That only makes sense when the F-35 is considerably more expensive than F/A-18E/F.. which is exactly what I think..

Did you read the article? The Canadians are referring to an interim capability and even the Liberals won’t try and call an all out replacement buy for SH as interim. Nor do they have the money to…

Secondly the budget woes for Canadian Defence are very real. The following from the 2016 budget is a good example.

“In order to make sure that we have the funds available at the time when they need those funds,” the finance minister told reporters about the defence numbers, “we’ve re-profiled some money in the fiscal framework, which is currently in the 2015-16 to 2021 period. And we’ve re-profiled it to future years so that when we need the money, the money will be in the fiscal framework.”

“Re-profiled” is a word only a finance official could love. Here, it really means the money is parked in the beyond. But however numinous, the amount is still impressive. In his two tries, Flaherty moved a total of $6.7 billion in procurement funds off the page in this way. Morneau has now added another $3.7 billion.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-budget-defence-milewski-1.3506670

Finally we know that when the Canadians are looking to purchase, sometime in the early to mid 2020s, is when the F-35 will be at its lowest price point. The Danish assessment indicates costing for both and just like the Danes, the Canadians would be required to pay FMS fees on any SH purchase but not on the F-35 (as they are for now still a member of the industrial participation program).

If they buy SH now they buy with the intent to do what the RAAF did and use the SH as interim lift. What an interim buy also allows the Liberal Government to do is save face by preserving capability now while acquiring a better aircraft in 2025-28 for less cost but with more capability.

Seems the Liberals are getting ready to abandon their pledge to have an open competition. Buying Super Hornets as an “interim” measure would be pretty darn shady. For one thing nobody could honestly believe the Super Hornet would only be a short term solution, but at this point an F-35 ordered today would arrive as a Block 3F aircraft in 2018-2019. No need at all for an “interim” fighter.

It depends on how many they plan to buy. If they purchase 24 and use them to extend the age of the current classic fleet through fleet management it may work. The Canadians were never going to be able to afford a full replacement until 2022 anyway so as a stop gap this may work and the conversion time between a classic and SH is 5 rides, which allows a core group of aircrew to convert rapidly. The issue becomes one of sustainability though. Do they maintain the jets themselves or contract that direct to Boeing? How about facility upgrades, the F-35 would fit within the same footprint as the classic Hornet while the SH is substantially bigger.

Looking forward though, the issue remains that the F-35 will be the only politically viable fighter jet to purchase when the entire classic Hornet fleet needs to be replaced. That the Liberals are unwilling to admit this should not be surprising…

If we apply the “more expensive” statement then yes, but as said these figures aren’t necessarily correct or up to date. The F-35’s 55 bln USD figure is already a few years old and its SDD phase has yet to be concluded, we have seen further delays and technical challenges which certainly didn’t reduce the costs.

The US$55 billion is then year dollars that has been calculated from the latest SAR. As for more mkoney being spent, if you look at the SAR it is very clear that the vast bulk of money has been spent and from today to 2021 are the final tying off of the program. For example, the F135 SDD funding is all but finished and the SDD F135 program closes in 2017.

One addition that needs to be added here is that paid for costs are typically not adjusted for inflation, that typically applies to projected costs at a given time vs actual cost at a later time.

That is in line with the whole comparison being somewhat pointless anyway…

They are moot in the way that they mainly relate to sutainement costs, which invitably incure over the life cycle of an aircraft. The principal error people make wrt the Typhoon programme is that Tranches aren’t indicative for capabilities per se. The changes introduced on T2 and subsequent T3 aircraft maily cure obsolescences, address manufacturing defincies discovered during manufacturer or from in-service and add provisions to allow the aircraft to grow further.

Fair enough.

but you have to keep in mind that the F-35 is over a decade younger than any of the three ECDs. Certain technologies simply didn’t exist by the time the ECDs were conceived and developed, so you effectively count in twice the cost for certain systems such as radars.

And that is before we consider one of the three airframes being capable of VL and all three having been designed with an RCS at least two orders of magnitude lower than any of the Eurocanards. While VLO stealth comes at a cost, we see from the Danish evaluation that it significantly increases survivability.

By that token you could also count a portion of the F-22’s development costs into that of the F-35, because without this advanced investment and development the F-35 would either be less advanced and capable, more expensive or a combination of both.

While I understand your point I disagree with it. There is very little that is common between the two aircraft, yes some F-35 systems are derivatives of F-22 but the difference between their SDD periods is so much that full new dev programs were required. But where do we stop when counting dev costs for any airframe given the technologies all came from somewhere? Gripen clearly benefited from Viggen, Rafale would not be the same aircraft today were it not for the Miage 2000 and I am sure Eurofighter brought refined technologies from other European programs.

Even at Block 3F, however, the F-35 won’t be capable to perform the full range of missions that are being performed by its predecessors, which puts the often put forward argument of “Typhoon or Rafale not being FOC due to the lack of this or that” into a perspective. IOC and FOC declarations are made on base of the readiness of an aircraft, the logisitic system and the air- and ground crew to execute defined missions. This doesn’t require the aircraft to be capüable of performing all mission types envisaged in the longer term and that applies to virtually all modern combat aircraft. Furthermore requirements evolve and you can hardly call “not FOC” because a mission or capability, not even envisaged within the original requirements isn’t available or can’t be performed at a given time.

You have to define capability somewhere and FOC is a reasonably common method of doing so. Curious to know where you see differences between F-35 FOC and current USAF/USN/USMC 4th gen capabilities? Other than perhaps ALCM, I cannot see any other deficiencies and even with ALCM delivery the F-35 approaches the mission set differently.

Yep.

Thanks.

Does that mean death to the plans to revive the F-22?

It must be. Not that the F-22 was ever coming back but this has just placed the coffin into cement…

“Fiscal environment” is substantially different to a program not being fully funded. Which is it? If it is fiscal environment I would absolutely agree with you.

Fully funded is a relative term. The rebaseline pulled funding from the program by extending out SDD and LRIP. Yes that becomes more money overall but extending out the SDD phase and reducing LRIP buys inflates the program cost and directly influenced, and delayed, IOC and FOC timings.

The original contention however was that the F35 program suffered from similar financial (and political) issues as both the Typhoon and Rafale programs.
Such a contention is patently inaccurate.

We are clearly not going to reach a common position on this.

” http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2011/12/11/04015-20111211ARTFIG00186-rafale-pas-de-cadeau-fait-par-l-etat-a-dassault-aviation.php
http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2015/02/12/le-rafale-27-ans-d-attente_4575585_3234.html
https://www.senat.fr/questions/base/1993/qSEQ931203972.html
http://www.leparisien.fr/politique/defense-du-retard-dans-les-programmes-01-08-2001-2002338756.php#xtref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%24rct%3Dj%24q%3D%24esrc%3Ds%24source%3Dweb%24cd%3D8%24cad%3Drja%24uact%3D8%24ved%3D0ahUKEwj50NvRzonNAhXpB8AKHTdQDMMQFghWMAc%24url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.leparisien.fr%252Fpolitique%252Fdefense-du-retard-dans-les-programmes-01-08-2001-2002338756.php%24usg%3DAFQjCNHbSOqKaUYX1hmVYbySSkIIwXrgyA

That should cover the Rafale delays. Do you really need help for the Typhoon stuff?

I’ve read the first two via translate and will work though with the next two when I have more time. The first two are puff pieces, nor are they accurate.

As for Rafale delays, one of the Flight Global articles I quoted in the cost area is pretty clear on delays and the reasons for,

Budget delays by successive governments, lack of cost control, unplanned modifications and a reduction in the total requirement from 320 aircraft have all engendered “considerable financial consequences”, says the report. Development costs have risen by 30% since the programme was launched in 1989, it says. “Half of these occurred between 1988 and 1995, when cost controls were insufficient and contracts had neither cost limits nor constraints on series production timing”. The other half came from the “substantial modifications” to specifications and programme stretches.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/rafale-costs-likely-to-rise-if-production-rate-is-not-met-123052/

Given F-35 SDD has increased by approx 30% on original expectations there appears to be little difference between the two and both suffered at the hands of changing specifications. Remember the F-35 had a near three year delay due to requirements changes for the F-35B internal payload.

The timeframes are also pretty close as well if we look at USMC IOC as similar to the French Navy taking those first Rafales while the respective air forces declare IOC several years later.

So the National Assembly Financial committee attributes a lengthening of the program and specifications changes to program delays. Surprise, F-35 experienced exactly the same thing.

If you want an understanding of the early issues with the Rafale program I suggest reading the below report. It pretty accurately predicts the issues the Rafale was going to face in the market place as well as more realistic dev and production estimates.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD106.html

Didn’t prevent the US from spending huge sums for the F-35’s development, typically at the expense of other types. The money that is spent on the F-35’s development alone exceeds the development costs for the Rafale, Gripen and Typhoon combined and it was furthermore spent over a shorter duration of time! Add the previous investment into the F-22.

Let us look at some actual facts on development costings… I calculated these a couple of years ago for another forum but they are consistent still today.

Eurofighter dev costs are approximately Euro 22 billion. Figures are taken from here http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Feurofighter.airpower.at%2Ffaq.htm&langpair=de|en&hl=de&ie=UTF-8
and here [https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2sQwBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=Rafale+total+development+costs&source=bl&ots=foaA6eDhX4&sig=wq-xCFr0rGkU6ESeMbYxY_HxUZI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizzZjTp4nNAhVBI5QKHfobCEIQ6AEIVzAL#v=onepage&q=Rafale%20total%20development%20costs&f=false

I don’t believe the above figures includes all Tranche 3 costs but I’m sure someone can let us know how much that is so far.

Rafale total development costs to get to F3 is close to Euro 20 billion which given it covers both land and carrier based airframes is not bad. Figures are harder to come by but rough can be calculated here, https://translate.google.com.au/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.senat.fr%2Frap%2Fa13-158-8%2Fa13-158-813.html%23toc178&edit-text=&act=url
Here, https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/rafale-costs-likely-to-rise-if-production-rate-is-not-met-123052/
and here https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/french-funding-dispute-over-export-rafale-is-resolved-125712/
and again here, https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2sQwBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA231&lpg=PA231&dq=Rafale+total+development+costs&source=bl&ots=foaA6eDhX4&sig=wq-xCFr0rGkU6ESeMbYxY_HxUZI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizzZjTp4nNAhVBI5QKHfobCEIQ6AEIVzAL#v=onepage&q=Rafale%20total%20development%20costs&f=false
The last link above indicates total Rafale dev cost was less that ten percent of Eurofighter. The saving grace for Rafale is that industry paid 25% of initial dev costs although nothing for subsequent F2 and F3. Looking back at the lack of exports and reduced domestic orders that is probably seen as a poor investment.

Gripen is the hardest of all, the Swedes claim a figure of approx US$3.5 billion for total development, if you factor out the costs of airframe purchase. Figure is taken from the Wiki page. I don’t believe these numbers but I haven’t been able to find anything official to support or contradict them. It is a small limited capability aircraft that re-used a lot of existing parts though so could be accurate.

There are currency fluctuations all through that but if we take a Euro average of 1.2 to the US dollar since 1999 then total dev costs for the Eurocanards are approx US$54.5 billion… That is pretty close to the F-35 total SDD cost of US$55 billion in then year dollars.

From the F-35 SAR while we can see that most of that SDD money was spent from 2003 to 2012 the SAR does tell us that funding for F-35 SDD has been accounted back as far as 1994 and ends in 2021. That timeframe matches pretty close to that of both Rafale and Eurofighter.

So F-35 dev more expensive than Eurocanards myth busted. F-35 shorter time to spend money myth busted.

If you look at the “air superiority” link I provided on the previous page one may indeed wonder if the F-35 will be fully able to meet all threats post 2030… So perhaps that’s why they decided to go for “present day” threats?

They decided to go for present day threats because injecting a 5th gen like threat would have rendered the competition pointless.

As for enhancements, those are going to occur to existing airframes. We have already seen studies about F-35 and DEW as one example but I’m not sure what your beef is. The US has and wants to maintain a capability edge and continued investment in systems and technology allows that to continue. They have done the same thing to existing airframes and systems, upgrading their EW, radars, fielding decoys, adding DIRCM etc.

Why does sustainment cost to 2055 favor SH and/or Typhoon?

The cost of maintaining a platform that has been out of production for 25-30 years as the sole operator is fraught with risk. The RAAF example of the F-111 indicates quite clearly that maintaining a small fleet of aircraft after the primary customer has withdrawn them from service involved skyrocketing maintenance charges and drop in airframe availability. That is an airframe from 1973 to early 2000 with plenty of spare frames in the desert.