F35 cost increases.
Discussion
This farcical project is going to turn into a spectacular and massive error of judgement. The US really, really screwed up big time here.
It will not be long now, perhaps less than a generation, before China and its allies have highly competitive aircraft - and lots of them.
And the US and its allies would have spent a trillion dollars on this piece of crap. It's got a less useful range than an out of tune Nascar with the fuel tank from a Tata Nano.
I'm no defence expert, but jeez, clearly there are many politicians and so -called advisors who are not either..
Bumbling, baffling, staggering incompetence of a massive scale.
It will not be long now, perhaps less than a generation, before China and its allies have highly competitive aircraft - and lots of them.
And the US and its allies would have spent a trillion dollars on this piece of crap. It's got a less useful range than an out of tune Nascar with the fuel tank from a Tata Nano.
I'm no defence expert, but jeez, clearly there are many politicians and so -called advisors who are not either..
Bumbling, baffling, staggering incompetence of a massive scale.
Simpo Two said:
I'd call it the 'flabbiness of peacetime'. There is no enemy at the gates to help make fast and sensible decisions.
If de Havilland were still around they could build it in six months. Out of wood
We have been at war more or less continuously in one form or another since the F35 was mooted. Certainly for the last ten years we've been very active. Someone should really have stood back a bit and check what capability we really needed. That capability for the wars we are fighting at the moment is: If de Havilland were still around they could build it in six months. Out of wood
Ability to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
davepoth said:
We have been at war more or less continuously in one form or another since the F35 was mooted. Certainly for the last ten years we've been very active. Someone should really have stood back a bit and check what capability we really needed. That capability for the wars we are fighting at the moment is:
Ability to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
The F35 has a version that can delpoy from less prepared airstrips. It is called the F35-B. The F-35C and F35A have 4 weapons bay points but can also take another 6 on wing pylons AND 2 wintip points. Thats more than the majority of UAV/UCAV and other similar warplanes with regards to heavy ordinance load. Furthermore due to the speed of the F-35 it can respond much quicker than say a B52. Ability to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
The F35 has a superior avionics suite and high stealth abilities. Coupled with speed it can be shot at and very little will hit it or bring it down.
Additionally all this "we need to focus on the wars we are fighting now to the exclusion of all else" is just a load of bull ****. The biggest failing of almost every military is building a force to fight the war they have just won, or the skirmishes they are fighting to the exclusion of all other capabilities.
China just got a carrier. She is planning 5, 2 of which will be indigenous 95,000 tonne carriers. India has just got a carrier, she is planning 4-6. Both these nations will field capable aircraft on the carriers. Both have a different policy and social structure to the west.
So your showing a remarkable ignornace in asserting that the F-35 is useless.
As usual, what has really cost the F-35 is political playing and industry skimming. More often than not the biggest cost increases are political measures.
For instance the T45 costs twice as much as it was meant to. Primarily because of the constant delay to build, the constant need to tick political boxes (first with Nato frigate, then with Horizon). Then stupid decisions like "it's gone up in price so we will purchase only 6... oh wait that means R&D now goes across 6 vessels instead of 12... MEGA FAIL!)
Then there is the Astute... BAE decided to use CAD. They took that risk... they failed. Yet the Politicians forced the MoD to bail them out of that failure so that "british" industry wasn't effected. That shouldn't have been part of the defence contract. That should have been a sperate bailout loan given by the treasury to BAE.
With the carriers, delays to them have resulted in short term savings for parties like Labour in an ATTEMPT to remain in power. Meanwhile they are passing a time bomb to whoever gains power next.
Defence industries in the west need to start being treated with steel. They need defence secretaries who KNOW what the cost of a fracking light bulb is, or the cost of a steel sodding screw... not like you can't find it on the internet or from Janes etc and then push them to explain why they are making it cost so much.
Politicians needs to start agreeing that regardless of party differences BRITISH defence will be treated with the priority it needs. They need to stop all this crappy interference to try and placacate fat, lazy, drunken, smoking voters who are after benefits and hundreds of thousands of pounds to have an operation to save them from their own glutony.
Finally, the MoD needs to stop changing requirements. We need to say we need X, Y and Z delivered by A, B and C. We need it by time T. We want you to present a low cost, mid cost, high cost solution. We want your opinion on the best value for money. We will then have a comitte meeting with parliment, the CDS and Heads of service as well as with the MoD memeber. We will agree on a type, on numbers and on initial orders. Initial orders will not be changed. We will only make minor changes during build. Moderate changes will happen inbetween batches. Major changes will only occur due to massive world change or major muck up by defence industry.
Job done. We all go home. HMS Dreadnought was designed in 6 weeks. Built in less than 12 months. She was revolutionary for the time. We didn't **** around. Anything that needed to be improved was kept quite and done on the next vessel. It's quicker, it gives more hulls, it still adresses weaknesses.
This is why China and India are going to become more powerful than us. They say "I want this by then how are you going to give it to me." The industry says "We will do this, it will take X years". They then say "Make it happen, any **** ups are your own damn fault".
That and while they have 10 year reviews, or 5 year reviews. Their global long reaching strategy is planned for 40-50 years. Which really is how our defence should work given we are a maritime nation and a carrier lasts for about 50 years. With escorts designs capable of having a 30 year hull life and a 50odd year design life with SLEP adjustments.
davepoth said:
We have been at war more or less continuously in one form or another since the F35 was mooted. Certainly for the last ten years we've been very active. Someone should really have stood back a bit and check what capability we really needed. That capability for the wars we are fighting at the moment is:
Ability to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
Precisely ! I'm an armchair general and yet even that seems pretty obvious. There really are some weapons-grades idiots in positions of power these days.Ability to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
It seems the decline of the west is certain from a military perspective as well as an economic one. We can't even commission the right kit for the job. And we waste billions, even trillions, of $$ in the process.
If you sit down and think about it too much, it is easy to get very, very, VERY angry about the chronic waste of money being displayed...
DamienB said:
No Dave, we need a super high tech stealthy jet that is so expensive we can only afford a handful in order to defend us against the ravening hordes of, er, the Russians, no sorry, the Chinese, er hang on they own half the country already er... sorry what was the question again?
The F/A-18 would do just as well. However the tone of your post reveals that like most you don't seem to realise how much we have at stake.We NEED oversea trade. Without it Britain no longer exists in about 3 months top. It is in serious trouble after JUST 3 weeks.
That oversea trade goes through 8 major choke points. Of those choke points we cannot use the Army or the Air force to sustain a 24/7 presence in the event of a conflict.
We have a number of oversea territories. Some dependencies, some are resource valuable (Antartic, Falklands, S.Georgia) some are Strategic (Indian ocean territories). To protect those we need an aircraft capable of Carrier landing so that we can utilise them in the event the territory is hit first and infrastructure can no longer support in air reinforcement.
We have Anti-Piracy, Anti-Narcotic duties. We have terrorism problems.
The world has less resources.
We have a sensior NATO security council seat and responsibilities with that.
Either we fund defence to match those requirements and obligations listed above OR we reduce foreign policy, reduce defence and accept that we are not independent and at the whims of other nations with regards our trade, livelyhood and security.
As a nation with great experience and history to draw on, with a legacy of an empire, with ties around the world and a diplomatic voice of some weight I believe the former is required. I also believe that leaving others to guard our spread out oversea territories, to gaurd our trade routes and to look after the world is a stupid and irresponsible view.
We need not go alone, but we need to be able to contribute to international law and order. As well as ensure our soverignty is protected as well as our trade rights.
So we need a carrier capable aircraft. As a 5th generation the F35 will come into service about the time of our new carriers. It will last for about 30 years. It is a long term investment and allows us to contribute to both high and low end intensity based operations.
EDIT;
That said I would have gone for F/A-18 Superhornet instead or Navalised Typhoon straight from the start of it's design. Choosing to operate it primarily from carriers. With F-35 being considered after 2020.
Afterall, why have a static air base over a moving one? Why use multiple airbases to cover territories with relatively few squadrons when you can just deter attack by the presence of an aircraft carrier able to deploy 3 squadrons of fighters along with AEW, Tanker support and the rest of the TG threat.
Finally I accept some may wish to not be involved in the global world anymore. In that case we don't need carriers, we don't need a large RAF or a large Army but we also need to cut back on our foriegn policy and accept what the world hands us...
Edited by Sea Dragon on Saturday 16th July 13:27
Sea Dragon said:
The F35 has a version that can delpoy from less prepared airstrips. It is called the F35-B. The F-35C and F35A have 4 weapons bay points but can also take another 6 on wing pylons AND 2 wintip points. Thats more than the majority of UAV/UCAV and other similar warplanes with regards to heavy ordinance load. Furthermore due to the speed of the F-35 it can respond much quicker than say a B52.
The F35-B has this issue where it melts everything it stands on if it uses the lift engine. Also it reduces the combat load massively. I don't think they've tried using it off an airfield yet. It may have a better combat loadout than a UAV, but I think it costs about 25 times as much as one. I bet 25 UAVs would be quite useful.Due to the range of the F-35 (600 miles I think) it can only go as fast as its tankers, which are probably a bit slower than a B-52.
Sea Dragon said:
The F35 has a superior avionics suite and high stealth abilities. Coupled with speed it can be shot at and very little will hit it or bring it down.
For the last 20 years we've not fought a war against anyone with an even vaguely comparable airforce. Even when they've had half decent planes they've not had the AWACS capability to control them properly. A man with an AK-47 or an anti-aircraft gun doesn't often have radar to stop him seeing a plane, and they have to go much slower when flying low.
Sea Dragon said:
Additionally all this "we need to focus on the wars we are fighting now to the exclusion of all else" is just a load of bull ****. The biggest failing of almost every military is building a force to fight the war they have just won, or the skirmishes they are fighting to the exclusion of all other capabilities.
The problem is that we're building a force to fight a war we won in 1990. That's a bit stupid.Sea Dragon said:
China just got a carrier. She is planning 5, 2 of which will be indigenous 95,000 tonne carriers. India has just got a carrier, she is planning 4-6. Both these nations will field capable aircraft on the carriers. Both have a different policy and social structure to the west.
And? Carriers do not an expeditionary force make. For all of their regional clout, China are a fair distance away from wanting to project massive force beyond the South China Sea, mainly because they don't see the point of rattling their sabre for no reason, unlike certain nations. India is turning into a superpower, but thanks to Britain it's going to be a superpower that is also the world's largest parliamentary democracy. Neither of the countries will get involved with an idealogical battle with themselves or anyone else right now - the battle will be about resources, and that won't be for twenty years or more, based on current estimates. So while they are a concern, the fight with them will be with their next generation of plane which will trump the F-35 anyway.
Sea Dragon said:
So your showing a remarkable ignornace in asserting that the F-35 is useless.
I never said that, I said that the F-35 is not the plane we should have been building. We needed more cheaper planes, rugged, with STOL (but not VTOL) capability, not made of stealth materials, and with the capability to own the battlefield once the air has been cleared by our air superiority fighters that we spent so much money on.Sea Dragon said:
As usual, what has really cost the F-35 is political playing and industry skimming. More often than not the biggest cost increases are political measures.
For instance the T45 costs twice as much as it was meant to. Primarily because of the constant delay to build, the constant need to tick political boxes (first with Nato frigate, then with Horizon). Then stupid decisions like "it's gone up in price so we will purchase only 6... oh wait that means R&D now goes across 6 vessels instead of 12... MEGA FAIL!)
Then there is the Astute... BAE decided to use CAD. They took that risk... they failed. Yet the Politicians forced the MoD to bail them out of that failure so that "british" industry wasn't effected. That shouldn't have been part of the defence contract. That should have been a sperate bailout loan given by the treasury to BAE.
With the carriers, delays to them have resulted in short term savings for parties like Labour in an ATTEMPT to remain in power. Meanwhile they are passing a time bomb to whoever gains power next.
Defence industries in the west need to start being treated with steel. They need defence secretaries who KNOW what the cost of a fracking light bulb is, or the cost of a steel sodding screw... not like you can't find it on the internet or from Janes etc and then push them to explain why they are making it cost so much.
Politicians needs to start agreeing that regardless of party differences BRITISH defence will be treated with the priority it needs. They need to stop all this crappy interference to try and placacate fat, lazy, drunken, smoking voters who are after benefits and hundreds of thousands of pounds to have an operation to save them from their own glutony.
Finally, the MoD needs to stop changing requirements. We need to say we need X, Y and Z delivered by A, B and C. We need it by time T. We want you to present a low cost, mid cost, high cost solution. We want your opinion on the best value for money. We will then have a comitte meeting with parliment, the CDS and Heads of service as well as with the MoD memeber. We will agree on a type, on numbers and on initial orders. Initial orders will not be changed. We will only make minor changes during build. Moderate changes will happen inbetween batches. Major changes will only occur due to massive world change or major muck up by defence industry.
Job done. We all go home. HMS Dreadnought was designed in 6 weeks. Built in less than 12 months. She was revolutionary for the time. We didn't **** around. Anything that needed to be improved was kept quite and done on the next vessel. It's quicker, it gives more hulls, it still adresses weaknesses.
No arguments there.For instance the T45 costs twice as much as it was meant to. Primarily because of the constant delay to build, the constant need to tick political boxes (first with Nato frigate, then with Horizon). Then stupid decisions like "it's gone up in price so we will purchase only 6... oh wait that means R&D now goes across 6 vessels instead of 12... MEGA FAIL!)
Then there is the Astute... BAE decided to use CAD. They took that risk... they failed. Yet the Politicians forced the MoD to bail them out of that failure so that "british" industry wasn't effected. That shouldn't have been part of the defence contract. That should have been a sperate bailout loan given by the treasury to BAE.
With the carriers, delays to them have resulted in short term savings for parties like Labour in an ATTEMPT to remain in power. Meanwhile they are passing a time bomb to whoever gains power next.
Defence industries in the west need to start being treated with steel. They need defence secretaries who KNOW what the cost of a fracking light bulb is, or the cost of a steel sodding screw... not like you can't find it on the internet or from Janes etc and then push them to explain why they are making it cost so much.
Politicians needs to start agreeing that regardless of party differences BRITISH defence will be treated with the priority it needs. They need to stop all this crappy interference to try and placacate fat, lazy, drunken, smoking voters who are after benefits and hundreds of thousands of pounds to have an operation to save them from their own glutony.
Finally, the MoD needs to stop changing requirements. We need to say we need X, Y and Z delivered by A, B and C. We need it by time T. We want you to present a low cost, mid cost, high cost solution. We want your opinion on the best value for money. We will then have a comitte meeting with parliment, the CDS and Heads of service as well as with the MoD memeber. We will agree on a type, on numbers and on initial orders. Initial orders will not be changed. We will only make minor changes during build. Moderate changes will happen inbetween batches. Major changes will only occur due to massive world change or major muck up by defence industry.
Job done. We all go home. HMS Dreadnought was designed in 6 weeks. Built in less than 12 months. She was revolutionary for the time. We didn't **** around. Anything that needed to be improved was kept quite and done on the next vessel. It's quicker, it gives more hulls, it still adresses weaknesses.
Sea Dragon said:
This is why China and India are going to become more powerful than us. They say "I want this by then how are you going to give it to me." The industry says "We will do this, it will take X years". They then say "Make it happen, any **** ups are your own damn fault".
The problem with that is that of course the defence industries will wither without the massive state subsidy that is defence procurement f
kups.Sea Dragon said:
That and while they have 10 year reviews, or 5 year reviews. Their global long reaching strategy is planned for 40-50 years. Which really is how our defence should work given we are a maritime nation and a carrier lasts for about 50 years. With escorts designs capable of having a 30 year hull life and a 50odd year design life with SLEP adjustments.
No, that's the wrong way of doing it.If you ask someone to build something that will work for 50 years, they have to design it to work for 70 years, just in case. That means they then have to look at things like "what will future weapons be?" which means that they have to design in the possibility of directed energy weapons, which means the powerplants get massively over-specced, which has knock-ons to hull size, etc, etc.
What we need to do is go to the market and say "I want a frigate with a 155mm gun on the front, a helicopter deck at the back, some anti-ship missiles in the middle, and a radar on top. I want it to have a hull thick enough to withstand a hit from a big torpedo."
Get the thing built with commodity guns, commodity missles, and commodity radar, all of which are on the market and sold for export (because those are the ones that people want to buy, because they work) for about 10% of the cost of developing the systems ourselves, and the whole life cost reduction will mean that instead of hauling it into drydock to be effectively rebuilt every ten years, we can just build another two.
Edited by davepoth on Saturday 16th July 16:06
Dave,
Got to say I disagree.
600 miles combat radius is more than enough to provide CAS in the majority of situations. Given that the F35C is also planned to be able to do buddy buddy tanking like the F/A-18 we have no problem.
Also it's very rare that an aircraft gets shot down by an AK-47. Even moving at 200 mph you're going to struggle to hit one.
As for buying off the market. I don't think thats the soltuion. British defence could easily survive if it was a leaner machine. If it HAD to compete then it might very well do it some good. Mainly because having to compete would make it more attractive on the global market. Better value for money AND the RN use it would be a potent selling combination.
UAV/UCAV are highly vulnerable platforms. Jam GPS, Jam Satelite uplink, Shoot the Satelite down are all options. Furthermore they are not anywhere near as resilent as a F35. Nor as versatile. They also lack the pure human element that is very important with regards messy issues like civillian casualties.
Anyway, I do apologise for any misunderstanding. Was feeling all frustrated and posted before calming down.
As I said, for myself I would have gone with F/A-18. It would have made carrier design choices easy (go with CATOBAR). It would have stopped the government doing political delays under the cover of "The Aircraft isn't ready so no point in having the carrier". It would have been much cheaper and so allowed us to build them under license here in the UK. Maybe pay for the cost of a tooling set and thus get a cut of the sales to the world export (more countries are interested in the F/A-18). We could have had the original 150 planned aircraft... Or 100 aircraft and the money saved on the 50 could be given to the RAF for them to do what they want with. Meanwhile the FAA has 100 F/A-18 to operate across both carriers.
Industry wins because it gets plenty of jobs building the aircraft.
Forces get a capable aircraft that will be useful untill 2030. It allows us to transition back to CATOBAR operations. It allows us to buy the F35 once it has worked out it's teething problems. It helps save money in the current recesion.
The Carriers could have been built quicker... maybe with the first one completed in 2012 for service in 2014. The second in 2014 for service in 2016.
Also, carrier strike is the best form of expeditionary air power. 80% of the worlds major cities and resources are within 400 miles of the coast. Most major operations will involve amphibious transpot due to it's much better economy of scale than air transport. Carrier air power allows cover of that operation. Initial strike and then for the aircraft to move to set up airfields once the initial beach head has been secured.
If needs be a carrier aircraft can operate from a land base in any event. So it's flexible.
EDIT:
With regards a design that will last 50 years. You don't need to do what your saying. You equip it with good tech right now and just make it large enough to take future upgrades.
Spruance class is an obvious example. It had enough space to take multiple upgrades to the design.
Type 45 is another example with plenty of space for upgrade.
Nimitz class carrier or QE class carrier will also have the space to take upgrades on the design.
Steel is cheap, air is free.
Got to say I disagree.
600 miles combat radius is more than enough to provide CAS in the majority of situations. Given that the F35C is also planned to be able to do buddy buddy tanking like the F/A-18 we have no problem.
Also it's very rare that an aircraft gets shot down by an AK-47. Even moving at 200 mph you're going to struggle to hit one.
As for buying off the market. I don't think thats the soltuion. British defence could easily survive if it was a leaner machine. If it HAD to compete then it might very well do it some good. Mainly because having to compete would make it more attractive on the global market. Better value for money AND the RN use it would be a potent selling combination.
UAV/UCAV are highly vulnerable platforms. Jam GPS, Jam Satelite uplink, Shoot the Satelite down are all options. Furthermore they are not anywhere near as resilent as a F35. Nor as versatile. They also lack the pure human element that is very important with regards messy issues like civillian casualties.
Anyway, I do apologise for any misunderstanding. Was feeling all frustrated and posted before calming down.
As I said, for myself I would have gone with F/A-18. It would have made carrier design choices easy (go with CATOBAR). It would have stopped the government doing political delays under the cover of "The Aircraft isn't ready so no point in having the carrier". It would have been much cheaper and so allowed us to build them under license here in the UK. Maybe pay for the cost of a tooling set and thus get a cut of the sales to the world export (more countries are interested in the F/A-18). We could have had the original 150 planned aircraft... Or 100 aircraft and the money saved on the 50 could be given to the RAF for them to do what they want with. Meanwhile the FAA has 100 F/A-18 to operate across both carriers.
Industry wins because it gets plenty of jobs building the aircraft.
Forces get a capable aircraft that will be useful untill 2030. It allows us to transition back to CATOBAR operations. It allows us to buy the F35 once it has worked out it's teething problems. It helps save money in the current recesion.
The Carriers could have been built quicker... maybe with the first one completed in 2012 for service in 2014. The second in 2014 for service in 2016.
Also, carrier strike is the best form of expeditionary air power. 80% of the worlds major cities and resources are within 400 miles of the coast. Most major operations will involve amphibious transpot due to it's much better economy of scale than air transport. Carrier air power allows cover of that operation. Initial strike and then for the aircraft to move to set up airfields once the initial beach head has been secured.
If needs be a carrier aircraft can operate from a land base in any event. So it's flexible.
EDIT:
With regards a design that will last 50 years. You don't need to do what your saying. You equip it with good tech right now and just make it large enough to take future upgrades.
Spruance class is an obvious example. It had enough space to take multiple upgrades to the design.
Type 45 is another example with plenty of space for upgrade.
Nimitz class carrier or QE class carrier will also have the space to take upgrades on the design.
Steel is cheap, air is free.
Edited by Sea Dragon on Saturday 16th July 13:57
davepoth said:
The F35-B has this issue where it melts everything it stands on if it uses the lift engine.
It's time the B version was dumped into oblivion really, it's just a hideous resource waste for a pointless a/c.
(I'm not even that convinced that it's even worth continuing with the A and C version either tbh)
davepoth said:
The F35-B has this issue where it melts everything it stands on if it uses the lift engine.
Does Harrier melt everything it stands on? The jet from F-35 is cooler than that of a Harrier. Plus if it melts everything it stands on, then I hope the users have budgeted for a hell of a lot of tyres....davepoth said:
We have been at war more or less continuously in one form or another since the F35 was mooted. Certainly for the last ten years we've been very active. Someone should really have stood back a bit and check what capability we really needed. That capability for the wars we are fighting at the moment is:
Ability to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
Ability to loiter with heavy ordinance - checkAbility to loiter while carrying a heavy ordinance load
Ability to be shot at by small arms without causing catastrophic damage
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips
And the F-35 doesn't do any of that.
Ability to be shot by small arms without causing catastrophic damage - check
Ability to deploy from less prepared airstrips - check
Already have a lot of them - Check
Right so the harrier does everything we currently need. And whats best, we don't even need to buy them.
Whats the bet that the F-35 is finally completed and is a big flop which is no where near as capable as the Harrier was?
Ian Lancs said:
davepoth said:
The F35-B has this issue where it melts everything it stands on if it uses the lift engine.
The jet from F-35 is cooler than that of a Harrier. aeropilot said:
Ian Lancs said:
davepoth said:
The F35-B has this issue where it melts everything it stands on if it uses the lift engine.
The jet from F-35 is cooler than that of a Harrier. davepoth said:
We have been at war more or less continuously in one form or another since the F35 was mooted.
Not really, compared to the world wars. The conflicts in Kosovo and Middle East had little effect on the majority of the population other than as news items. No air-raid sirens in sleepy England or risk of Kosovans and Muslims landing on the south coast and marching up Whitehall.Actually, hang on...
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