Before you go commenting on my attention span I strongly suggest you read the entire thread. It has nothing to do with the raptor and nothing to do with what is and is not included in a certain accounting bucket.

The question remains, why spend upwards of $150 million each for more of yesterday’s plane when what is on hand is sufficient and there is a need for so many other military items but they can’t be bought due to Tiffy sucking up money.

Well that’s the problem, “Upwards of $150m” you see that figure is wrong…

Now English may not be your first language so do you actually mean it costs more than $150M??
If you were to show us how you got to that figure and what date/exchange rate you think your using. Then we could explain where your going wrong.

Once you see where the mistake is, then we are all set to discuss the thread topic without you being hampered by simple mathematical errors.

Cheers

Cheers

Sorry Jackonicko you are just as guilty as nhampton of not comparing aplles-to-apples.

You are not comparing costs is the same years & disengenously applying more favorable later year exchange rates to earlier years costs.

Well its easily fixed – you do the math and show the most favourable rates vs the least favourable and then we can see what figures/dates that you are ‘preferring’.

Perhaps you will find those two figures are not so different that you could confuse flyaway cost with total program cost, which are very different.:cool:

I would certainly clear a lot of the confusion up, failing that go here Flyaway vs Program cost calculator

Cheers

Source Airshows UK

Looks like a neat set-up, I wonder when/if the double bomb racks will be trialled?.

and the Saudi Typhoon with the ‘different’ colour scheme.

cheers

In short lesson learned from the F-22 Program. Have been incorporated into the F-35 Program.:cool:

lol like not committing to production till adequate testing has been completed or the lesson hasn’t been learnt

Is it acceptable for one third of your f-22 not being combat coded because they are pre-stable production designs that are a nightmare to maintain.

Oh well, we shall see if the most aggressive flight testing schedule to ever run concurrently with production actually works, and what a brave decision to do it on the biggest military program too. man you have to be very confident or totally stupid.

Cheers

I’ve been reading this thread with some interest, where you are arguing the merits of aircraft with regard to other aircraft.
Pitting each ones strengths to the others perceived weaknesses, but there is an elephant in the room everyone’s ignoring.

Presently:-
The JSF is a fine plane on paper, but it needs to be translated into a real aircraft with a real price before these arguements are any use.

There are lots of conflicting price estimates for this aircraft, with the Manufacturer tending to quote at the low end (not that surprising:D).

There are recent comment that are ringing alarm bells to me regarding the JSF’s current status, so I thought I’d post what I think the present situation is.

The Joint Strike Fighter’s program chief warned Aviation Week in an interview that the JSF is under threat because of the second engine.

Forcing the program to fund development of the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 from within the existing JSF budget would “take 50-80 tails out of the program” over the next five years, says the program executive officer (PEO), Marine Corps Brig. Gen. David Heinz.

The alternate engine is not that expensive in relation to the program.

The alternate engine program is expected to need an additional $900 million through 2013 to complete the development of the F136 engine.

Funding the F136 within the existing budget would require cutting six aircraft from the 30 planned in Fiscal 2010, Heinz says. This would make aircraft in subsequent years more expensive, pushing back international purchases and compounding the problem because the partners could not afford early aircraft, he says.

“We would never get to 200 tails [a year]. We would build out to around 100, under-utilize the tooling and not get down the learning curve,” the PEO says. “I worry about taking tails out of the program because it will get so expensive the partners will start to pull back.”

The big problem:-
What is worrying about these quotes is the knife edge the JSF is currently on.

If the number of aircraft cut from the program is more than 50-80 or the budget gets blown out by more than $1B, then the program is in danger of the F-22 death spiral.
This is how close the JSF program is to collapse, $1B is being touted to send it over the edge, with several years till real production $1B is not going to be enough.

Now add the current financial crisis, the troubled US economy, add the UK’s reluctance to fund the Tranche 3 typhoons, and its very tight military budget, and the program doesn’t look like it can handle any bumps in the road.

These bumps in the road are part of all aircraft production and they start out small, such as the tiny number of flight tests carried out so far, delays and cost blow outs are guaranteed.

Now the big question – what will give?.:-

Clearly the program is the USA’s only option to replace the current aircraft, so its cancellation is only a remote possibility (at this time).

I think the cost vs capability is the only variable they can play with, with capability of the aircraft in the early marks suffering badly.

The airframes are a given, flight testing has been cut and cut again, so can’t be cut much further, Training, avionics and software are in the firing line.

So I expect a very cut down version to be produced with the capabilities ‘promised’ later, much later.

Export prospects:-

The export numbers originally projected will be cut, the UK may halve its requirement, they know attrition reserves can be bought cheaper later!!, so they are going to get a bare minimum to service the carriers.

The northern Europeans are now getting cold feet;) with delaying tactics to see what the price/capability/schedule is going to be all three are moving in the wrong direction so I do not see increases in exports.

The US is under the same pressure, the danger signs everyone is looking for are more legacy aircraft ordered in the interim and that’s already started.

Future:-
So the once rosy future of the JSF is looking more than a little wilted, its running on a knife edge, and the program partners are looking very uneasy.

Only adding the money now will stop the slide, I think its already started and will take another enormous investment to keep it on track.

The final big question – Is there enough money available to pull this project from this death spiral, what would the US afford up and over the $1B being touted.

Just my take on it.

Cheers

John

Nice thanx for the vid….

Here is an old Super-Hornet video..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-_OWMDN64M

Thanks for that. so 6500lbs a respectable load to be throwing around, I couldn’t help but notice the large toe out on the fuel tanks and weapons, how do asymmetric loads work with such a setup?, IIRC the Typhoon has been trialling asymmetric configurations last year.

I know the load out for the Typhoon display isn’t really a militarily useful loadout i.e.the centre line tank would be replaced by a designator and two fuel tanks would be added instead of two Bombs.

I believe it was just a very heavy configuration they could show off, at least the heaviest till storm shadow get passed. Don’t know the exact figures for the weights of the featured Typhoon display anyone what to add it all up?.

Cheers

Now…Why did Norway choose F-35?

Yes that’s what were all wondering.. if all the relevant details could have been gathered from a PPT presentation, and vague promises taken as truth then all bidders should have been able to bid on the same terms..

Its not the result its the how the decision was made, was it a fair and equitable process and if not, why not?

cheers