Posted on 07/15/2014 3:53:28 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Two US fighter jets were due to make their international debuts this week at the year's most important aerospace event, the Farnborough Airshow. At the moment, only one of them is here.
The F-35 may be the world's most expensive, most advanced military jet programme, but it was a cheap and cheerful budget aircraft that managed the trans-Atlantic crossing to Farnborough.
The Scorpion costs about $20m (£12m) a throw, is built from off-the-shelf components, and went from drawing board to first flight in 23 months.
The F-35, costing three times as much and conceived in the early 1990s, is still in the US while engineers figure out what caused a fire that has grounded the entire fleet.
OK, making comparisons is unfair; the Scorpion and F-35 are lightyears apart in specification and functionality. But it is still slightly ironic.
Whit Peters, part of the company behind the Scorpion, was involved in the F-35 when he was Secretary of the US Air Force in the 1990s.
A few years ago, he and some colleagues had an idea for a new, light tactical fighter for general security and reconnaissance, positioned between existing cheaper, but ageing aircraft, and full-on strike fighters.
"We were pretty sure that there was a gap in the market," Mr Peters says. "It was about building something with enough tactical capacity to satisfy customers, but that also had low running costs. We are in an era when defence departments are facing budget cuts."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Similar to the F-20 Tigershark debate of the 1980s.
Looks slow.
Since when is the cost of an F35 only $60 million? Don’t know what the final numbers will be, but all the estimates I have seen are much hire than that.
It is actually pretty fast. I think they claim about 450 knots or so. Maybe not exactly correct but I remember being somewhat impressed at the claimed speed. Now, whether that is dirty or not I can’t say.
Maybe that is the flyaway cost (as in what it makes just to physically make it not factoring in development costs)?
Maintenance costs would be interesting to compare as would average ready time...or whatever the Air Force call it.
The F-35, costing three times as much... BS try at least 6 times as much at around $150M each to date and $350B over budget to date.
GAO Report to Congress March 2014:
To execute the program as planned, the Department of sefense (DOD) will have to increase funds steeply over the next 5 years and sustain an average of $12.6 billion per year through 2037; for several years, funding requirements will peak at around $15 billion. Annual funding of this magnitude clearly poses long-term affordability risks
given the current fiscal environment. The program has been
directed to reduce unit costs to meet established affordability targets before full-rate production begins in 2019, but meeting those targets will be challenging as
significant cost reductions are needed. Additionally, the most recent cost estimate for operating and supporting the
F-35 fleet is more than $1 trillion, which DOD officials have deemed unaffordable.
This estimate reflects assumptions about key cost drivers the program can control, like aircraft reliability, and those it cannot control, including fuel costs, labor costs, and inflation rates. Reliability is lower than expected for two variants, and DOT&E reports that the F-35 program has limited additional opportunities to improve reliability.
I think a CitationX is faster than this thing.
Any individual vehicle should take a competent company no longer than 24 months to a first working prototype. Kelly Johnson managed it with the U2 and the SR-71. The thing he did was not allow the military to diddle with it. Every colonel who comes along suddenly adds cost by saying, “well, I want it to do x also.” They always say this when X means a complete redesign.
The more companies you put into the decision process the longer it becomes. I worked on Future Combat Systems and there were two “integrator of integrators.” Neither ever knew what was going on. The project was an expensive failure from every aspect.
The problem is, if the military can’t diddle they don’t want it either. I think the F-20 was an excellent plane. But no sale.
This thing will compete with the Bazillion turbo-prop fighters.
CFID risk there for sure...
If it can take 1/10 the damage that an A-10 can I’d be surprised. A-10’s work and have a mission record to grossly prove it. If they need a local tactical aircraft, they should stick to the overall A-10 design and just build new ones of those. A-10’s would probably come in no more than 30-40% over this crafts unit cost, and that’s not considering that the tooling and stuff associated with the A-10’s original production run is probably still lying around.
If it isn’t broke, but your taxpayers are, DON’T fix it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion
Maximum speed of 450kts so it’s slower than an airliner.
6 hardpoints with a total of 6000lb payload so it’s a very light attack aircraft.
My instinct is to agree with you. I thought the same basic thing about turning the Wisconsin, Missouri and New Jersey into museums. There is nothing that compares with that kind of survivability and firepower in our arsenal.
Hate to tell you, but Congress ordered the A-10 tooling destroyed after the Gulf War. There will never be any more A-10s.
.png=Alpha "”Alpha")
~If it can take 1/10 the damage that an A-10 can I’d be surprised. ~
Bingo, leave these toy shturmoviks to the Third World where it belongs.
Let them hunt narcos and their own civilians with these things. It won’t survive a single CAS mission against real soldiers or well-equipped rebels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.