How much were you guys quoted again???
Stealth fighters cheap at $140m
- Ian McPhedran
- From: Herald Sun
- August 25, 2010 12:00AM
The F35 Joint Strike Fighters are fifth-generation jets.
Source: Supplied
AUSTRALIA will pay a "fly away" price of less than $60 million each for up to 100 of the world's most advanced stealth fighter jets.
But the total will be more than double that for a package that includes weapons, sensors, training and lifetime support for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter.
At $140 million, the single-seat jets will be cheaper than the 24 two-seat Super Hornets bought by the Howard government for $6.6 billion or more than $220 million each.
The multi-role jet is powered by the biggest fighter engine ever built, which propels it at almost twice the speed of sound and it is virtually invisible to radar.
In addition to stealth, the aircraft is completely fly-by-wire with electric controls, fully networked with pilot voice recognition and a helmet mounted display offering "see through" features that enable the pilot to even look down through the jet.
Australia is buying up to 100 jets from the US Air Force under a so-called foreign military sales deal.
For the first time the aircraft maker, Lockheed Martin, has provided a "firm" price to Australian taxpayers in 2010 dollars.
During a briefing at Lockheed Martin's huge state-of-the-art JSF factory at Fort Worth in Texas, project chief Tom Burbage revealed that Australia, as one of nine global partners, would pay less for its planes than Israel, which has ordered 20 of the fifth-generation fighters.
"Your average cost of buying your fleet of aeroplanes will be at that number ($60m) or maybe slightly below it," Mr Burbage said.
Israel last week said it was buying 20 JSFs for a total outlay of $2.75 billion or about $140 million each based on an initial fly-away cost of $92 million, the same figure as early Australian aircraft.
Mr Burbage also revealed that the hourly flying cost of the JSF would be about 20 per cent below the RAAF's fleet of F/A-18 Hornet fighters.
"That has been fairly stable for the past two or three years," he said.
The first two RAAF jets will be delivered in 2014 when pilots will train on them at Eglin air force base in Florida.
The initial operational squadron of 14 planes is due in service by 2018.
Mr Burbage said the biggest challenge for the program was managing the global supply chain for aircraft components.
Up to 70 per cent of costs come from the supply chain that includes manufacturing centres in many countries, including $120 million for 180 projects in Australia so far.