Low Cost Combat Aircraft - are they really feasible ?

[Fonsini]

Bit of a ramble - so bear with me.

One area of military aviation that has always fascinated me is the increasing cost of developing, building, and supporting modern combat aircraft. With aircraft like the Gripen now representing the "low" end of the advanced combat aircraft market at an estimated $70m per unit and even an F-16 rolling in at around $80m depending on the support package, costs are spiraling, let's not even get started on the true unit cost of a Typhoon or an F-35.

One aircraft I have studied in some detail is the De Havilland Venom, a diminutive 1950s era fighter that in spite of a price tag that at today's prices would likely not find you a seat in a new Cessna yet was still capable of flying 1,000 miles unrefuelled, able to climb to 55,000 feet, and haul thousand pound weapons into combat. Such was the low cost of this aircraft that many of the final FB.4 variant were literally lifted over airfield perimeters by crane and dumped unceremoniously on scrap piles after just a couple of years service. They were seen as disposable.

I found an obscure analysis document a few years ago that listed the original unit cost of several aircraft converted to today's prices, and one that stuck in my mind was the A-4C Skyhawk analysis that priced out at just north of $2m today - and that for an aircraft with relatively modern(ish) equipment. Today we have aircraft like the Textron AirLand Scorpion - a sort of low cost A-10 made from off-the-shelf components and designed for those dirty wars that pilots in Africa and South America have so much experience of. The Scorpion appears to be the spiritual successor to aircraft like the Strikemaster and the A-37 Dragonfly and yet it still carries with it a unit cost of around $20m. An honorable mention also goes out to the Chinese/Pakistan JF-17 Thunder with its estimated $28m price tag.

So is it feasible to build a viable combat aircraft for $10m, or even $5m ? I know there are many, many variables - what type of combat aircraft, how many would you build, and for what mission - not to mention the fact that we now have guided weapons that cost a million dollars or more per unit. Then of course there is the question of finding pilots willing to fly such aircraft.

The aircraft this question brings to mind are types such as the SIAI Marchetti Warrior, the old A-1E Skyraider, the proposed Stavatti SM-27 (projected to cost $15m each), and the Super Tucano (at around $12m each). So do they now define the "low-point" and is it even feasible to try and define a low-point or are we effectively forced into buying larger, more technologically complex and therefore more expensive combat aircraft for any given mission. Finally, is there any technology in the pipeline that could dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of combat aircraft design and manufacture or is the era of truly low-cost combat aircraft at an end ?

I'd appreciate your thoughts.

[Planet Basher]

Cheap and less capable can be a good strategy as long as it takes into account that you would need more of them to be effective. A comparison would be the European tank battles of the second world war.

[switch_on_lofty]

I think that if you got a small group of pilots, engineers and designers together in a country with few barriers to testing and the willingness to certify aircraft on the mil register etc. then a lot could be achieved for a lot less than $12million a piece.
Pick some sort of light aircraft and start fitting sensors and weapons.
Question is what do you want to achieve? CAS with no air threat pretty much anything would do, maybe a UAV would be better otherwise DAS adds a fair bit (but is cheaper than buying a new plane and training a new pilot).
If you want to start pulling g and beating something else in a A-A fight then I think that it would start to get expensive e.g alpha jet, L-59 etc.
Who wants to buy them though? - a friend back from Africa said
"you can't get a big kickback on a cheap contract."

[Saintsman]

It's said that when buying a part for an aircraft you have to add a nought onto the price (I.E. a perfectly functional switch that would cost, say, £25, would cost £250). This is mainly down to certification / traceability costs (plus no doubt, profiteering).

The other big factor is scope change. A fortune is spent on designing something which is subsequently binned. All those costs need to be recovered and add to the final price.

So, if the aircraft was built to the original spec and the legislative requirements were eased, then yes, I'm sure that a cheaper aircraft can be built.

Not going to happen though, as the aircraft manufacturers are past masters at prompting scope change and inflating prices. Plus recruiting senior members of the armed forces to make sure it stays that way...

[highflyer40]

The quickest way to reduce the unit cost would be to remove the pilot. Drones on steroids will be the way of the future, you can have numerous units, and no aircrew at risk.

[Pontius Navigator]

The Venom had good range and payload in your example and comparable speed and altitude to contemporary opponents. Your Tucano example comes nowhere close and that is the rub.

Where there is only a small difference between types then numbers count. Today your Mach 2 penetrator could just blow through a swarm of cheap and cheerful unless they had modern weapons.

[4Greens]

The Venoms I flew couldnt make 55000 ft ever.

[KenV]

Maybe the Cessna Scorpion will answer this question. That airplane is, as you pointed out, (relatively) cheap both to buy and to operate, provides pretty good capability, and is entirely privately funded and developed. Kind of like Northrop's privately developed N-156 which turned into the F-5 Tiger, which was (relatively) cheap to buy and operate. Let's see if the Scorpion sells the way the F-5 did.

[melmothtw]

The quickest way to reduce the unit cost would be to remove the pilot. Drones on steroids will be the way of the future, you can have numerous units, and no aircrew at risk.

Not today it's not. UAVs don't remove the pilot, they just relocate him or her from the aircraft to the ground. In fact, the manpower needed to operate UAVs in the Reaper and Global Hawk classes far exceeds that of manned aircraft.

That may change in the future when UAVs do truly become autonomous, but not for many years yet (if at all).

Aircrew risk is another matter entirely, but there of plenty of young men and women (and some not so young) willing to take the chance.

[sandiego89]

It is the decades old high-low mix debate. First world nations have swung mostly to the high mix as it guarantess the best tools for any peer, or neer peer conflict. IF you knew your were going to be in decades of a low intensity war more of a low mix would indeed have been a good investment, but few have been willing to take that gamble. Squadrons of low aircraft would be fodder in a high intensity conflict. So we end up swatting flys with million dollar sledgehammers, because that is the tool we have.

Hindsight is much clearer, and at least in the USA we have seemed to need to re-learn the low lesson time and time again. We needed mudmovers in Korea, A-1s'/O-2's/Broncos/Mohawks/A-37s/AT-28s etc. in Vietnam/SE Asia, and could have still used something similar in SOME of today's fights.

I would like to see more emphasis on a low mix. A few squadrons of a modern turboprop or Scorpion type makes sense to me. I see no reason to not believe that we will continue to see lower intensity conflict.

I am also somewhat of a cynic on the military/industrial complex at least in the USA. Low cost, low number programs are more difficult to get congressional support. They involve less suppliers & create fewer jobs in fewer congressional districts and much less profit. "Gold plating" is also common as more comittees add nice to have requirements. Sad but true.

Could you build something cheaper? Sure you could. Whether you have the military and political support to do so is the question.

[Lonewolf_50]

I am also somewhat of a cynic on the military/industrial complex at least in the USA. Low cost, low number programs are more difficult to get congressional support. They involve less suppliers & create fewer jobs in fewer congressional districts and much less profit. "Gold plating" is also common as more comittees add nice to have requirements. Sad but true.

Could you build something cheaper? Sure you could. Whether you have the military and political support to do so is the question. This needs to get a sticky on it, as it applies to every acquisition program with which I am familiar.

[Sun Who]

'Low cost combat aircraft are they really feasible?':

Scorpion (http://www.scorpionjet.com/)

Depending on your anticipated threat, I'd argue - yes.

Sun

[Pontius Navigator]

Sun Zu etc, true. 4Greens, not knowing the Venom I accepted the OP. The Meatbox I flew in did 0.69 IIRC and 390. In the early 50s the Canberra made most fighters of the day obsolete.

The V-bombers did much the same for many high performance interceptors; it was the missile threat that caused the change to low level.

[ShotOne]

+1 to San Diego 89's post

[Fonsini]

The Venoms I flew couldnt make 55000 ft ever.

I mostly get my armchair information from "Venom, De Havilland Venom and Sea Venom, the complete history" by David Watkins, but that hardly puts me in a position to disagree with a pilot. Immense respect to you by the way.

Just for reference then - TG278 the Ghost trials Vampire for the Venom program took the world altitude record on 23rd March 1948 at 59,446 feet, albeit with tweaked wings.

De-fanged Venoms WG265 and WG275 were tested at 52,500ft for the high altitude reconnaissance role with clearance to 55,000 ft depending on fuel load (but not actually tested) - this was still deemed to be inadequate for service use and a subsequent plan for the Venom to achieve 60,000 ft with modified wingtips was shelved. (Watkins page 41).

I'm sure that in service with tip tanks, cannons etc the Venom couldn't get anywhere near that. But forgive me for quoting max performance numbers - I'm something of a Venom fanboy for reasons that aren't important here. I'll see if I can find some additional references but hopefully the above suffices.

Of more interest and of more relevance to this topic - the 1953 cost of a new production Venom in full combat spec was....£23,425 (Watkins p.13) which was cheap even by 1953 standards and approximately £600,000 at today's prices. Food for thought, build a Venom for 600k....anyone got any spare starter cartridges.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Retiring politicians and VSOs do not want non-executive directorships with cheapo, tin-pot little manufacturers in the back end of nowhere.

[Pontius Navigator]

Fonsini, similarly I believe a Wellington got to 42,000 ft; it wasn't going anywhere.

[t43562]

Perhaps low cost combat aircraft are possible in countries which are too poor and desperate to waste money on anything else.?

e.g. I understand (could be wrong) that helmet mounted sights were first tried out by the South African Airforce - trying desperately to find a way to make their Mirages match up to MiG-23s. They also came up with the Cheetah although perhaps the Israelis are really more responsible for that? Maybe it is just a Kfir with an SA badge - I don't know.

On the ground the Rhodesians pretty well invented mine resistant vehicles starting with the "pookie" which was built from an elongated VW beetle chassis with formula-3 racing tyres. Not exactly high cost - because there was no way it could possibly be high cost or they would never have been able to have it.

I am sure that the SAAF and the Rhodesians would have preferred to have lots of money and no sanctions so they could go out and buy high quality products off the shelf of course.

[tonker]

How much per airframe did the US and A pay for our Harriers? That had to be one of the lowest cost per capability aquasitions ever!

[rolling20]

Wasn't the Folland Gnat originally designed for that purpose? Built I believe to meet the 1952 Operational Requirement OR.303 calling for a light weight fighter.
The powers that be changed their minds however. It did go on to have some combat success in the Indian Air force.

[Torquelink]

Very relevant debate. It may be apocryphal but someone said that if current R&D and military budget trends continue even the USAF will only be able to afford to acquire a single aircraft by the middle of the century! There needs to be the same kind of R&D cost paradigm shift that there has been in personal electronics. Interesting to note that Airbus has just opened a facility in Silicon Valley with a view to absorbing some of this low cost, thinking outside the box, culture.

The Scorpion is a good example of what can be done and while it's hardly "low cost", it's R&D budget compared to that of e.g. the F35's would be barely measurable. Someone else once said that, not necessarily just with respect to aircraft, if you are prepared to settle for 90% of the capability you can get it for a fraction of the cost and therefore afford many more units. After all one aircraft/ship/tank can only be in one place at a time.

Using latest off-the-shelf computing technology both for design and operational capability plus Scaled Composite / Skunk Works-style rapid prototyping, could surely produce something far more cost-effective than the current turgid, inflexible, military-industrial vested-interest complex manages?

[Wander00]

Harriers to the US, surprised we did not gift-wrap them

[Heathrow Harry]

"It may be apocryphal but someone said that if current R&D and military budget trends continue even the USAF will only be able to afford to acquire a single aircraft by the middle of the century!"

Not Apcoryphal at all - thisis the well known Augustine's Law

In 1983, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics published the first edition of Augustine’s Laws by Norman R. Augustine, then president and chief operating officer of Martin Marietta Corporation. The book is a humorous, but insightful look at the problems of managing a large corporation

Law Number XVI. In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. The aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy, 3.5 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day

he showed that from 1910 onwards the cost of US tactical aircraft increases at a rate of 4 times every decade - what is really frightening is that every US aircaraft built since 1983 falls on or close to his prediction......

[boxmover]

What do you need it to do and at what risk to the crew?

If you JUST need an aircraft to find low tech Isis types and lob SDB's or brimstones at them then a modified biz jet will do the job for far far less than a Tornado or F16.

BUT


If isis gets some help with AA kit the crew of the biz jet are dead meat. ( protection just puts the cost up and the utility down)

To me the risk would be lower than that run by ground troops and there for acceptable but it's not me who has to sit in the biz jet.

PLUS

Western airforces have been reluctant to by kit only useful in very low end conflicts.

[dagenham]

Don't forget the f16.... The fighter Mafia's answer to overweight expensive fighters proposals in the f111 and f15 initial fighter proposals. General dynamics led the way from an earlier design that in itself was an f5 competitor istr

Seemed to turn out ok

[West Coast]

Depending on your anticipated threat, I'd argue - yes.

There's the key to,answering the question. Just what is expected of this notional aircraft, what threats can be expected.

[chevvron]

I think that if you got a small group of pilots, engineers and designers together in a country with few barriers to testing and the willingness to certify aircraft on the mil register etc. then a lot could be achieved for a lot less than $12million a piece.
Pick some sort of light aircraft and start fitting sensors and weapons.
Question is what do you want to achieve? CAS with no air threat pretty much anything would do, maybe a UAV would be better otherwise DAS adds a fair bit (but is cheaper than buying a new plane and training a new pilot).
If you want to start pulling g and beating something else in a A-A fight then I think that it would start to get expensive e.g alpha jet, L-59 etc.
Who wants to buy them though? - a friend back from Africa said
"you can't get a big kickback on a cheap contract."
Google 'Luscombe P3 Rattler'

[HambleTinBasher]

Well, “Low Cost” and “Combat Aircraft” on the same page of a wish list is a bit of a stretch.
I do remember a chance conversation with a senior BAE Systems chap a few years back that touched on this subject. He made the rather telling point that anyone committing to developing a new aircraft would likely have to complete against the US selling off refurbished ex USAF F16s.

[OFBSLF]

The quickest way to reduce the unit cost would be to remove the pilot. Drones on steroids will be the way of the future, you can have numerous units, and no aircrew at risk.

Only if you are discounting the cost of the satellites required to operate them. And if your enemy has manned fighters, expect your UAVs to be clubbed like baby seals.

[highflyer40]

Not when you can have 60 missile carrying drones to his 1 fighter. (Broad assumption of a fighter being worth 60 million and a drone 1 million).

[Courtney Mil]

Highflyer,

Where you going to find a "drone" capable of carrying modern air-to-air missiles, all the electronics necessary to target and support them, the ability to operate those electronics (remotely or autonomously) and with all the hardware like engines, flight control system, links various, etc for a million quid? Not even close. Not even an order of magnitude out. How you going to operate air-to-air with a three second latency?

Or are you just going to launch a single (big) firework at some chaps on the ground? In which case your "drone" needs to be big enough to carry it, still needs and engine and associated stuff, guidance, control and links (good enough to to do high resolution vid in real time). Even Predator cost about 5 million a copy. Reaper, what, three times that, but that is big.

These things still need pilots. You may take him out of the cockpit,mbiut someone still needs to operate them. Not sure about the 1 million figure.

For both, a massive amount of bandwidth on satellite channels. Can you jam these signals?

[DirtyProp]

As a (unwilling, mostly) tax-payer, I find this discussion very interesting.
The public opinion in Italy is quite outraged at the acquisition price of the new F-35, and also the way the whole deal has been handled.

Piaggio is developing a drone based on the P180 Avanti, the HammerHead.
Carrying capability isn't much (500 kg), hopefully it will be increased.
But it's also a TP, not a jet.

[Royalistflyer]

Buy up all the Jaguars you can get, totally rebuild them, fit new avionics?

[fallmonk]

Was there not some grumbling from the states about reopening the A-1 Skyraider production line ? As a very cheap answer to to the F-15E mud Eagles high $ per hour rate ?
Tick's all the boxes apart from a few , a very important one being not pointy and sexy , ended up cost of reopening the production line killed the idea

[DirtyProp]

Was there not some grumbling from the states about reopening the A-1 Skyraider production line ? As a very cheap answer to to the F-15E mud Eagles high $ per hour rate ?
Tick's all the boxes apart from a few , a very important one being not pointy and sexy , ended up cost of reopening the production line killed the idea
And it could even drop the famous "Toilet Bomb"!

USS Midway VA-25's Toilet Bomb (http://www.eugeneleeslover.com/Humor/Toilet_bomb.html)

[melmothtw]

Highflyer,

Where you going to find a "drone" capable of carrying modern air-to-air missiles, all the electronics necessary to target and support them, the ability to operate those electronics (remotely or autonomously) and with all the hardware like engines, flight control system, links various, etc for a million quid? Not even close. Not even an order of magnitude out. How you going to operate air-to-air with a three second latency?

Or are you just going to launch a single (big) firework at some chaps on the ground? In which case your "drone" needs to be big enough to carry it, still needs and engine and associated stuff, guidance, control and links (good enough to to do high resolution vid in real time). Even Predator cost about 5 million a copy. Reaper, what, three times that, but that is big.

These things still need pilots. You may take him out of the cockpit,mbiut someone still needs to operate them. Not sure about the 1 million figure.

For both, a massive amount of bandwidth on satellite channels. Can you jam these signals?


You're not wrong Courtney - Predator Drones Once Shot Back at Jets... But Sucked At It | WIRED (http://www.wired.com/2012/11/predator-defenseless/)