The code is written in Ada – Ada 95 I believe. The OS, at least for parts of the system, is Green Hills Integrity RTOS. The actual development environment is Green Hills AdaMULTI.

I happen to know this because I’m very familiar with Green Hills products from working in embedded systems. I’ve worked with MULTI for C and assembly for processors like SuperH and ARM. It’s a very nice IDE with integrated support for probes, cpu emulators, and hardware debugging.

Oh and Ada is not really archaic, it’s IMO overly complex but it is in current use in lots of military systems. It’s just very uncommon in the civilian world.

I guess you can tell this from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in your time?

That, and because I find it unlikely anyone would install a radar sideways in an aircraft.

The F-22 radar , the AN/APG-77 is using 2000 modules providing 4w each (8000w in total)
http://www.f-22raptor.com/af_radar.php

Now , according to Thalès , it seems that the RBE2 is using 838 modules rated in between 10 to 20w each but they don ‘t want to say yet . That would give a total output power of 8380w or 16760w (which is more than the APG-77).
It seems that the correct number is around 10kw , so 20% more than the -77 .
It is not surprising when one look at the calender , column “years” .

That site you linked is talking about the original APG-77 from 1998. Their “4 or more watts” is just a guess anyway, and no public source has any idea how many watts each element of the current APG-77(V)1 can handle.

Maybe when they Thales manages to develop a radar that is competitive with the APG-80 they can start contemplating one that can compete with the APG-77. Someday. 😉

I remember reading (can’t give source now but is was US military or political) that the benefits accruing from 2 suppliers were estimated to be in the $billions.

If it worked so well before, why not do it again?

Exactly. The benefits are huge and the cost is comparatively trivial. Gates’ justification for canceling the F136 is that it the F-35 development budget can’t afford it. The remaining cost of F136 development is something like $300 million. If the F-35 is that close to the edge, then there’s no reason to continue; that’s a tiny fraction of the total cost overruns the program has incurred so far.

And they arrived at their figures using methodologies using previous aircraft acquisitions, rather than what was actually being spent on the F-35. These issues have been addressed here before, (weeks and months ago), so it’s asinine to keep beating that dead horse.

What dead horse? You keep saying the LRIP airframes are declining in cost. And they are, it would be an even bigger mess if they weren’t. But that doesn’t have anything to do with what the production airframes will cost, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the maintenance cost. The simple fact is that JET I/II, the NavAir study, and the GAO have all made cost projections which are not being proved wrong, and the only argument you have boils down to a fact-free denial by the people in charge of the project.

The issue I have is with your failure to distinguish between increased, and ever increasing.

The correct phrase is “ever increasing”. It’s not as if it just increased once. Every GAO report on the subject has shown an increased acquisition and O&M cost for the F-35 compared to the previous one. Every program review (JET etc) has done the same.

Yes the cost of the LRIP aircraft are decreasing as numbers increase, that is to be hoped. Doesn’t change the fact that the flyaway cost of the aircraft is more than was originally estimated, more than the revised estimate from 2005, more than the one from 2007, more than the one from 2009, ad nauseum.

Oh really? In what way? Would you like to expand on that, explain what you mean?

They are apples and oranges because of the different payloads, different fuel reserve requirements, landing on a CV vs on a runway, etc.

Ignoring speed and payload difference also mentioned. And, as mentioned, comparing the avionics of 2 aircraft of different generations isn’t exactly a straight comparison (esp. when the discussion started out on performance) Clearly, one would rather not have to overfly an enemy airbase to fire runway cratering ammunitions, but if you had to would you rather be in a Tornado than in a Rhino ?

Comparing the avionics of the two is completely relevant. The question is not “which one was a better aircraft for its day”, the question is which one is a better fit for UK requirements today. Given the much better avionics, wider ordnance selection, air to air capability and much lower operating and maintenance cost of the Super Hornet, the answer is clearly not the Tornado, regardless whether the Tornado has a speed advantage in certain profiles.

As far as which is better for that particular mission, as you say I would prefer not to do it at all since it is an obsolete and excessively dangerous way to do runway interdiction. The Super Hornet with its better ECM would likely be more survivable however. But the better question is, which aircraft is better able to carry out a runway denial mission regardless of specific ordnance, and in that case the Super Hornet wins.

Reliability and Capability cannot reduce the cost , The F-22 still would remain (no matter how much money you throw into it) quite expensive to own and operate as compared to a F-16 or f-35 . With the F-35 they get to replace the F-16 and the F-16’s and also the Harrier and make up the BULK of the USAF and preserve some form of squadron strenght they have now.

Realize, though, that the F-35 is more expensive both to purchase and to operate than the F-16, Harrier, or F/A-18A-D. This will necessarily have an impact on fleet sizes.

The thing you have to look at is whether it’s really worth it to have every single fast jet in your fleet carry around the weight and expense of first-day-of-war stealth. I agree that the USN needed a manned VLO airframe; the saner thing to do would have been to upgrade the F-22 for the AF and buy it in larger numbers, develop a stealthy carrier-based strike fighter for the Navy, and continue procuring updated 4th gen types for the bulk of USN, USMC, and USAF squadrons. What we have instead is a mess.