People assuming that unmanned and missile technology will make manned aircraft obsolete any time soon are kidding themselves, they require a huge amount of infrastructure to operate. Also consider the size of the “anti-stealth radars” that people have mentioned, if you think huge fixed critical infrastructure of any kind is magically going to survive any kind of conflict … I don’t know what to say to you … It is not as simple as x beats y, these aircraft don’t operate in a vacuum.
The latest indications given to Australia put the cost of the F35 at around $60 million per unit, there is no aircraft in the world that can match what the F35 can do for even double that price.
Except that there is no other plane in the same field of the market available.
Sure, I’ll take that bet, especially since you presume to be able to lecture me on evolution of warfare technology in the 21st century without even acknowledging that in the future, anti-ship missiles are going to be going up against a carrier battle group with networked high-energy solid-state laser point defenses.
Which, as has been hashed out in other defense threads, is another saving grace for the F-35, if you it isn’t the -B variant, guess what you’ve got a nice block of space for where the lift fan would be, conveniently close to the engine?
There is only so much money, and naval shipbuilding is probably the most fucked up area of military procurement, which is really saying something. The revolution isn’t going to happen as fast as you think. Heck, just watch as the F-35 buy gets cut over the next decade (driving up the per unit cost).
Are carrier groups facing new developments in threats over the next couple decades? Yes, however defenses are not remaining static, and people underestimate the complexity of proposed counters.
The (Russian/Chinese/X) anti-carrier (cruise/ballistic) missile is the Magical Negro of the US skeptical armchair defense wonk.
Ever since unsporting nations figured out you could use mines in waterways it has been a point of pride for naval planners to ignore inconvenient technology.
So what’s the compelling reason for a country to buy F-35s today? How about… say… after the US works out the bugs, and the costs and capabilities become better known?
The answer to that, is, of course, that LM badly needs locked-in orders so that they can start to bring the price down to the cost targets to get the economy of scale that proved so successful on the F-16.
And, as an engineer myself, I know how cool the new technology is. However, I’ve personally seen programs promise far too much cool technology for too cheap a cost, and that did not go well for anyone.
Would many of these countries be happy with F/A-18s or F-16s (or, to be fair to Europe, Gripens, Rafales, or Eurofighters) kitted out with AESA radars and targeting pods? Maybe, depends on their missions. They definitely would have a much better idea of what they were getting for how much.
There was a report on Dutch TV a while ago where the designer of the F16 and A-10 Warthog was interviewed. He basically claimed that the F35 was like a “jack of all trades, master of none” in that the jet was trying everything at once but failed to do even one thing good.I don’t know how credible the documentary is but it was enough to spark a heated debate in the Dutch House of Representative between the coalition and opposition.
Well they are working hard on them now, though it may be a bit of a boondoggle. Energy costs are high, and effectiveness still pretty low, and I seem to recall the prototypes are quite fragile, presumably due to some combination of the massive field flux and the stress the projectile applies to the system as it is accelerated. Still perhaps they will become more reliable eventually. I think the contractor is General Atomics, not sure though from that link.
By “useful payload” I meant more than a couple of hellfires, but plenty of others understood what I was saying.
Do I think unmanned aircraft are the future, you bet. So much so that I’ve been working on a major unmanned UAS program for the last 4 years. I’ve also helped out on some smaller programs (like Firescout). A lot of effort is going into these platforms but they aren’t magic. Significant work remains, some seemingly mundane (like being able to fly in the national airspace), some complex (integrating unmanned aircraft into a carrier wing), and some really cool shit that would make James Cameron smile. None of this is cheap, so how fast this happens is a bit up in the air, so to speak.
BTW, the F-35B is easily one of the loudest aircraft I’ve ever been around. Seriously…the jet noise protesters are going to lose their minds when these things become operational.
I do remember the clip of that unmanned Airbus trying to ‘land’ a few years ago. I think however its just a matter of time. The question is when they can trust AI based craft to make decisions or just deliver payloads in general without a operator.
Ofcourse this is going into scary land quickly…
Also, some Norwegian pilots agree with you seemingly, the F-35 is noisy, its going to be hard to find a place to operate them without people pulling out pitchforks :)
Lovely if they only cost $66 million (is that usd? my numbers are in CDN - which is almost par with the USD), but they won’t. They’re costing at least $100 million, more like $135 million, and there’s a wikileaks cable from a US diplomat to confirm that - though my googlefoo is failing me.
Alot of the price differences comes down to the various accounting methods used and selective inclusion of inflation. A price of 60m, 100m, and 135m, could all be true for exactly the same aircraft, different nations account for different things in their price estimates. You need to be careful and check if that price includes spares, training, weapons, additional fittings, support infrastructure, etc…
The Canadian Air Force or whatever its called actually released a good document on the F35 going through all those points, perhaps you should try googling that up.
The AUD is around $1.05US so if the CDN is at parity too then the price would be 60m for the actually aircraft with these estimates.
Janster, these estimates are from May this year…
XPav, one compelling reason to purchase into the F35 project for foreign nations is to provide opportunities for local industry to American defence funding, also to gain access to the most advanced flight technology in the world for use in future projects.
If those nations would have been happy with the aircraft you mention they probably would have bought them instead of buying into the F35 project… the truth is none of those aircraft aren’t a significant enough upgrade in anyway from their current fleets to justify the cost. Look at the aircraft that the Eurofighters was selected to actually replaced, the question you’re asking is do they want to move forwards or sideways.
For me, the F-16 fighter does everything Norway require of it and more…the F-35 has better bombing capacity which for some reason Norway wants…
Just like the Battleships of WW2 the F-35 carries a pricetag thats hefty, and getting bigger…and I so highly doubt we will have use for such a beast in the near or far future, not to mention the technology is probably only so and so useful.
Stealth is nice, but I just don’t see missiles as going to get any less bad-ass in the future. (and drones for that sake).
Btw, Netherlands put their 85 planes at 14,6 billion euro…
And if you think the answer to F35 cost is as simple as 14.6b / 85 you couldn’t be any more wrong. Refer to my post above as to what that likely includes… they may even have chosen to include the price of constructing new air bases in that price point.
You mention growing costs again but fail to take into account that the cost of fuel will effect all aircraft not just the F35, I wonder if you’re also taking inflation into account when looking at the increased costs.
The F35 has significant technological advantages over the F16, enough to justify actually upgrading to it. The actual performance of the aircraft is yet to b proven in testing but on paper it is also a large step up in these terms as well.
Stealth isn’t the F35s only defence, go look at the F35s DIRCM or EODAS…
It also pays to consider the increasing price of supporting an ageing aircraft such as the F16, especially as spares will be harder to source as F35s start replacing the F16 in American service. There is little point in maintaining a legacy aircraft just because over the years it has won a place in your heart.
Finally, consider the worth of the planned through-life upgrades and development that all F35 users will have access to.
While there have been many problems with this project at this point much of the “debate” is just incredibly misguided and pointless
Well, when the debate was up, the pricetag was 40 billion NOK for 54 planes…now the pricetag is 70 billion NOK for the same amount of planes.
Norway is stinking rich, but this is a big bill to suck up. The aging F-16 has to be replaced ofcourse… I just wonder if the F-35 being better, is just not the future of air combat…
Also, the question is smaller countries can manage to use such weapons systems at all, or if we should look elsewhere for defense systems.
There is only so many times I can repeat the same thing to you, consider what that price includes… did Norway include through-life support costs such as fuel estimates into their price point? What part of the increase is inflation?
You can’t simply take the total F35s project cost from different nations and make direct comparisons as they all include different things in them, while some separate them out across various projects. Just as you can’t also take prices a decade apart, ignore inflation, and try to make some kind of point about the difference.
So you solution for Norway is to replace the F16s with … nothing … either abandon air power until some random point in the future when technology catches up with your imagination or maintain the F16s indefinitely…
There will likely be a place for manned aircraft until a point in time where those aircraft are placed in the hands of AI which don’t require any ground based infrastructure to operate.
If small nations can’t afford to operate the F35s there is no way they can afford to operate the huge amount of infrastructure and support network that drones require on the scale you would need to replace their current combat aircraft fleets.
