More shocking Reporting - editorials this time

Korea – F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft

The Pentagon has offered to sell S. Korea 60 F-35A fighters at a unit price of $180m, much less than the prices it has offered to Japan ($238m) and to Israel ($202m). (LM photo) WASHINGTON --- The Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress March 29 of a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Korea for 60 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Conventional Take Off and Landing (CTOL) aircraft and associated equipment, parts, training and logistical support for an estimated cost of $10.8 billion.

The Government of the Republic of Korea has requested a possible sale of (60) F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Conventional Take Off and Landing (CTOL) aircraft. Aircraft will be configured with the Pratt & Whitney F-135 engines, and (9) Pratt & Whitney F-135 engines are included as spares.

Other aircraft equipment includes: Electronic Warfare Systems; Command, Control, Communication, Computer and Intelligence / Communication, Navigational and Identification (C4I/CNI); Autonomic Logistics Global Support System (ALGS); Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS); Full Mission Trainer; Weapons Employment Capability, and other Subsystems, Features, and Capabilities; F-35 unique infrared flares; reprogramming center; F-35 Performance Based Logistics.

Also included [are]: software development/integration, aircraft ferry and tanker support, support equipment, tools and test equipment, communication equipment, spares and repair parts, personnel training and training equipment, publications and technical documents, U.S. Government and contractor engineering and logistics personnel services, and other related elements of logistics and program support.

The estimated cost is $10.8 billion.

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy goals and national security objectives of the United States by meeting the legitimate security and defense needs of an ally and partner nation. The Republic of Korea continues to be an important force for peace, political stability, and economic progress in North East Asia.

The proposed sale of F-35s will provide the Republic of Korea (ROK) with a credible defense capability to deter aggression in the region and ensure interoperability with U.S. forces. The proposed sale will augment Korea’s operational aircraft inventory and enhance its air-to-air and air-to-ground self-defense capability. The ROK’s Air Force F-4 aircraft will be decommissioned as F-35s are added to the inventory. Korea will have no difficulty absorbing these aircraft into its armed forces.

The proposed sale of this aircraft system and support will not negatively alter the basic military balance in the region.

The prime contractors will be Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, Texas; and Pratt & Whitney Military Engines in East Hartford, Connecticut. This proposal is being offered in the context of a competition. If the proposal is accepted, it is expected that offset agreements will be required.

Implementation of this proposed sale will require multiple trips to Korea involving U.S. Government and contractor representatives for technical reviews/support, program management, and training over a period of 15 years. U.S. contractor representatives will be required in Korea to conduct Contractor Engineering Technical Services (CETS) and Autonomic Logistics and Global Support (ALGS) for after-aircraft delivery.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness resulting from this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.


(EDITOR’S NOTE: The above notification prices the F-35As for Korea at $180 million each, excluding weapons. The sale would also require fully 15 years of local support by US government and contractor reps, the cost of which is not included in the notification price tag.
It is also worth noting that the F-35 is being offered at widely differing prices to US Allies.
While Korea would pay $180 million per aircraft, Japan has been told it would have to pay about $10 billion for 42 similar F-35As (4 + 38 on option), which works out to $238 million per aircraft.
Israel, on the other hand, has been offered 75 F-35s (an initial buy of 25, with an option for 50 additional F-35As or 50 F-35Bs) for $15.2 billion, or $202.6 million per aircraft. But this price was fixed in 2008, and will be higher once it has been updated to current dollars.
One wonders what future buyers will think of such widely varying price tags for the same aircraft, and how the Pentagon will justify them).

Source: Defense Security Cooperation Agency; issued April 3, 2013

Turkey to Replace F-16s with Local Jets

T
urkey eyes replacing F-16s with locally produced fighter jets by 2023, Turkey’s defense undersecretary said yesterday. “We’re working on the conceptual design of a new fighter jet that will replace our F-16 fighters,” Defense Industry Undersecretary Murad Bayar said yesterday on the sidelines of the two-day International Air & Space Power (ICAP) Conference being held in Istanbul.

Recently, Turkish arms manufacturer TAI has signed a technical assistance deal with Swedish Saab on technical assistance to build a fighter jet, as Daily News reported.

Turkish officials have been in talks with Saab (and with Korean Aerospace Industries) to find the best modality for the ambitious project of building its own fighter since 2010 and 2011. In August 2011, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, signed a deal with TAI to carry out the conceptual design work for fighter and jet trainer aircraft Turkey hopes to build.

In recent months a Turkish delegation, including SSM officials, visited Saab headquarters and production facilities in Sweden. And more recently, TAI and Saab penned a preliminary agreement for technical assistance which will pave the way for a subsequent support deal.

In yesterday’s statements, Bayar said the project of designing a local fighter began last year and after some trials one of the designs has matured.

After completing the design phase, the undersecretary will make an offer on developing a fighter to the Defense Industry Executive Committee, the highest defense procurement body of Turkey, which includes Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Defense Minister ?smet Y?lmaz, Chief of the Turkish General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, as well as Bayar himself.

Recalling that Turkey had been one of the partners in the multinational Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) consortium that builds F-35 fighters, Bayar said the roles of the new model to be developed and the F-35 would be different. Therefore, new fighters will be configured as air-to-air planes and they will complement each other with F-35s.

Defense sources had told to Daily News that the program was exposed to the risk of a prolonged conceptual design and this would make the whole project “not very meaningful.”

ANKA to be developed

Meanwhile, asked about how Turkey’s recently launched Göktürk-2 satellite would serve the Turkish Armed Forces, Bayar said the satellite would provide intelligence to Turkey by taking photos of certain regions, which will be used in the operational plans of the army. The first visuals have already arrived, he said.

In addition, he said Turkey also had ambitious plans to develop and upgrade its unmanned aircraft, ANKA.

“The new ANKA will be 4 tons, [the current model is 1.5 tons] and its carrying power, capabilities and sensors will be developed accordingly,” Bayar said, stressing that this would be one of the most important projects of the upcoming period.


(EDITOR’S NOTE: After Italy and the United Kingdom, who will keep their Eurofighter Typhoons in service alongside the F-35, Turkey is the third major customer to confirm that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will need to be supported and escorted by air-to-air fighters.
One wonders how other countries, which plan to operate the F-35 as their only combat aircraft, will do to carry out air-to-air missions.)

Source: Hurriyet Daily News; published March 29, 2013

kamenriderblade wrote:Israel and Japan have a right to complain, what's up with the disproportionate cost of aircraft?

gtx wrote:

kamenriderblade wrote:Israel and Japan have a right to complain, what's up with the disproportionate cost of aircraft?

Not really - countries are buying different quantities at different times in the program with potentially different support packages...

Lightndattic wrote:Guys... that's Giovanni de Briganti's site. He's in the same class as Sweetman and David Axe. Everything about the F-35 is twisted to be negative.

Should North Korea's hostile rhetoric give way to action, the U.S. military has sent F-22 fighters to defend South Korea. These fighters carry a price tag of $143 million each, making them the most expensive in use.
That could change if the F-35 Lightning II were deployed. Yet by all indications, that won't be happening anytime soon - if at all.
According to Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight, the F-35 program now costs approximately $200 million per craft.
Despite the princely sums spent on the fighter, the plane actually sits idle - a boondoggle Wheeler claims is pushing up its cost, since it missed its original 2012 deployment date.
Its convoluted design, pursued by the Department of Defense, is primarily to blame for the airplane's extended stay in the development stage, according to the analyst.
"They took vertical landing design and said, 'let's make that supersonic,'" Wheller said in an interview. "But STOVL [short take-off and vertical landing] airplanes have to be short and stumpy, and supersonic airplanes like to be twin-engine, and long and fine-looking."
The DoD then tried to make it a multi-purpose fighter and bomber, an effort that Wheeler says fell short. "Those have very different design specifications," he said.
(Read more: The Most Expensive Military Programs )
He added that the decision to make the F-35 a multi-service vehicle further complicated matters. "The Navy version looks like the Air Force version, but it's 5,000 pounds heavier," he said. "Both are quite different from the Marine Corps' STOVL version." Additionally, the design limits pilot visibility.
"The pilots said they can't see to the rear, because of the way the cockpit meets the fuselage and the placement of the headrest," he said. "Seeing to the rear is essential for fighter aircraft."
So what will it cost to correct these problems? In June 2012, the Government Accountability Office released a report estimating that the revised development cost would exceed $55 billion, a 23 percent jump over previous estimates.
However, that figure pales in comparison to the projected total cost of $1.1 trillion for its entire 30-year service life, which Wheeler called a low-ball figure.
"The total acquisition plan cost is $396 billion," he said. "That report also cites the additional cost, $1.1 trillion. Add them together and you get the eye-popping $1.5 trillion figure, and those estimates assume that everything goes perfectly from here on in."
Wheeler also noted that there was still plenty of time for the price to go up.
"We're only 25 percent of the way through the initial testing, and this is the easy, laboratory testing," he said. "Real testing doesn't even begin until 2017. The date for it to be finished with additional operational testing is 2019."
(Read more: The Most Expensive U.S. Military Vehicles )
Despite all the time and money, Wheeler said that he did not expect the completed F-35 to be much of an improvement over what the military already has patrolling the skies. In fact, he said that some of the military's existing airplanes already outperform it.
"The F-16 has more range and payload, and so does the bomber version of the F-15," he said. "In fighter mode, F-16s accelerate faster and are more agile in the air."
Ultimately, he characterized the F-35 Lightning II as an expensive, ill-conceived program, and he recommended that it be mothballed.
"The smart thing to do is put these things out of their agony and initiate a properly conceived program to design a fighter and a separate air-to-ground bomber," he said.
"You need a prototype that requires competitors to produce a combat-ready airplane," Wheeler said. "We did that with the F-16 and the F-18, and those are good, successful airplanes, very cheap and extremely effective. We need to learn the lessons of those airplanes, and the F-35 shows we've forgotten those lessons."