Forgetting one MAJOR issue to Base RAF aircraft on foreign soil needs Diplomatic clearences sometimes thease aren't exactly forth comming. Whereas an aircraft carrier can sit in International waters.

And if we had to repeat a Falklands type scenario and dip clearences weren't forth comming then without carriers we would be well stuffed. I know the arguments Uncle Sam will always provide (when it suits him)

Nursey,

If by some mischance we withdrew the F3s and then had to recover the Falklands, without coalition support, we would be f*cked without carriers.

If we needed to drop paras at Brigade strength, we'd be hard pressed.

If we needed to make a full-on cavalry charge, we'd be b*ggered.

But with shrinking budgets, and with increasing costs of defence equipment, we can't hope to be able to do everything that we used to do.

And if we have to cut corners, it's better by far to ditch the higher cost capabilities that we are least able to need and to concentrate on those areas that make us most useful to our allies, and that we do best.

As for Dip Cs, they were there for Dakar during Palliser, long before the carrier got there.


Bismarck,

UK commitment was certainly useful to the Yanks, but what they asked for first were R1s and PR9s and then tankers, and I'll bet they'd have welcomed one more R1 or a couple more VC10s than they welcomed Illustrious, that just got in the way, without generating a meaningful sortie rate or effect.

No we can't hope to everything we once did. But there is a level of capability we should be able to provide. We have restructured our forces to fight expititionary warfare like we did in the 1930's and look what happened when they went to war without proper aircover!!
As to Dip clearences they can have caveats like no offensive air. Again you are relying on somone elses good will and at some point in the future we may be having to send a force into an area which there is limited of no goodwill for us. BTW I said a Falklands type operation IE proper unilateral expiditionary warfare and force projection from the sea. Which is more viable than dropping an airborne Brigade in which even 16 AA admit is a non starter which is why they focus on dropping a Batalion group and TALO or Air Assualt the rest in.

West Side Boys procure IADS?
 

Surely the 'lack of HNS' argument being used to underpin the purchase of CVF is flawed? Unless the carriers are equipped with awacs, aar etc, those aircraft will have to be based somewhere. The argument that some countries will not allow fighters to be based on their soil, but will allow basing of all associated enablers, does have historical precedent but is that a basis for spending £20 Billion+ (est cost of CVF and JSF) on building carriers that can only launch fighters. CVF has to be fully autonomous or the 'lack of HNS' argument is bollox.

Speaking of which, why buy JSF? If the US won't sell on favourable terms and if we're always going to go to war as part of a US-led coalition (an assumption that seems to underpin current UK defence policy) then why can't they do the stealthy thing for us? As far as National or European capabilities are concerned, are the peace-loving pygmies of the Upper Volta replacing their sharpened mangos with double-digit SAMs? If so, shouldn't we be buying more Stormshadow and TLAM (which will also allow us to meaningfully contribute to the early stages of a Coaltion campaign)?

Scrap JSF, navalise Typhoon, properly equip and outfit CVF, and let's do the whole Watusi village. . .

Thomas Power, General
Commander, Strategic Air Command

Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the ba*tards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win.

GTP

Unless the carriers are equipped with awacs, aar etc, those aircraft will have to be based somewhere.

1. AWACS/AAR aircraft have greater range/endurance than fighters.
2. Some nations will be ok with support aircraft based on their soil, but tooled up jets? No...........
3. MASC will provide a lot of the capability of AWACS (how much depends on what platform is chosen) and I can't see why limited carrierborne AAR (either a buddy buddy system, dedicated F35s or V22 (if chosen for MASC) isn't considered to augment FSTA (which is more expensive than CVF).

I assume that when you say "fighters" you mean fast jets. But remember CVF will also carry MASC (a key enabler for all forces in the naval/maritime/littoral domain) and various helicopters for a variety of possible missions.

WEBF, are you sure about the CVF vs FSTA costs? ISTR that this was raised (possibly on Pprune) a while ago, and it was suggested that the difference came from comparing the whole-life costs of the FSTA programme against the unit cost (i.e. the on-the road [water] cost] of the CVF, so it was a bit of an apples and oranges comparison.

Jacko,

I do not disagree with much of what you say above. I did not suggest that ILLUSTRIOUS was there as a battle winning asset or that it was what the US needed (most definitely they needed the PR9, AAR, R1 etc) but are we to build an RAF around recce and AAR? For sure the Typhoon is a white elephant and we need the capability of JSF instead. What is important is that if we are to get CVF then the MOD trick is to deliver on budget and on time - as opposed to Typhoon, MRA4, Astute etc the money wasted to date on which would pay for CVF many times over.


If JSF were scrapped then we would be in the appalling situation of relying on Typhoon for combat power - we would never take part, because the US would not want the a/c anywhere near an OP theatre.

Ah yes. JSF.

No internal PWIII.
No external ASRAAM.
No Brimstone.
No ALARM.
No external tanks.
No Storm Shadow for years.

No ITAR waiver, so no STFs, SEMs, and little chance of UORs. Doubt as to the viability of autonomous repair/support.

Downgraded LO characteristics and capabilities.

A programme that the US GAO believe to be a huge risk, which is being flown before key technologies are mature or in place.

Unit price for the USAF already more than $100 m.

Not a hope of getting the aircraft into frontline squadron service before 2017. (Think GR7A/9/9A can last that long without new back ends?)

Yet Typhoon is the aircraft you choose to kick......

:ok:

IIRC the inner pylons are wet and cleared to 5000lb. :rolleyes:

Now is it my fault you don't keep yourself up to speed, Orac.

28 April

Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Ft. Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $52,400,000 ceiling-priced modification to a previously awarded cost-plus-award-fee contract (N00019-02-C-3002) to exercise an option to certify the small diameter bomb for the U. S. Air Force Joint Strike Fighter conventional take off and landing (CTOL) aircraft and eliminate the effort for wind corrected munitions dispenser and external fuel tanks. *Work will be performed in Ft. Worth, Texas (89 percent); El Segundo, Calif. (6 percent); Orlando, Fla. (3 percent); and Wharton, United Kingdom (2 percent), and is expected to be completed in October 2013. *Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. *The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.

Clarkson claims JSF has less boot space than Vauxhall Astra
 

WEBF - copy all ref MASC (I do mean FJ). . . however, JSF STOVL has about the same range and payload as a Golf GTi. When you start looking at anything more than BAI against a littoral opponent in the air-to-ground role, or how long it can stay on CAP in the air-to-air role (which will determine how many of the embarked ac will be needed to protect their own ship) you'd have to conclude that without (bootloads of) AAR the CVF will be a self-licking lollipop. I would agree with you if we were buying C-Variant JSF. . . but we aren't . . . a light blue, industry-inspired stitch-up apparently. . . or our interminable fascination with things that go jump in the night.

Bismark - you're right about the interoperability piece. However, for the majority of any campaign, that will be driven by whether or not we're on the net, rather than whether or not we're stealthy. Yes, there will be target sets that are so heavily defended that we'll want to use stealth, TLAM or Stormshadow - but how many and for how long? If we were being brutally honest, the US wouldn't really need our help in the early phases of any campaign. Where they do need our help is in the UN and on the ground over the long haul. . . ask 'em whether we've been more valuable as allies during Telic 1 or Telic 8. . . . I don't know the answer, but if it caused a pause, then maybe it's not worth burning our conventional FJ capability to pay for a stealthy jumping bean. . .there's not a huge amount of stealth being used at the moment. No doubt they're all getting repainted and bombed-up ready for the Big One (in Iran or North Korea, or somewhere else where Perfidious Albion has no national interest or desire to get involved, thanks very much). As regards conventional air interoperability - well, that'll be determined by whether or not the US are prepared to tech-share JTRS (son of JTIDS). If they're going to be as tight with JTRS as they are with JSF, then maybe we ought to ask ourselves why we're always so keen to be a member of their gang. . .and whether or not it's time to go and start our own.

Jackonicko is right - don't knock Typhoon. It may be ugly but it's our baby, and it could be a truly great weapons system for want of a few Billion quid. That may sound crass, but we'll have spent 20Bn through life by the time we're done and a "a few Billion" is about 15% of what we're going to pay for JSF. Finally, if Typhoon is our baby, then JSF is somebody else's foetus, and we're going to end up sitting around for years waiting for its arrival. That's going to introduce further delays to CVF which is already being hollowed out by the vultures - if the Naval sheds had any sense they'd embrace Typhoon, which, to some degree, is a politically protected programme, and could meet CVF's in-service date. I don't buy any of the earlier lines on this thread about how difficult it would be to navalise Typhoon. I suspect the real difficulty might be how much it would cost to redesign CVF as a cats 'n traps carrier (although I am told a cat wouldn't be required) . . .

Tom "Bark like a dog for me" Power

:ok:

That's crazy. How the h*ll can Australia, or for that matter the RN, buy an aircraft you can't hang jugs on? Even if you have tankers, they're not always available or can't enter the combat zone; and I wouldn't like to be half way across the Indian Ocean or pond without jugs when the tanker broke. :ooh:

Don't shoot the messenger, ORAC.

And is it any crazier than buying an aircraft that can neither:

a) carry our chosen day one weapons in its day one configuration?
nor

b) carry our chosen A-A weapons externally (or, in the case of Meteor, at all)?

and that we cannot:

modify, upgrade, support nor sustain without US Government and Lockmart say-so?

NB:
The US GAO say:

"The combination of cost overruns and quantity reductions has already diluted DOD's buying power and made the original JSF business case unexecutable."

"Given continuing program uncertainties, DOD could use more time to gain knowledge before it commits to a new business case and moves forward. Any new business case must be accompanied by an acquisition strategy that adopts an evolutionary approach to product development-one that enables knowledge-based decisions to maximize the return on remaining dollars-as dictated by best practices."

"The cost estimate to fully develop the JSF has increased by more than 80 percent. Development costs were originally estimated at roughly $25 billion. By the 2001 system development decision, these costs increased almost $10 billion, and by 2004, costs increased an additional $10 billion, pushing total development cost estimates to nearly $45 billion. Current estimates for the program acquisition unit cost are about $100 million, a 23 percent increase since 2001."

- That's £58m - already perilously close to the programme unit cost of Typhoon - and much more than the price of additional Typhoons would be.

"Design and software teams have found greater complexity and less efficiency as they develop the 17 million lines of software needed for the system. Program analysis indicated that some aircraft capabilities will have to be deferred to stay within cost and schedule constraints."

Confident that these won't be capabilities that the UK deems essential?

JSF's planned approach will not capture adequate knowledge about technologies, design, and manufacturing processes for investment decisions at key investment junctures......the JSF program will lack critical production knowledge when it plans to enter low-rate initial production in 2007.
Only one of JSF's eight critical technologies is expected to be demonstrated in an operational environment by the 2007 production decision.

o Only about 40 percent of the 17 million lines of code needed for the system's software will have been released, and complex software needed to integrate the advanced mission systems is not scheduled for release until about 2010-3 years after JSF is scheduled to enter production. Further, most structural fatigue testing and radar cross section testing of full-up test articles are not planned to be completed until 2010.

o The program will not demonstrate that critical manufacturing processes are in statistical control, and flight testing of a fully configured and integrated JSF (with critical mission systems and prognostics technologies) is not scheduled until 2011.

Still think the JSF is a better bet than Typhoon N? Perhaps it is, but the issue is less clearcut than JSF adherents pretend. I can't help but wonder whether this isn't another C-130J, waiting to bite us in the ar.se.

Still think the JSF will be ready in time to meet UK timescales? And if it isn't we are royally screwed, because there's no way on earth the GR7/9 will last beyond the planned 2017 OSD.

It is rapidly acquiring the look of the F-111/TFX programme.

Looking again at that contract it drops the requirement to cetify the F-35A with external tanks. Anyone know if this eliminates the same for the B/C and any time implications?

Will the USMC want to pay for tank certification, instead of simply piggy-backing off the USAF?

Would a USN tank clearance on the C-model, with its very different wing, read-across?

Who knows.

But tanks or no tanks, it's becoming less and less like the right choice.

How about the other issues, Orac?

AGAIN:

No internal PWIII.
No external ASRAAM.
No Brimstone.
No ALARM.
No external tanks.
No Storm Shadow for years.

No ITAR waiver, so no STFs, SEMs, and little chance of UORs. Doubt as to the viability of autonomous repair/support.

Downgraded LO characteristics and capabilities.

A programme that the US GAO believe to be a huge risk, which is being flown before key technologies are mature or in place.

Unit price for the USAF already more than $100 m.

Not a hope of getting the aircraft into frontline squadron service before 2017. (Think GR7A/9/9A can last that long without new back ends?)

Jacko, look at my previous posts, I have always had misgivings about the F-35B, but none were a show stopper. As far as I am concerned, this is.

I also have strong suspicions it is only being dropped for the overt/overseas build and the US versions will be able to slap tanks on as when they see fit......

We disagree then.

Radius is respectable on internal fuel, and you can plan around a known limitation.

The jet can still fly useful short range missions.

The ITAR issue raises unpredictabilities which are impossible to plan against.

The UK weapon incompatibilities limit the aircraft's usefulness.

If it doesn't arrive bang on time we're as screwed as we were when the US $hit-canned Skybolt.

The need for CVF
 

You never know where a carrier might be needed next. In 1971 Guatemala rattled its sabres at the then British Honduras (Belize). The nearest asset was the old Ark and she was this side of the pond but she set off at max chat and when 2000 miles out she launched a flight of Buccaneers, a mix of tankers and bombers, which over flew the country and put the Guatemalans back in their box purely with a simple fly by. Just shows what the thought that there is a carrier just over the horizon can do:ok:.

Their territorrial claim remains as does that of Argentina over the Malvinas and when might the next Grenada kick off? and we had to rely on Uncle Sam for that last one (maybe we were still getting over the Falklands).

So yes, the Buc could buddy refuel it carried a huge extra fuel tank in the bomb bay and even the bomb bay door was converted to a tank. Could this be done to the JSF? why not put a couple of big tanks in the Weapons Bays. It would require wet pylons to enable an additional tank and an AAR Pod to be carried but wouldn't it be worth the effort to provide CVF with such a useful force multiplier.

:) sharmine

Actually, Uncle Sam decided to invade Grenada without any reference to us.

Which, legend has it, led to the then Commander-in-Chief receiving a telephonic handbagging from the then-incumbent of No.10. The story has it that the majority of his contribution to the discussion ran along the lines of 'Yes, Margaret... no, Margaret... but, Margaret... but.. but... yes, Margaret, yes... I'm very sorry, Margaret... yes [etc, etc, etc]' until she ran out of steam. Which took quite a while. Probably apocryphal, but she was very, very cross indeed. HMQ was none-too-pleased with the invasion of a Commonwealth country either.

I agree. Surely a good argument to project air power by air - it's faster and more flexible and you don't have to spend days days having your teeth shaken out by a carrier travelling at max chat to get to where it's needed because it happened to be on the other side of the world, and then arrive too late.
Most of the ISTAR product and ordnance dropped in both the Afghanistan and the Iraq invasions came from platforms that took off and landed in mainland USA. It can be done.

Just a non-flying yank but isn't it rather odd knocking our next wonder flying machine vs Typhoon on the grounds of cost & internal weapons?

Doesn't the worst case MoD forecast say 150 wonder machines for half the program cost of 232 Typhoons? We may be paying $100m for ours when all the R&D bills come due but be honest that's not the Brit price tag, is it?

Couple other points: there's a lot of shuffling of money around the JSF program right now. External tanks being taken out of this one particular contract doesn't mean they've been dropped. Suggest you chat with L-M/PO before taking that story into print. I think you'll find they just switched money from one pocket into the other.

The smaller STOVL bay was the original brit requirement if I'm not mistaken. Your chappie over here working on his tan said you've not got any 2,000 pounders to drop so it wasn't a biggie. He also said Brimstone & SS remain on the list for post SDD integration. SS is a bit iffy tho' given it's bring back issues. Alarm is obsolete.

BTW, ITAR waiver ain't the issue. What's being asked for is. If you lot really signed for $100m per, then I'd say that issue just went away :O

So where's the thanks for keeping the rolls 2nd team engine alive? wonder which one wins the UK "contest"?

Price check aisle 35!
 

I'm not clear where this figure of $100 million per junk jet has come from. The problem with the Jolly Serious Fraud is that the international customers have no idea how much the thing is going to cost. Any figures used by the UK MoD are guesstimates of the highest order.

The deal with the production sustainment MoU is that the international 'partners' [snort] have to sign in blood and commit to buying a fixed number of aircraft without being told how much they will cost or when they will be ready.

That's the deal on the table. The only deal.

If they decide later that they don't like the price or they don't need so many aircraft then they will be penalised until their ears bleed.

And we already know that the UK will not take 150 jets...even though BAE's entire financial case for the programme is predicated on that exact number...

But apart from that - yeah, sure. Carry on.

VC

Oh, and that bit about the UK asking for the weapons bays to be made smaller is wrong too.

Read your programme history.

VC

The RN (FAA) needs to buy RAFALEs M and not the pseudo F-35 or a Typhon navalised ( what a joke :D :D :D )

:ok:

RonO,

The US GAO say that the cost will be $100 m per jet, or $110 m, more recently. That's for the cheap, bargain basement A-model.

No US politician is ever going to accept a situation where the answer to the question as to "How much are we charging the Brits" is smaller than that headline price figure for the US DoD.

And for every other platform we operate the 2,000-lb PWIII and 1,000- and 2,000-lb PWIV are and will be core weapons. As is Storm Shadow, and as is Meteor. And ASRAAM is important enough that internal only carriage doesn't fly, either.

We were promised ITAR by Clinton, but this Admin has back-tracked on that. ITAR isn't the issue, per se, it's operational sovereignty - the ability to modify and ugrade our own aircraft as we require, to support, sustain and repair them, and to integrate our own weapons rather than waiting for US industry to fail to get around to it.

If we don't get that, this over-priced, over-weight, high-risk, one trick (LO) pony simply isn't worth the candle.

We can do the Day One job (if we ever need to in coalition ops) with TLAM and stand off (Storm Shadder, for example) and Typhoon with four or six Meteor and two or four ASRAAM will be more capable against the likely threat in the A-A role than JSF with a pair of AIM-120s and two AIM-9X.

The situation is more clear cut than even that. Under US law, no US contractor can sell defence equipment to a foreign customer for less than the price paid by the US government.

And foreign sales/support is where the JSF is going to claw its costs back...

VC

Folks - there's some missing knowledge/thought about the bigger future issues here. We are now/will be in the "Effects" generation process. The CVF is only one (big) piece of that puzzle. The idea that the UK will be able to influence another nation 7000 nm away with the threat of a Typhoon with no HNS is a bit of a larf. We couldn't sustain that sort of operation. The EuroF may have a greater payload but then the JSF has supercruise stealth - horses for courses.

The actual airframe isn't that important (they've all got something up their sleeve - and most will be yards better than any opposition in the air), it's the fact it's an enabler for influence that matters. You exert that influence with credible capability, ie sea base your strike force amongst many other options. Anyone who thinks land-based jets can do the job alone is somewhat wide of the mark, and getting bogged down in weeds.

The big picture doesn't plan solely on staging out of a Kuwait or Saudi. That's called putting your eggs in one basket. Our baskets may be small but we want more than one of 'em.

Agreed we couldn't sustain a Falklands type task force but this has been well known for years as the navy has been cut piecemeal in the promise of Jam tomorrow.
I note from other sites the Aussies and canadians are now increasing defence spending and increasing the size of their armed forces

A few more points
 

1. Is the comparison between jets based aboard a carrier and ones ashore a fair one? Consider a possible operation in Africa in nation x (well the 2004 Defence White Paper used a Sub Saharan example). The theatre is n thousand miles from the UK. There are no UK forces established in the area. The nearest established airfield that could take Typhoons or Tornados is 400 miles away in nation y. Nation y opposes outside interference. Nation x has about 200 miles of coastline, and at least 70% of its territory is with 500 or so miles of the coast. This is just an example and not meant to be real scenario.

Assuming that the CVF (with F35 et all) is at 48 hours readiness and is in UK waters, which of these is fastest?

a. Send the carrier and her air group to the area at 25 knots (=600nm per day), carry out planning and preparation on the way, start flying sorties once within range, other capabilities (helicopters, logistics) can be brought be other ships.

b. Negotiate with the Government of y - and hope you get diplomatic clearance Lets assume that after a few days they give in. Now the aircraft need to be prepared, flown to nation y, along with stores, support equipment, weapons etc etc. They need to get in theatre, establish a base with comms back to the UK, before sorties can start at a constant rate. Incidentally how do the supplies get there?

c. Identify an abandoned airfield, secure it, establish it as a forward base with force protection, etc. This assumes we have STOL/rough field capable aircraft.

d. Go to the friendly Government of nation z, use their own air bases, but the distance to theatre is now more like 900 miles. We may need some tanker support.

And the answer is..........

In practice we'd opt for a mix of a,b,d and possibly c. But it does illustrate my point. The "(aircraft x) is faster than a carrier, therefore it can deploy faster than a carrier" argument is very simplistic and ignores factors like diplomatic clearances, logistics, support facilities, force protection, etc.

2. As NURSE says, the cutting of the Services makes the deterrent power of carriers even more important (prevention being better than cure). Nothing says "Stop being naughty boyos" as much as a carrier, preferably in combination with amphibious forces. Worryingly, the MOD seem to regard "Carrier Strike" and Amphibious stuff as totally separate They are not. I've discussed amphibious issues on the Sea Jet thread- I won't link to it again.

3. See this.

The MOD considered all other options very carefully before selecting the JSF as the preferred aircraft for its new aircraft carriers. The other options included a marinised version of the Eurofighter (232 Eurofighters are ordered for the RAF) the American F18E, the French Rafale and an updated Harrier. But the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant JSF emerged as the best option.

4. CVF is crucial in a number of ways. One of these is preserving the capabilities of constructing major warships in the UK. Despite claims of the largest ship construction since the Second World War, orders are rather thin on the ground. To my knowledge the only vessels currently being built in UK yards are:

Six Type 45 Destroyers. The last two have not been ordered yet.
Three Astute class SSNs.
Four LSD(A).
One OPV(H).

If we want to retain naval construction capabilities we need to get CVF ordered NOW. If we don't do it soon, we may not be able to. We might have problems building warships of any type.

Let me ask a question - mostly for Navaleye. Does the CTOL/STOVL debate, or the choice of MASC platform effect the hull, propulsion, etc. If not then what reasonable excuse (other than cost cutting or incompetence) does for not getting CVF ordered and steel cut?

It makes no difference at all. The equipment required for CTOL operations resides in the top 3 decks of the ship. I understand MoD wants the design to be completely mature before cutting steel, so that the mega blocks are as outfitted as possible before they are joined up. The speed at which the T45s have been built shows the benefit of this approach.

"The MOD considered all other options very carefully before selecting the JSF as the preferred aircraft for its new aircraft carriers."

The MoD selected JSF to meet the UK's FCBA requirement on 17 January 2001.

This 'careful' selection was made when Typhoon was still a very immature design, before its capabilities and characteristics were fully apparent.

Before we even knew what the JSF was, in fact, since the USA hadn't chosen between the X-32 and the X-35.

(It was not until 26 October 2001 that Lockheed Martin won the Prime Contract to develop the Joint Strike Fighter, as the F-35.)

Back in 2001, when the selection was made, JSF still promised to be an F-16 priced aeroplane, we were still certain of getting a proper ITAR waiver, and there was no reason to suspect that UK weapons would not be integrated on the aircraft with enthusiasm and alacrity. The GAO hadn't judged it as a high risk programme that badly needed to be further delayed.....

It's time to 'carefully' reconsider.


As to your African example, put a name to your country X and we'll see how many realistic (politically sustainable) scenarios would not be able to gain HNS nearby.

Have you seen how many landlocked and near land-locked nations there are in Africa?

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.

Jacko, you need to learn your way round a GAO/SAR report.

$104m PAUC you quote is the total US program cost divided by expected US orders. It's an accountants fabrication that doesn't differentiate between JSF variants and amortises US R&D across the entire US production run.

Just for fun I did the same math for UK Typhoon and got $158m. Ouch.

The US is not passing it's R&D bills onto the Brits or anyone else. Just like the EF partners don't pass on theirs. So let your eyes drift lower down the GAO page to find the expected flyaway's of the "A" at $45m and the "B" at $59m. THAT's what you need to figure the latest UK stickers. And yeah, they'll go up between now and then.

Check out this thread from one of your neighbors. Scroll down for English. Hilarious in parts.

http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2006/05/01/464964.html

Don't disagree with the pig in the poke nature of the deal being offered - sign here and we'll tell you the price later. Such is life in the real world. If you don't like it, bail out of the program and come in later when the prices have been fixed. Of course that means a higher price, no UK royalties, no UK industrial benefits, no UK weapons integration and last place on the production line. And absolutely no chance of getting your sovreign thingie. Your call.

Navaleye - will CVF have through deck lifts? I was told that if you go for cats and traps, and if you want to conduct concurrent launch and recovery operations, you need to have a canted off launch deck as per the usual US design with lifts that go up the side of the ship instead of through the deck...all fundamentally impacting the design of the hull. Can you run launch and recovery ops on the same strip of steel, or will a redesign of the top three decks allow the ship to be configured for Nimitz-style ops?

Jackonicko - I thought PWIV is a 500lb weapon? You seem to think there will be 1000lb and 2000lb variants.

WEBF - the decision to procure STOVL JSF was a bit of a rum (sodomy and the lash) do. There were a lot of conspiracy theories running around Whitehall at the time. Strangely enough none of them involved JSF STOVL being 'the best option' as you quote. The best option was actually CV JSF - all the boffins said so. However it made CVF too expensive (cats and traps and a lot more embarked manpower, through life etc.), there was not enough work-share in it for UK industry and (so the rumours go) it was too capable! If we had procured CV JSF, that would have seriously cut into the capability headroom that was at that stage planned to be filled by FOAS (c. 2020), the Future Offensive Air System, subsequently renamed FCAC and Heaven knows what since. FOAS was to be a system of systems, including UCAVs, legacy platforms and (critically) a follow-on purchase of JSF, wherein lay the future of the manned fast-jet Air Force. Buying CV JSF against a background of planned reductions in our overall FJ requirement, would have quickly resulted in a scenario where Typhoon and CV JSF were all that was required ie. no follow-on purchase of JSF for the RAF, just 144 Typhoon, a few Harriers that were going to pass their jump-by date c. 2015 and the splendid old warhorse, Tornado GR4, heroically justifying its continued existence on the basis of a theoretical ability to carry 4 Stormshadows, and launch them at a range where its chronic lack of surviveablity wouldn't have to be exposed to a modern enemy. . .

"So, 1SL, me old mucker, you stop fighting the jumping bean, and we'll stop fighting CVF", said CAS. "When the RAF purchases JSF, we'll get the C-Variant, and then we can fly our jets off your ships!"
"By jingo, you're right", said 1SL, "and with so many JSF flying about, we could probably persuade a future govt to buy a third carrier!"
"Well, quite." said CAS.

:}

That's a joke, right? The point of overseas sales is to lower costs by splitting the R&D costs across a broader base. I can just them trying to sell that to Congress, "the Brits can buy it $xx cheaper than the USMC because we've absorbed the R&D costs for them..."

I mean, give me a break....

Brits are kicking in 2 bill for SDD plus a tad extra for brit weapons integration. You wanna pay that AND part of the US SDD share? Cool.

However you might think about getting the norsemen to cut your deals for you :O

Truth is the Uk will indeed pay the same price as the Marines - $59m plus project inflation.

Ron O,

On price.

Typhoon is c £81m per jet including R&D ($148m), £42m ($77m) without. Not $158m. That price reduces with each Tranche. We've been selling Tranche 2 jets to Johnny Foreigner for €62m ($78m) each. You may assume that there's an element of profit and R&D contribution in there.....

Typhoon's costs of ownership and running costs are extremely low, and are contractually guaranteed.

The expected flyaway costs of the F-35A and F-35B you quote should be on bargain hunt. They're that antique. They're in 1776 dollars.....

Moreover, they represent the 'settled unit flyaway cost' and initial Lots will be priced higher. By the time you factor in a 'now year' dollar conversion and inflation, you'll find that it comes to something astonishingly close to $100-110 m per jet, in fact. This figure was confirmed by Lockmart sources at Singapore, and has been widely briefed.

The UK's $2 Bn investment in SDD buys us nothing in terms of aircraft, but it does "buy" us our industrial participation. It equates to $13m-$23m per jet on top of whatever purchase price is set. Unless and until LM can find a cheaper, 'best value' supplier of rear fuselages (which incorporate some UK IP) than Samlesbury, however, then BAE will build the back third of every JSF regardless of how many jets we decide to buy. Even, in fact, if we delay or scrub our purchase altogether.

This is indeed a pig in a poke, but we have more options than to bail out now and rejoin when the prices have been fixed. We can cancel the JSF purchase altogether and buy something else altogether. And if we don't get the operational sovereignty, that's what we'll do, and we'll lead a rush of other JSF partners hovering on the brink of jettisoning this ill-conceived jet.

And while (even using your figures), every JSF will cost us more than $82m ($59m + $23m SDD costs + inflation, + UK specific integrations), every extra Typhoon over and above 232 would cost us less than $77m. And that would be a T4 jet capable of carrying all the weapons we need, which we could support, sustain, modify and upgrade autonomously and independently, with lower support and operating costs than JSF.

We'd be building more Typhoons, providing more UK jobs, and much of the price would flow straight back to the UK exchequer, and we'd still be an industrial partner in JSF, and though it may lose Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia, it will still be a programme worth participating in in industrial terms.


Thomas,

I believe that your explanation to WEBF is wrong. All of the documents I've ever seen relating to Staff Target (Sea/Air) 6464 made it pretty plain that STOVL was the preferred solution, and that remained the preference up to September 2002, when the UK announced its selection of the Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant of LM's JSF as the FJCA - having selected JSF as FCBA on 17 January 2001, when it was still unclear whether it would be Boeing or LM.

I'm guilty of using the term PWIV when I mean EPW. EPW will of course be in 1,000-lb and 2,000-lb flavours, while PW IV is strictly speaking the TM applied to the Lot 4 UK weapon with a Mk 82E body, but using the same guidance and control kits as EPW II and EPW III.

JSF flyaway costs are from Dec 2005 in 2002 $'s. Not sure why the derision on age - doesn't seem that long ago. How old is your EF financial data and what year does it assume?

Don't understand your math on JSF prices either. Each one that the UK purchases should cost $59m. Plus inflation of course. And project escalation. But $100m?? heck no. I'd suggest you check back with LM - that dude in Singapore was feeding you a line. Didn't have a french accent did he?

The UK's $2 bill earns the right to bid for SDD contracts. Production contracts will be awarded based on committed country orders hence the bums rush to get signatures this year. No UK orders means some empty UK lines & unhappy Bae faces. Don't kid yourself that UK is the only place that can do the work.

Gotta love your confidence in those Typhoon Tranche 3 & 4 numbers. Must be the best managed procurement project ever - no escalation, every financial target hit dead center. Impressive.

While I'm here, you keep claiming the UK will get a lower spec aircraft than the US esp LO. Burbage told your parliament committee that's not the case. You reckon he lied? Norway's being told the same thing as I expect you noticed. They being lied to as well?