RiiSorry, your comments are just your own personal opinion
F-35 is almost twice the size of the F-16s most NATO nations are operating, and last time I checked their borders haven’t changed, although budgets have gotten much tighter and that big bad to the east is gone. So clearly they must now travel much further afield in search of enemies to destroy and this is why they need larger and more expensive aircraft in F-4 Phantom class.
Japan and Israel which have agreed to purchase the F-35.
Japan and Israel are freakshows both. Singapore and Korea will be a much better benchmarks of whether a ‘regular’ nation interested in western advanced combat aircraft and not already invested in the program can be persuaded of its merits.
Rii“Bitter Taste” What are you talking about? The F-35 is one of the most complex fighters ever developed. Yet, it has had relatively few problems. Which, is impressive consider it’s not one fighter but three!
Yeah, I hear Mattel makes a Transformers line too. Nobody cares how impressive an ‘achievement’ it is (not very) but how well the variant they’re buying fits their requirements and how much it costs.
And the bitter taste would be from NATO members buying an aircraft that isn’t well-suited to their needs and paying through the nose for it. An imperfect fit at a bargain price is one thing, an imperfect fit arriving ten years late and at ruinous expense is quite another. Ask the Indians re: Vikramaditya, lol.
I mean, don’t tell me you actually buy the ‘sunshine and rainbows’ tone of that Norwegian MoD press release? Even those in MoD who still think it’s the right choice must be ****ting themselves at having to sell those prices to Parliament.
RiiAlso, don’t you think the members that have committed to the F-35. Have already judged the F-35’s Capabilities and Requirements vs Cost!
If you ignore the roles of political considerations and industrial carrots, potentially inferior or compromised decision-making processes and bureaucratic inertia, and the vast discrepancy between what was promised and what has been delivered, sure.
And it was a general observation. F-35 can be very successful in terms of units and customers and yet leave a bitter taste in the mouth for everyone involved — bar Lockheed Martin. In contrast, Gripen NG could fail to find a buyer and yet still be an admirable program and aircraft. And of course that’s without getting into the real test of a combat aircraft, which doesn’t lie either in the chequebook or the sales record.
RiiMy opinion is the F-35 will be as successful or more than the F-16 was during its time.
Notice that you talk of F-35 in terms of customers and units sold, whereas I talk of F-35 in terms of capabilities vs. requirements and costs. :rolleyes:
RiiSorry, the latest M-1’s are equal to any tank currently fielded………
Maybe, maybe not, but that’s not really the point: we didn’t get the latest M1s, and the second-hand ones we did get have been more trouble than they’re worth. The only reason it hasn’t attracted more attention is because there have been so many other recent debacles as bad or worse.
RiiThe M1s were part of John Howard’s plan to make Australia the “US’ deputy sheriff.” Originally there was even talk of having half of them stationed in USA. Basically Australia would’ve been subsidising an American tank batallion.
Last year I attended a lecture John Howard gave on Australia’s relationships with China and the United States. Unsurprisingly he said almost nothing of substance, or indeed interest, but something I found almost chilling was what he didn’t say. That is, he occasionally obliquely approached the notion of a US-China tensions — to say that we shouldn’t necessarily see them as rivals or conflict as an inevitability and so on (which is fine) — but what he never even hinted at was the subject of Australia’s position in the event of tensions between China and the United States.
Charitably it’s possible that he was simply being polite, felt the subject too delicate to raise in the public forum, etc. but when one puts it alongside everything else he said, and everything he did as Prime Minister, I think the more likely explanation is that he didn’t address it because he thought it went without saying that in the event of tensions leading to conflict Australia will be on the frontlines alongside the US: fighting, dying, maybe even losing … irrespective of the circumstances.
RiiI am beginning to wonder if you read what you post??? As Australia has a Strong Defense and is a valued Member of the Western/Pacific Alliance. Beside having some of the best trained people in its Armed Forces. It has high quality equipment. Including but not limited to Aegis Destroyers, BPE Amphibious Ships, Wedgetail, Super Hornets, M-1 Tanks and soon F-35’s.:cool:
The M1A1s are junk — outdated, and proving terribly problematic. I don’t think Australia should even have tanks but if we had to have them they should’ve been new Leopard 2A6 or whatever latest variant is.
P.S. If you think I’m being ‘anti-American’ here, I also consider the selection of NH90 over UH-60M foolish.
As for the rest: yes, Australia has some high quality equipment, usually not nearly enough of it as we like to focus on token capabilities like C-17 over those we could execute more robustly than a shaved-to-the-wire commercial logistics operation. Part of the reason for that is our infamously terrible defence dept., known for such debacles as Collins, SH2… and JSF. And the other part of it is our fondness for ‘coalition operations’.
RiiBy the time this happens, F-35 will be obsolete.
Obsolete perhaps, but in RAAF service for the next decade or two. 😉
At least, that’s the plan: the ‘one platform’ thing. I object to it for precisely these reasons: we don’t need a low-end 5th gen in the next 15 years, and past the early 2030s that same aircraft simply isn’t going to cut it given our rapidly evolving strategic environment. What we should do is to acquire what we need, when we need it: established 4.5 Gen in the present, high-performance 5.5/6th gen when said platforms come online from 2030.
This is largely an Australian concern. US and Japan face same evolving environment but have resources to field robust array of platforms to meet emerging challenges (F-3, NGAD, etc.) whereas we don’t. F-35 is perfectly suitable for European customers if only they could afford it. One nation the F-35 is perfect for, tho, is Israel. Especially seeing as how they don’t have to pay for it. :p
Indonesia (aka world’s last empire) has a lot of issues that have prevented the development of it’s conventional armed forces:
[snip]
The air force seems to be largely forgotten and procurement for it is poorly managed. Wonder if this has anything to do with the airforce’s former status with Sukarno regime.
The legacy of the Sukarno regime has a lot to do with it. But it would be irresponsible to believe that the current situation will remain: that Indonesia will not pair its growing economic power with robust military capabilities. It may be that this (very historically unusual) thing happens and Indonesia remains a third-class power with no influence beyond its borders, but that is not something one can responsibly take for granted, anymore than the US could take China’s ‘peaceful rise’ for granted even before the stirrings of the last few years that’ve pricked up everyone’s ears in the region. It’s not about scaremongering or irrational fear of Asians/Muslims/whatever, but rather taking seriously the responsibility of the security of the nation and its people.
RiiAlso, remember the PAK-FA is currently project to cost over $100 Million (US) and it’s likely to go up. So, I think many loose prospective when some start talking numbers.
Not when the nations employing such aircraft have vastly more resources than Australia does. Indonesian GDP will surpass Australia’s within the next decade and military expenditure will follow in short order. In the long-term Indonesia is likely to field several hundred advanced combat aircraft: a KF-X / T-50 mix appears most likely at this juncture.
There’s nothing Australia can do about the overall shift in the balance of power, but as in all cases where a weaker power confronts a stronger, the idea is to field a sufficient deterrent in both the defensive and offensive sense of the word. What that means in practice is the ability to emerge victorious in quantitatively equal circumstances, so that one can plausibly arrange favourable tactical scenarios and inflict (hopefully) unacceptable losses on the adversary. Training, force multipliers, etc. are all part of this; in the realm of aerial warfare a key characteristic is the ability for one of yours to beat one of theirs.
To illustrate the point: it doesn’t matter whether Iran has 100 F-4 Phantoms or 200 F-4 Phantoms: USAF is going to roll right over them. USAF would ultimately roll over 50 T-50s too, but the latter would give them pause — cleverly employed the T-50s could manufacture some ugly scenarios, whereas any number of F-4s are just target practice. Now replace Iran with Australia, USAF with Indonesia, F-4 Phantom with F-35 and T-50 with NGAD and you have an (admittedly exaggerated) analogy.
F-35 simply does not offer the qualitative edge that Australia needs, when we need it.
RiiPersonnel costs are the biggest problem, and would be even moreso if healthcare, retirement funding, etc. were actually included in the defence budget as they should be to encourage due prudence in such matters. The long-term cost of the 2000s bloat of the US Army is staggering and has hardly begun to be felt — the nation will quite literally be paying for Afghanistan and Iraq for decades to come.
Can’t do anything about personnel being expensive, but what can be done is to ensure that if they’re around it’s because they’re needed to constitute, maintain, employ, etc. a valuable capability.
And so the best thing USAF could do for cost control — and could do without impacting national security in the present, or affecting future balance re: China and other challenges — is to cancel plans to life-extend and upgrade F-16s and/or F-15Cs and retire them instead. Lots of money saved there, but the real savings come from getting rid of the pilots and support personnel and from the base closures that would follow unit consolidation.
The only reason not to do this is if those platforms are expected to be replaced on a 1:1 basis with F-35s, and it has been clear for some time now that this is simply not going to happen. Airframe numbers are going down one way or another, the question is whether USAF is smart enough to get ahead of the curve and make that fact work for them.
RiiSo it is doable to operate F-35,
1] If you are the richest country on the earth, and
2] Provided you reduce flying hours down to amateur levels
Thanks for infoThis goes to show that operational cost is several times higher than acquisition cost, it really is operational cost that makes the difference
I think we can assume that the listed total operational cost includes the acquisition cost, but even so your point stands.
And ofc. it’s operational cost where Gripen NG really murders the competition.
I do like the positive spin Norwegian MoD tries to put on things. Best of luck at the parliamentary hearings. :p
RiiCertainly interesting airframes: hybrids of the C/E worlds.
I find it interesting that some people are so strident about the differences between Hornet E/F and preceding variants — “whole new aircraft, should’ve received new classification” — whilst displaying no such consideration for other platforms that’ve been almost as extensively modified from their earlier incarnations, i.e. to the extent that they share almost no components in common with their forebears: F-15E, MiG-29M, Su-35. These are still asserted to be 60s/70s designs as opposed to the (supposedly) 90s design of SH. Of course we all know why this is: they are attempting to create false equivalence between Super Hornet and more modern platforms such as Rafale and Typhoon, or — less commonly — attempting to denigrate F-15E as being of much older lineage than SH when this is not the case.
RiiSo i make it, that SAAB is funding it as a tech demonstrator and they are hoping for Government and/or Foreign partner funding. Am i correct?
I think this is correct. I see Boeing as an unlikely partner, but not impossible. The best prospects for SAAB (and for a light 5G platform) are in partnership with Turkey or Brazil. If both of those fall through and Boeing aren’t themselves involved with Brazil or Korea, I could see a partnership emerging for the reasons you suggest: SAAB needing monies, Boeing needing to keep skills sharp to maintain credibility for NGAD/FA-XX and wanting a fallback.
And if all of that falls through I think the next step will be for SAAB to form part of future Euro 5.5/6th gen program discussed earlier. One way or another SAAB will remain in the business, but it would be nice to see them remain relatively independent and to execute a light 5th gen with usual admirable efficiency and show everyone else for the clumsy oafs they are. :p
RiiThat is where the GAU-12 is located …
O wow. It looks like more of an afterthought than the F-4 cannon. 😮
Thanks tho.
RiiWell I have to say I would love to see Dassault -SAAB-BAE get together to build a 5.5/6 gen fighter for Europe but I don’t see it happening
I certainly see some Rafale/Typhoon-successor program emerging at some point. Europeans are miserly, uncoordinated, etc. but not so much as to simply give up on a future manned fighter aircraft. Even if EU collapses, coordination on this level will remain. Son of Neuron/Taranis/etc. will simply be too limited to be considered sufficient, and Germany isn’t involved in that anyway. If nothing else the French will corral everyone into doing … whatever it is the French want to do, lol.
Japanese F-3 is a much shakier proposition than Euro 5.5/6th gen I think.
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