F-35 Training costs

[pembroke]

Rarely do I stray here, I'm normally found elsewhere and the word "EASA" and training feature. Re. this week's Private Eye and the difference between the training costs of an OCU in UK vv training in the US. Apparently it will be 4.5m to train a pilot in the UK, compared with 1.5m in the US. It will also take away operational aircraft for training in the UK, with the US using spare training capacity , as well as training many other countries on this aircraft. Slightly contentiously is the RAF training that superior?

[GreenKnight121]

No, as what they are looking at is the cost of an establishing and maintaining an OCU divided by the number of pilots per year that will be trained there... there is no way that the number of pilots the RAF and FAA will be passing through will begin to get close to efficiently use an OCU... much less get close to fully-occupying the unit's capacity.

Due to training not only the much higher numbers of USAF/USN/USMC pilots but also significant numbers of international F-35 pilots, US training units can fully utilize their capacity, thus lowering the "cost-per-trainee" while providing the same level and quality of training.

[kintyred]

Ah yes, Green Knight but it's very important for the RAF to have the kudos of training its own. Couldn't possibly have those ex-colonial Johnnies teaching our boys. Anyway it would mean at least one less group captain, couple of wing commanders and several squadron leader jobs less. The tax payer will never notice a few extra million being squandered in an already hopelessly inefficient department.

[GreenKnight121]

However, if all (or even most) NATO F-35 users were to sign on to doing their training in Britain, then a UK-based OCU would actually be pretty efficient... and the "per-individual" cost would get pretty close to the "in-America" cost.