PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Future Carrier (Including Costs)
View Single Post
Old 3rd May 2006, 11:57
  #154 (permalink)  
LowObservable
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Far West Wessex
Posts: 2,580
Received 4 Likes on 2 Posts
The 2000 pound PW series was never (I believe) even an option for internal carriage. It's too long. The proposed Laser JDAM is an option as is a hypothetical precision JDAM with a seeker.
Internal 1000 pound JDAM has always been the baseline for the STOVL version (on the Boeing design, some of the bay capacity was eaten by the STOVL nozzles). There was some hope in 2003-04 that a 2K option would be available but it went away in the weight growth panic of 2004-05.
As for external fuel, it's not clear whether that has been taken off the USAF account or shifted to post-SDD.
As for the price issue, that depends on whether you talk about flyaway, total procurement cost (which I think is the source of the $110 m and may include spares/support for the LRIP aircraft) or program acquisition unit cost (which is total development + procurement + support divided by the total numbers of aircraft).
The real problem is that there is no fixed price until full rate production, by which time the UK will have bought most of its aircraft.
LowObservable is offline