The A400 is a brand new platform is certainly better for a adpatating new technologies.
Anyway, I would trust Airbus any day of the week over an american compagny.

I’d say that adapting new technologies is often where the costs go up and the program slows down, but okay.

I wouldn’t trust or count on any contractor or air force to deliver a project on-time and underbudget. It happens sometimes, but often it doesn’t, and sometimes it’s through no fault of the parties involved. Italy and Portugal both dropped out of the program. Germany dropped its buy in 2002. The plane is being sold into some pretty stiff competition at a time of shrinking defense budgets, and it’s not a budget priced aircraft.

Maybe it does well, and maybe it doesn’t. Much depends on what happens down the road.

So why try to start a flame war when it’s not necessary?

Flex:

I don’t have the specs handy, but I think there have been some performance improvements over the H’s. Whether they’re worth the higher cost is something I don’t know.

If the cargo deck wasn’t still of a useful size, I’d assume the air force would have insisted on a new design when the C-130J was proposed (maybe someone else knows the full story here).

I don’t think the cargo deck became a huge issue until the army fixated on the stryker and its future combat system, and the argument there is still based on conjecture about what the FCS will look like. All that rigamarole about a force of quick deploying armored vehicles based on a single chassis that get protection from super strong, super light armor is still up in the air in our post-OEF world.

And I have read nothing, that the USAF doctrine about the need for visual ID was altered or dropped for the Raptor, so far.

ROEs depend on the nature of the conflict, with limited conflicts against weak enemies being the most restrictive. It wouldn’t make much sense to put a lot of effort into developing BVR systems if they wouldn’t be used BVR.

When were Pakistan’s 12 K-8s built?

Those figures agree with me and disagree with Dinger. I think Dinger might be in error with some of his figures.

Phil 🙂

The planned buy is in line with what I’ve seen in the news. The total program cost is an estimate I saw. If the program cost estimates that I have are off or there’s some issue about exchange rates, those are places where the figures would differ.

It’s not like I didn’t explicitly say what the calculation was based on.

Savage-Rabbit:

I’d take those ratios with a grain of salt.

A lot depends on the capabilities of the F/A-22 as a complete weapons system, and I doubt anyone is privy to much of that information yet. The tactics each side uses to employ or counter the new capabilities of the F/A-22 or Typhoon remain to be worked out. And both aircraft would be employed as part of a larger air warfare system if they ever tangled.

On the other hand, this is no fun if we don’t get to speculate…

Seems like you should look at the total cost of the Eurofighter program and divide by the expected number of aircraft that will be built. I saw one source with program costs at an estimated $71.5 billion for 620 aircraft. That works out to about 115 million per aircraft, assuming the buy isn’t cut or increased in the future.

In July of ’02, Austria ordered 24 aircraft for $1.75 billion, which works out to about $73 million per aircraft (that sounds like a bargain even against the latest F-15s).

Obviously whether the Eurofighter is a bargain compare to the F/A-22 depends on whether the F/A-22 lives up to its hype. If it can take out whole flights of Eurofighters in a mission without suffering a loss, then it’s probably worth the money.