Its not just the contracts. They are InFact trying to compare cost of Rafale and F-35. Unless all those Rafale cost are also without engines..

If you are talking about the FY2017 F-35A Flyaway price of $99mil, that’s with an engine.

Using the announced contract prices of the F-35 and Rafale, the F-35 is cheaper.

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If South Korea had gone with the original 60 for $10 billion then the price per would drop to $180 mil (weapons included).

The Japanese contract has a higher than normal price (just as the F-2 was) because they wanted to build them locally thereby losing the economy of scale pricing the rest of the buyers enjoyed. The original Indian “build at home” contract negotiations failed for the same reason.

Even so… 103 mil per plane is just journalist guesswork.

No guess, that is what several sources said.

BS. Going from barely 1 Rafale per month to 3 per month and you think it doesn’t get cheaper? What are you on, seriously?

Nic

I did not say that… or anything like it.

Economy of scale is what makes the F-35 economically feasible. btw, Rafale deals for 24 is not over the course of one year, but several, so no 1 per month becoming 3. Dassault will stretch them out to keep teh line open as long as possible.

“Subsidized ” was the wrong word, sorry.

If the “bare fighter” cost to India is $103 million but the French government pays a lot less, that means that as a customer I don’t care what France pays for theirs, I care about what I am getting charged. Yes, the F-35 has had more than it’s fair share of cost overruns, but as an FMS customer, I can still buy an F-35 today for less than France will sell me a Rafale. I don’t have to pay for any Dev fixes (thank you USG) and certainly don’t have to pay an additional $50 mil per plane for “customization”.

I can’t read French, but the Rafale wiki says that the “Flyaway” cost of a F3+ Rafale as of 2010 is $110 million per this PDF:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120130003146/http://www.ccomptes.fr/fr/CC/documents/RPA/1_conduite-des-programmes-armement.pdf

But another doc from 2013 says $80 mil.

Now, take a look at the deal as a whole.

Let’s look at FMS F-35 sales and Rafale exports.

India: $8.8 billion for 36
Egypt: $5 billion for 24
Qartar: $7 billion for 24
South Korea: $7.8 billion (with weapons) for 40 F-35s
Japan: $10 billion for 42 F-35s (most locally built)

Do the math, the F-35 is cheaper.

That was reported earlier in the week.

CPFH cost estimations for the F-35 have actually gone down in recent years as experience is gained and real world costs can be calculated. btw, the JSF SAR is looking at real world (2008-2010) F-16 costs. The data that you pointed to was from 2 years ago and only covered just that one year. The SAR report covers the entire program.

The F-16C/D CPFH figures were developed in a joint effort between CAPE and the Air Force Cost Analysis Agency. The figures have been normalized for comparison to the F-35A CPFH forecast. The starting point for the F-16C/D CPFH is an average of actual cost incurred for this fleet during FY 2008 through FY 2010. In order to enable the direct comparison of the CPFH figures, the actual F-16C/D CPFH is adjusted to reflect the cost of fuel, the number of flight hours forecast for the F-35A, and FY 2013 inflation indices. The F-16C/D figures include costs that F-16 shares with other Air Force platforms: Systems Engineering/Program Management (SEPM), maintenance training costs, certain software development efforts, and information systems. Costs for mission planning are included in the F-35A CPFH figure, but equivalent costs for the F-16C/D are not available, and no adjustment was made for this element of cost. Finally, the F-16C/D figures assume full funding of requirements consistent with the F-35A CPFH figures.

While you are entitled to your own opinion, the FACT is that a “bare fighter” cost of a Rafale (as offered to India) is more than a “Flyaway” FY2017 F-35, by $4 mil per airframe.