DoD Releases 2014 Budget request

The DoD finally released their 2014 numbers today. Here is what I found.

1. Procurement

The F-35s are getting cheaper (barely) even though the numbers are the same as last years (19/6/4) for F-35-A/B/C.

Here is the breakdown (RED is where component was more expensive than previous year)

Some sites are reporting a 4% increase in procurement cost. This is unrelated to the Flyaway and is due to a new RCS verification facility, higher costs for Simulators, Post-SDD development costs, etc.

2. Upgrades

While the USAF has had upgrade costs in the budget for a year now, the USN has now joined in adding LRIP upgrade costs to the budget. They has also broke it down to a Block specific number. The 2B upgrade costs a few hundred thousand (software only) and the 3i upgrade (to include hardware Tech Refresh2) costs $4.6 million per F-35. Concurrency costs are not included in the above numbers.

http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/budget/
http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/fmb/14pres/BOOKS.htm

Jack Northrop started building (not just making drawings of) flying wings in the 1920’s.

The N-1M flew in 1941 and the N-9M in 1942, the YB-35 in 1946, and the YB-49 in 1947.

He did not get his ideas from German designs.

IIRC the initial MD design called for a bleed-air driven lift fan. This was deemed to be too risky so they went with separate lift engines. It was these lift engines that lost it the bid slot, IMHO.

Somewhere I have an article that goes into in and has cutaways showing the lift engines.

To put into the simplest terms that even those that arrived here on the short bus can understand: NO

What the Russian Scientist did was come up with a theory and some calculations of what if would take to achieve a low enough RCS to be tactically significant. Unfortunately, they were not able to further develop, prove, and take advantage of his theories.

People & governments have been trying to hide from and fool radar since the day it was first turned on. It was not something that the Russians started.

Think of it this way… Who invented the airplane? Without thinking the first name in your mind will be the Wright Brothers. Why? Simple as they were the first to make it work. Can you remember the hundreds of people that studied flight going back hundreds of years? Of course not since they could not make it work.

The same hold true for stealth.

Today the “SE” is the “regular” Eagle.
Recently Saudi Arabia forked out the cash to develop the “SE” transforming this new version into the “regular future Eagle offer”.

I think you are confusing the F-15SA with the F-15SE.

Much of the avionics in the SE are not in the SA including the data fusion, active jammers, large display, etc. Then there are the airframe improvements (RCS, etc).

Wow, Spudman is all but calling Korea for Boeing. I can hear corks pop in STL from here.

Nope, just stating the obvious which is that Boeing had a huge advantage going in and that in no other contest will it enjoy that same advantage.

Even though the F-35 is the better plane, this contest is Boeing’s to lose. Boeing is in a unique position that they held some wildcards in their favor that do not appear in any other F-35 contest:

1. South Korea uses the F-15SK already so they have an infrastructure head start.
2. South Korea plans on an indigenous LO platform
3. This contest is to replace SK’s older series of fighters, not its current frontline fighters.
4. The F-15SK/SE are capable of dealing with NK considering #2 & #3
5. The contest is heavily cost and schedule dependent.

Boeing will not benefit from these criteria in other contests. Nobody looking at the F-35 is also an F-15E+ customer (besides Singapore and it looks like they are going for the F-35B for STOVL reasons).

With all that being said, the F-35’s loss in this contest (if it happens) will not greatly affect other F-35 contests as the F-15/18 does not enjoy this unique set of criteria.

Gen5 airplanes do not have a magical ability to detect a Gen5 adversary.

Two oppsing Gen5s in EMCON listen-only mode could fly past each other and never know it.

EODAS – like devices should pick it up within 10nm or so.

They could have saved a lot of money and received a lot more airplane simply leaving the F-22 in production.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-f-35-uss-200-144812833.html

The F-22 cannot do the mission of the F-35

–no 2k Internal weapons
–no IRST
–no FLIR
–no STOVL
–no Navel version
–not Exportable
–Difficult to upgrade avionics
–Much higher lifetime costs (the largest singe cost factor) would wipe out any development and acquisition cost savings.