F-35 Jet drama and accountability

Here in Vermont, where Burlington is one of the places being considered as a F-35 base for the Vermont Air Guard, noise is a big issue. The constant battle between jobs and environment, shaded of course by the liberal/conservative split that is a part of Chittenden county political life, will probably not be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Hell, there is even a contentious battle over whether to allow an air show for charity over the lake, due to concerns about noise, pollution, fuel use, and militaristic displays.

Considering the price has ballooned up from an advertised $75 million, and going by other articles online, mostly american ones, it’s $133 million per manufacturing cost. Unless Canada and the US estimate costs similarly, what is Australia’s not getting that’s going to save them over half the cost of the plane?

http://www.defpro.com/daily/details/819/

Everywhere I’m looking it says the estimates costs of the plane are 15%-20% higher than the original price, which is the price being advertised to potential buyers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/25plane.html

Well, you are bringing up valid points.
However I don’t see why the price tag should be so different from nation to nation, and our government is jittery about the results from Netherlands cost wise. So obviously there is merit to it.

I think someone else in this thread mentioned this about drones, but I don’t see how on earth they can be more costly than manned jets…

If we take the drone discussion off the table, I would say good missiles + euro fighter would have been way cheaper…
That said, F-35 is better and Norway can afford it, our military is for want of nothing…but manpower…

Eurofighter is a more expensive aircraft that is less capable…

As I mentioned before different countries bundle different things into their projects from weapons and spares to training and infrastructure to fuel and predicted maintenance costs. Why is that hard to understand? If you want to make comparisons you need to look at the details.

Many people don’t understand the true costs of drones, taking the pilot out of the aircraft doesn’t save you a pilots wage, if anything it increases your costs as you now need to setup and maintain the communications infrastructure to put that pilot remotely in the hotseat.

You just linked to an article which specified an AVERAGE unit cost not an actually cost per production model. This average price includes the prices of all development aircraft and all types, no one will be paying $133m per aircraft. Most nations are buying the F35A, it is ridiculous that people try and push an average price including the 2 more expensive models onto these nations in an attempt to point out rising costs. Yes the price may well end up being higher than estimated at the very beginning of the project, if you look back at history though there are few if any projects which do and nations budget accordingly when investing in development projects.

Australia is missing out on nothing, the $60m is simply the base cost of the airframe, not the fly-away costs or a bundled cost, which are all different.

Again, please check the details of what the prices you are about to post as evidence of a failed program actually mean what you think they do. Most prices being quoted in public now are for LRIP aircraft which some Air Forces plan to buy to use as training aircraft, these aircraft will be more expensive than production aircraft for reasons that are pretty obvious.

Seriously anyone who is really interested in the various price tags should just try and find the documents the Canadians put out which break all the points down and explain some of the procurement lingo.

edit: Found it, http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/pri/2/pro-pro/ngfc-fs-ft/arriving-estimation-eng.asp http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/pri/2/pro-pro/ngfc-fs-ft/comparison-comparaison-eng.asp

You can also find a graph on their F35 page which graphically shows the price curve of F35 production.

The F-35 price controversy is roaring in Canada as much as everywhere, just muted to the background after the Conservatives’ recent majority election victory. The second forces link - which might be summarized as “these will cost 75m, not 148m like the (non-partisan) parliamentary budget officer says” - is an interesting document.

So far as I can tell, the ISS is for pretending to have a space program but not actually having one – presumably so that the aliens who told us in 1973 to stop sending manned missions beyond LEO won’t destroy us with their proton reversal beams. How’s that for a conspiracy theory?

How exactly does one reverse a proton?

I mean split it, sure, that’s perfectly sensible. You’d end up with a neutron and an electron. But reverse it?!

Good sir, protons are not LPs, you cannot just reverse it to hear the voice of Satan whispering in your ear.

I prefer my conspiracy theory; the ISS is our secret hosting facility for railguns, and we will be shooting the earth with them for lols any decade now.

You can doubt their motivation if you want but its hard to find fault in their point by point justification of their price, they’re aren’t asking you to trust them as they’ve laid all the details out in front of you so you can make up your own mind.

The link is also a good way to show how costs can vary greatly for exactly the same product given different account methods used by different departments and governments.

I refer to higher authority.

I don’t mean to cast doubt on their motives, but to evaluate their list (and Page’s list) you pretty much have to do the same level of research as they did.

If the Forces’ math here checks out better than the PBO’s it’ll basically have to be confirmed by some sort of journalist or pundit who really knows exactly how all the nuts and bolts of this sort of purchase works. In the absence of that we have two lists, one by a party who - and I don’t in any way mean this as a slight - wants the purchase to happen, and another party that really doesn’t have a dog in the fight.

It may very well be that the military knows how this math works better than Page does, and that that’s where the discrepancy lies. But I’m not equipped to fact-check the Forces’ comparison.

Can you hear that? That is the sound of my women lamenting.

Dead horse must be viciously beaten.

Also, yes, it’s entirely possible I will lose that bet on “no manned carrier aircraft in the Pacific by 2026.” Still, it’ll be damned interesting to see how close it comes, and I’ll stick to it. In fact, I’ll put a $50 amount (in 2026 dollars! no inflation adjustment!) on it, and it looks like I’m on the hook to both Linoleum and Incendiary Lemon, no more takers allowed. Emailing myself a link to this post. Next question: what are the odds that 1) Qt3 will still exist, 2) all three of us will still be posting, and 3) we will all remember the existence of this bet in 15 years?

How is it beating a horse quoting an article about trying to miniaturize drones to bird and insect size? For a hummingbird sized UAV to replace the F-35, it would need to be firing antimatter tipped micro-missiles. I’m not sure that will be ready before 2126, much less 2026.

Which is just making me think of the Burning Skies trilogy and it’s extrapolation of warfare into the early 22nd century. Talk about toys…

Well, the LHC has been capturing antimatter particles for a while now…

Hm, sounds like I should read this Burning Skies trilogy. Amazon wishlist ho!

And again, the point isn’t that drones can do what the F-35 can do; the point is that drones may change aerial warfare so dramatically that the F-35’s actual mission is no longer critical enough to justify its cost.

http://longbets.org/

Wow, nice! Unfortunately registration is disabled, but it’s darned tempting.

This. There are many sizes of drones. Very few have been weaponized.

All the current drones have been operating in areas where we have total air superiority. None of these could survive in a high threat area (i.e. exactly what the F-35 has been designed for).

They have their uses, and they are the future. But the future is not tomorrow, or next year, or in five to ten years. Unless maybe you are in China.

-CJ

RepoMan, unmanned aircraft technology has been around since at least the 1950s, and we are only just getting to the point where a few models are fitted with weapons that can be reliably used.

For your idea of an unmanned aircraft carrier to be possible it requires an advanced enough AI to be able to fully engage in combat as well as all other associated maintenance and planning tasks. Why? Simple, if your unmanned systems require human input to act you build in a huge weakness that can easily be exploited by your opponents, the communications networks required to keep your drones operational. If your unmanned vehicle fleet can be disabled through shooting down its satellite communications infrastructure then it is useless. At that point a self contained manned vehicle would still be better than your most advanced drone.

Where is AI research at right now? A long way off where your imagination is.