, the same as aussies do their costings
but you can guess what ever floats your boat, and if 140m flyaway for the f-35a is the number you want, so be it :confused:
its a shame the aussies and canadians dont agrees with you

if the SH system is iffy now, it means there is no hope for the eurocanards

No shame at all. Do you really have to derail the thread by pointing out that Raytheon has already done something? Good for them. UMS is also working on GaN. So is nearly every other MMIC manufacturer. Neither has it in an operational piece of hardware based on GaN MMIC’s. This thread’s not about Raytheon.

raytheon has a complete module operational tested, it isnt a big deal that its trying to be made by arthuro that they are ‘looking’ at GaN tech for rafale at some far future date
at this stage they are simply putting an aesa antenna on the same backend of the rafale

@jj,
the F-22 can communicate with other F-22s via its IFDL, but it can’t forward its own data via DL to anything else, as no other platform uses a DL compliant with the IFDL message standard. With the integration of the MADL the F-22 will at least be able to communicate with other aircraft equipped with that DL (F-35 & B-2 f.e.). By that F-22s can only contribute to the overall SA of a battle group by conventional radio chat.

doesnt it also have satcom ? i’ll go and google
when L22 is up and running and replaces the L16 it will be able to datalink

@jj,
I’m not to sure about that. UMS a German-French company produces unified TRMs, but I was of the impression that the British produce their own. It will be interesting to see what TRM technology will make it into a potential Captor-E for the Typhoon, but that is yet another discussion which doesn’t belong to here.

isnt UMS a JV EADS & thales