Well fair enough, but my problem isn’t with the F-35 numbers, it’s the other numbers which don’t stack up based on what we know about these aircraft.

Is there any info about what configuration Danish were evaluating for Typhoon and Super Hornet? Radar, EW set, jammers and so on?

If the position was reversed you and others would be jumping up and down claiming conspiracy. It frankly doesn’t matter what this program does, people find fault either with them releasing too much info or not enough.

No need to ‘reverse position’, I’m claiming conspiracy right now…
Underlying assumption is that F-35 and F-16 CPFH figures are calculated in same way as much as possible, so people get the idea how the costs compare. Now, they reduced price of fuel for their F-35 calculation, but didn’t for F-16. So the figures are no longer comparable. I’m not saying this is actually lying (as they told what they did) but it is potentially misleading.
Who knows, the overall effect of fuel price change may be small (they didn’t say) but still, it’s not intellectually very honest.

I would attribute most of that to improved learning of the maintenance staff and refined processes/reduced timeframes for undertaking upgrades.

I dunno…I do note that the maintenance cost went up about 10% compared to earlier estimate. I presume that means spares and depot/factory level maintenance? It’s not too clear what the categories include.
Of course, actual cost of some prospective upgrades far in the future is extremely difficult to estimate.

What would you rather they do, state directly and clearly that a lower fuel cost was a factor for CPFH reduction or leave it out and wait for Defence-Aerospace to announce it to the world as if they were hiding something?

Yes, they should have left it out since the whole point of the exercise is to provide comparative figure to legacy aircraft, which it no longer does as the numbers are based on different fuel prices. Also, the reader has no idea how much of the cost reduction is because of fuel burn improvement and how much is because of fuel cost decrease.

The LRIP batches in the F-35’s case will carry on till 2019, so that works out just fine for it as far as hitting the $85 mil mark goes.

Orders haven’t been reduced since the numbers were reinstated by the Congress (and it was a marginal cutback to begin with). And even if they were reduced, at worst, the cost would only stagnate.

Planned F-35A procurement is 1763 aircraft. That is roughly the number of all US F-16’s, A-10’s and F-15C’s currently in service and reserve. I think it’s extremely optimistic to envision that all those aircraft will be replaced on 1-to-1 basis, barring some major international development which would justify greater defence expenditure. I think 1000 to 1200 is realistic USAF number.

Cool, I didn’t know UV systems had that capability. Are they offering Typhoons with a passive MAWS yet, or was that capability completely scrapped? Last I heard, they just had the MMW radar system.

Last I heard, such system (PIMAWS) was ‘option’ for Eurofighter but whether it is developed to the extent that it is actually realistic option for customers, no idea…probably not.

It’ll first need to get one of those 3 submarines past Astute class submarines, P-8s and a hoard of ASW helicopters. Then the torpedoes will have to get past SSTD and IDS300. Then there’s the small matter of the British-Franco defence pact, meaning there’ll be 3 carriers, a total of 120 aircraft and twice as many subs, destroyers, frigates and ASW assets.

3 carriers? 🙂 There would be 1 – at most.

With torpedoes.

It would matter because Saab is claiming it would cost less than a quarter of that, and a key selling point is low cost operation. Light fighters built on low cost of operation should not cost what medium fighters do, and no where near the uber expensive F-35.

But those numbers would not disprove that Gripen is cheaper to operate: quite the contrary. So lets go with $29800 CPFH for F-35 as per latest SAR (though IMO, those reductions compared to earlier SAR are somewhat dubious – also they mask the fact that maintenance cost went up 10%) and assume that $21000 is correct and comparable figure for Gripen (it likely isn’t but I have no idea which way it should be modified).

Lets assume fleet size of 50 aircraft which fly 200 hours per year. If difference in operating cost is $8000 per flight hour, with 10 000 flight hours annually you would save whopping 80 million dollars a year. Enough to buy a whole new fighter, each year. Even compared to F-16, difference would be 45 millions per year.