Jason SimondsSome actual news in the thread, rather than supposition would be appreciated, I thought…
Anyone want to guess how many “test points” might have been hit?
Jason SimondsI read them just fine. DSCA lists FMS sales.
FMS means – Foreign Military Sales, ie: the exchange of money for goods or services…
Excess defence articles, might be deemed as a gift, depending on your view of things. I wasn’t referring to Excess Defence Articles with that list…
Jason Simondsa few points,
> India is already a overmatch for pakistan,
> when was the last time you sold anything worth more than a couple of million $ to pakistan ? mid 80’s ?
The last time? How about March 2010? Here are the DCSA announcements back to 2006.
$78m. Refurbishment and purchase of Oliver Perry class frigate. 2010.
$100m “Support of technical services”. 2010.
$115m AH-1F Cobra helicopter upgrade/refurbishment. 2008.
$75m. F-16 Electronic warfare self protection pods (AIDEWS). 2007.
$185m. TOW-II missile system. 2006.
$161m. Harris VHF/HF advanced radio systems. 2006.
$650m. F-16 weapons package. 2006.
$151m. F-16 FALCONUP/STAR upgrade package. 2006.
$1.3b. F-16 MLU upgrade package for F-16 aircraft. 2006.
These are just the FMS announcements dating back until 2006 that have turned into confirmed contracts. “Excess Defence Articles” and direct commercial sales with US contractors are completely separate…
$2.815 BILLION just in these announcements alone. Add to that, acquisition of 18x new build, Block 52 F-16C/D’s, 8c refurbished P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft, plus a plethora of helicopters (Cobra, B212 and Iroquois helos, night vision equipment etc) and other platforms and the price tag for US systems provided to Pakistan in the last 4 years alone, tops $5 BILLION easily.
The USA has provided Pakistan with PLENTY of support in recent years. Not as much as Pakistan may want perhaps, but they HAVE done a lot…
Jason Simondsem745 , the Dassault Rafale is not a stealth aircraft and was never intended to be .
Its RCS from up front and clean is 0.1m2 ( 10 times less than a clean M2000 , data from Dassault) .
A Rafale with 6 Micas and a supersonic central fuel tank has a RCS of less than 1m2 . A F-16 with a similar load is having a RCS of 6m2 , a F-15 18m2 , a SU-27 16m2 .
Is that a Have Glass II modified F-16, or a standard one?
I’m sure you are fully aware of this modification, Doctor…
:rolleyes:
Jason Simondsexcept signature management doesnt work like that, you cant just splash ram around or all planes would just be covered with the stuff
Course you can. Don’t you know that RAM itself is an absolute “cure all” as long as it is applied to a European or Russian aircraft?
It of course achieves absolutely nothing on a US manufactured aircraft, but on a French aircraft…
In fact you could probably apply it to the side of a French barn made from pure stainless steel and it would be less observable than any US manufactured aircraft…
:rolleyes:
Jason SimondsUS Navy proceeding with Boeing F/A-18 deal
* Pentagon leaders said satisfied by 10 pct price cut
* Multiyear deal ensures St Louis production through 2013
* Gives Navy options if Lockheed’s F-35 delayed further
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy plans to proceed with a multiyear deal to buy 124 Boeing Co F/A-18 fighter jets after securing a 10 percent price cut that satisfied top Pentagon leaders, sources familiar with the decision said on Thursday.
The Navy is due to send documents to Congress in the coming days explaining the multiyear agreement, which is expected to cost about $5.3 billion in total, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record.
That amounts to a per-plane price in the low $40 million range for each fighter, excluding government furnished equipment, said one source. Including that equipment, the price per plane will be about $50 million, well below the $57 million price listed on a Navy website about the twin-engine fighter.
Boeing and its backers in Congress have been pushing for another multiyear contract because it gives the company a more stable funding source and shores up jobs in local economies.
This agreement would secure the St. Louis production line of the fighter — which Boeing is also aggressively marketing overseas — through fiscal 2013. The U.S. government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
The deal also gives the Navy a fallback option if more problems arise with the next-generation F-35 fighter being built by Lockheed Martin Corp to replace older model F/A-18s and other fighter jets.
The Pentagon this year restructured the $300 billion Lockheed program, pushing back by two years the date at which the Navy will be able to start operating the new planes.
“It does keep leverage on Lockheed,” said one congressional aide who is closely tracking the Navy’s talks with Boeing.
Shares of Boeing, trading at $69.30 just before news of the Pentagon’s satisfaction with the deal, briefly rose to $69.85 before giving up those gains.
DEAL TO COVER FOUR YEARS, OPTION FOR FIFTH
Officials at the Navy and Boeing declined to comment on the Pentagon’s decision to proceed with the multiyear agreement.
Boeing has said its latest proposal would result in 10 percent cost savings from the previous multiyear deal. It also vowed to continue delivering both the fighter and electronic attack models of the F/A-18 to the Navy on time and on budget.
Boeing spokesman Philip Carder said the company would continue to provide information to the Navy and Pentagon as it weighed a multiyear contract.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates was disappointed with Boeing’s initial offer, telling lawmakers it fell short of the 10 percent savings needed to justify a multiyear agreement.
But Boeing later increased the cost savings in its offer, paving the way for a deal with the Navy, the sources said.
The agreement will run for four years — from fiscal 2010 through 2013 — but includes an option for a fifth year, according to the sources following the discussions.
It will also allow some variation in the number of jets to be bought each year to give the Navy more budgeting flexibility, but firmly caps the total number at 124.
The Navy said on Monday it had asked Congress for more time to work out a multiyear agreement with Boeing, saying that it was still working through issues with top Pentagon leaders.
Defense companies like multiyear contracts because they provide a more stable basis for mapping out company investments and earnings in future years. A four- or five-year deal allows companies to buy materials in bulk and invest more heavily in facilities, allowing them to pass savings on to the Pentagon.
From the Pentagon’s viewpoint, such fixed-price deals make sense because they can insulate the government against cost overruns, as long as the contracts are structured properly.
But one former defense official said multiyear agreements sometimes include too many clauses that allow companies to pass unexpected costs — such as spikes in commodity prices or higher labor costs — back to the government. An earlier F/A-18 multiyear deal delivered actual cost savings far below the 10 percent rate that was promised, said the official.
Defense analyst Loren Thompson said the multiyear deal posed a possible threat to the aircraft-carrier variant of Lockheed’s F-35 fighter, because it is due to be produced in smaller numbers than the Air Force and Marine Corps variants.
“The F/A-18 is potentially a threat to the carrier version of the F-35 because it’s a potential alternative,” he said.
Jason SimondsStrangely none of the things he supposedly says, according to you above, are in the article as published…
No but they are part of his entire argument. His entire argument is not present in this article either. As I mentioned earlier he is equally as scathing of the F-15, F-22, Eurocanards, Russian fighters and indeed anything that doesn’t meet his ideal vision of what a combat aircraft should be.
Just because he didn’t add that in this article, doesn’t mean he doesn’t hold the opinion…
It may be that he indeed does hold those opinions. However to dismiss this article as more of the same, when those particular positions are not actually expressed in the article, is stretching it and suggests that you have a tendancy to reject things out of hand if they do not immediately agree with your opinion or come from those commentators you have a pre-defined opinion of.
Not a very balanced viewpoint.
When he says things like this:
Consider the following. If one accepts every performance promise the Defense Department currently makes for the aircraft, the F-35 will be both overweight and underpowered. At a 49,500 pound air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight ratio for a new fighter. At that weight and with just 460 square feet of wing area for the Air Force variant, it will have a ‘wing-loading’ of 108 pounds per square foot. Fighters need large wings relative to their weight to enable them to maneuver and survive. The F-35 has a wing loading much like the appallingly unmaneuverable F-105 ‘Lead Sled’ that took huge losses over North Vietnam in the Indochina War.
Which is a direct quote from that article, it is the precursor that he uses to expand upon what a fighter should be in his opinion.
As to an “unbiased” light, well I’m hardly Robinson Crusoe there either, because he compares an F-35 with an enormous takeoff weight (because of it’s large internal fuel capacity) to aircraft in an “air to air” configuration only.
Load an F-16 up with 18400lbs of fuel and an air to air weapons load and consider T:W once again, but of course he never does that… I am not rejecting things “out of hand” but rather an opinion he has expressed for years. There is NOTHING different in this article than any other he has contributed to, or been asked about for years now.
Anything worthwhile in that article? Not that I saw. If his “solution” were to be considered the aircraft configuration I mentioned earlier would be the sole air combat solution for the USAF.
But first, why don’t you ask Pakistan how an F-16A with nothing but a pair of Sidewinders, a gun and practically no sensors or external fuel would fare in modern air warfare?
Jason SimondsThere’s nothing “totally different” about this article at all. Simply more the same ill-informed rubbish that Winslow Wheeler has been putting out for years.
If you were to rely soley on his opinion about combat aircraft, then F-16A’s with a pair of Sidewinders, no radar other than for navigation purposes, no EO/IR sensor systems, no EW systems, no LO measures and no external fuel would be the epitome of air combat capability…
He hates the F/A-18, F-22 and F-15 with an equal passion to the F-35 and I suspect if pressed, he’d denounce every other air combat aircraft in the world too.
The unpalatable fact (to him and those like-minded) of modern air combat is that you NEED radar, EO/IR sensors, EW, data-link capabilities and beyond visual range missile systems to stand a chance of surviving.
In future, survivability will continue to combine these capabilities along with other features, likely to include LO, “supercruising” capability, hypersonic weapon systems and directed energy weapon system.
In the face of hypersonics and DEW, comparisons of agility, wing-loading and thrust to weight are going to look even more asinine then they already are…
Jason SimondsNow, can you call the results achieved by F-22s under these circumstances as lie? Nope, they are genuine. Can you now automatically assume that Raptors are so much superior as the score says? Hardly, scores like that can only be achieved under special circumstances, something no pilot will tell you.
I am expecting few dedicated fanboys to jump on me because of this but that alone is hardly enough to persuade me on the contrary.
Tremendously lop sided score are obviously not possible.
Oops, what’s that F-15’s have achieved over 100 actual air to air kills, by multiple air arms, not all of whom, enjoy the advantages that USAF pilots have and yet the F-15 series has not suffered a single loss in A2A combat?
Obviously those figures must be fudged too…
Jason SimondsGuess…
🙂
Jason SimondsI thought the USAF F-15C was to integrated onto the centre line hard point?
That is what Boeing is doing for the F/A-18E/F IRST installation. I haven’t heard that they are doing the same for the Eagle.
Jason SimondsTransfer- or ferry-range is the maximum possible under the most favourable conditions and demonstrated by test-pilots only.
For a combat mission with a limited weapons-load that value is halved most of the time and will be reduced further when not just a hi-hi-hi profile only. 😉
Precisely. D*ck measuring contests in relation to range or combat radius are pointless, because there ARE so many variables.
Manufacturer data is best case scenario, designed to attract sales. It does not reflect on the true capability, which is why most Countries request commercial in confidence data on the platforms and assess them, before signing up, rather than basing their decisions off website data…
Jason SimondsWe’re they delivered with the F100-229’s or the original F110-129C’s?
And wasn’t there going to be an IRST?
Yep. You can see it just above the Sniper XR pod in this photo. It is the L-M long wave IRST designed for the F-14D, though probably updated…
Lockheed Martin calls the system “Tiger Eyes” and South Korea ordered it for it’s F-15K’s too.
Jason Simondslol!!! So it goes the same for F35 of course…??
Remind me what percentage of required F35 testing has been performed to date will you. roflmao.
As seems to be the fashion at the moment: Pot = Kettle = sferrin.
Flight testing is about 4%.
However there are many other aspects to the test program and do you really want to discuss software modelling, lab testing, rcs pole testing, live fire testing etc, ground and vibration testing, individual supplier testing of their products, etc etc?
Jason SimondsETs can be dropped if needed.
Nic
Some. Not all….
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