Finnish DefMin interested in F-35s, not Gripens

Program progress, politics, orders, and speculation
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by loke » 06 Apr 2020, 16:21

krorvik wrote:With regards to the logistic footprint of the RNoAF iceland Air policing, I noticed someone saying a sizable part was base security - bigger than for the F-16.

So - the difference for the *flying part* should likely not be observed on the detachment size alone.

Do we expect the security requirements to become reduced as time goes by? I guess by the time other players have figured out most of the secrets of the F-35 security can be relaxed but that could take some time! Depending on how strict security measures are implemented now...

Are there strict the requirements to the staff implementing the security measures? Presumably Finland would need to rely on conscripts, in particular when training on the dispersed airbase system...?


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by XanderCrews » 07 Apr 2020, 21:37

loke wrote:The count will drop for future missions, however they do not expect it to be anywhere near what it was for the F-16. It is clear that the F-35 for the foreseeable future will be significantly more expensive to operate that what the F-16 ever was.



I don't know if your exaggerating here or really need to tone it down a notch? you can try defining these adjectives with actual costs.

Remember when F-35A would never ever ever in our wildest dreams get under 85 million Flyaway? how you were crazy to think that? And what is it now? 77.9 million? its less than a Gripen E now, I am very curious if for the foreseeable future the Gripen E will be "significantly more expensive to operate that what the F-16 ever was." but then I remembered the Gripen defies basic economics.

One day people are going to learn to stop betting against F-35. you would think the light bulb would be on by now.
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by loke » 08 Apr 2020, 09:03

XanderCrews wrote:
loke wrote:The count will drop for future missions, however they do not expect it to be anywhere near what it was for the F-16. It is clear that the F-35 for the foreseeable future will be significantly more expensive to operate that what the F-16 ever was.



I don't know if your exaggerating here or really need to tone it down a notch? you can try defining these adjectives with actual costs.

Nope, I am talking about operational costs, not the costs to purchase the F-35. Even Energo, a well-known F-35 fanboy, said on the previous page that the operating costs of F-35 are expected to drop down to roughly 20 % above F-16 operating costs.

To me, 20% is "significantly more expensive".


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by optimist » 08 Apr 2020, 11:55

TBH, I don't know what the final CPFH will be in 2028, I expect it will be more than a F16. When you balance the LER and aircraft needed per set mission, compared to others. Does it really matter, it's still cheaper overall.
Europe's fighters been decided. Not a Eurocanard, it's the F-35 (or insert derogatory term) Count the European countries with it.


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by loke » 08 Apr 2020, 14:27

The Coronaavirus raves the Finnish economy, but what will happen to the billion-dollar fighter project? This is how the Ministry of Defence responds


In the successor project of hornet fighters, the delay seems inevitable due to the corona epidemic, says Lauri Puranen, Director of The HX Project's Defense Department.
However, according to him, the aim is still to make the selection decision on the new fighters as planned next year.
According to Purase, efforts have been made to find solutions to promote the negotiations, including through remote connections, but it will not completely eliminate the problem of the epidemic and its response.
"Negotiations with a certain content can only be conducted face-to-face and secure, which is currently not possible," Puranen says in his e-mail comment to the B.T.

According to Purase, the HX project is currently working hard to analyse the responses to the specific invitation to tender and the results of the HX Challenge tests organised in Finland.

The Hornet successor project is so long-term that, according to Puranen, the delay in weeks or months in negotiations or evaluation is not significant.
"According to current estimates, final offers can be requested this year, and a decision could be made next year," he says.

Defence Minister Antti Kaikkonen (centre) said today in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that the Government is not in its frame session to interfere with the costs of the fighter project or the closing schedule. The corona crisis is acute, while the fighter project goes far into the 2050s.


Google translated from: https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/kor ... #gs.39515i

Google translate has improved! This translation is completely readable.

Also interesting that Finland currently does not see a significant impact on the project. Unfortunately there is a risk of invasion from Sweden (the Swedes have quite relaxed COVID-19 rules). I wonder if they have closed the border? Norway has closed all borders and anybody entering the country must remain 14 days in quarantine. That's the way to do it.


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by magitsu » 08 Apr 2020, 14:57

No, the Swedish government pressed the Finnish one not to. Northern Sweden is completely reliant on Finnish cross the border healthcare workers.
People on the Finnish side of the border are indeed worried that their more strict measures might be for naught due to this travel.

Norway also pressured Finland to keep the Northern border open, so Norway can't closed for cross the border healthcare workers. They need the more populated Finnish side's workers almost as much as Sweden.

Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo (Green) was asked at a press conference on Tuesday why the borders were not completely closed?

Ohisalo replied that foreign policy issues also weighed in the consideration.

- We do not want to leave Sweden in trouble, the Minister of the Interior said.

In recent days, Sweden and Norway have put pressure on Finland not to restrict cross-border traffic, as Sweden in particular would not be able to survive in the Norrbotten area without Finnish medical staff.

According to Iltalehti, restrictions have been a source of internal struggle in recent days within the Marin (sd) government, and various options have been closely discussed between Swedish and Finnish ministers. Adding fuel to the fire, northern Swedish MPs have publicly warned that closing the border would have serious and long-lasting effects on relations between the two countries.

- The Finnish government has listened to the Swedish government. Sweden would be in trouble without Finnish medical staff, Interior Minister Ohisalo summed up the outcome of the diplomatic twist on Tuesday.

In other words, Sweden won Finland in the corona match between national teams - at least in this round.

https://www.iltalehti.fi/politiikka/a/0 ... ae7176448b


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by magitsu » 08 Apr 2020, 21:51

The Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said in televison tonight that the national defense needs to be taken care of. She also said that the HX project has large parliamentary support and it must not be delayed.

We can expect a few month delay due to the HX project staff and the suppliers not being able to negotiate remotely. But 2021 should still be viable.


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by XanderCrews » 09 Apr 2020, 15:24

loke wrote:Nope, I am talking about operational costs, not the costs to purchase the F-35. Even Energo, a well-known F-35 fanboy, said on the previous page that the operating costs of F-35 are expected to drop down to roughly 20 % above F-16 operating costs.

To me, 20% is "significantly more expensive".


1. You missed the point: F-35 costs in several occasions have dropped well below even the most optimistic predictions. Which is why I bring up purchase costs and even the fanboys here were crossing fingers for the JPOs 85 million per projection

2. Yes Purchase costs do have relation to operations costs. Gripen fanboys said that for years and only recently stopped... one can only wonder why...

3. With respect to energo and his credibility as a "fanboy" it's his opinion, you're taking that and running with it

4. The F-35 costs will drop regardless if what it actually costs with an aggressive public relations/lying campaign wherein we tell the public for decades it costs only 4700 an hour. :mrgreen:

5. As optimist notes, Operational costs are but one factor and whenever the operational timeline is extended, we see more savings net and the F-35 gains advantage.
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by spazsinbad » 09 Apr 2020, 15:37

HX Fighter Finland Leads the Way in Fighter Procurement [FOUR page PDF of article attached below]
May 2020 Jamie Hunter

"The Ilmavoimat (Finnish Air Force) is running one of the most open and honest competitions in its bid to select the best fighter aircraft for its future needs. Jamie Hunter evaluates this fascinating process...."

Source: AIR International Magazine May 2020
Attachments
HX Competition FINLAND AirInternational May 2020 pp4.pdf
(456.8 KiB) Downloaded 766 times
HXfighterLOGOairInternationalMay2020.jpg


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by wrightwing » 09 Apr 2020, 21:57

loke wrote:
XanderCrews wrote:
loke wrote:The count will drop for future missions, however they do not expect it to be anywhere near what it was for the F-16. It is clear that the F-35 for the foreseeable future will be significantly more expensive to operate that what the F-16 ever was.



I don't know if your exaggerating here or really need to tone it down a notch? you can try defining these adjectives with actual costs.

Nope, I am talking about operational costs, not the costs to purchase the F-35. Even Energo, a well-known F-35 fanboy, said on the previous page that the operating costs of F-35 are expected to drop down to roughly 20 % above F-16 operating costs.

To me, 20% is "significantly more expensive".


You can't look at F-16 vs F-35 in a 1:1 operational cost comparison. You have to look at mission cost to achieve X effect. (i.e. it doesn't take an equal number of F-35s to achieve an effect, as F-16s.) Let's use estimated 2025 numbers, to illustrate the difference. If F-35s are at $25k/hr and F-16s are 20 percent cheaper to operate, that works out to $20k/hr. Now if 4 F-35s can achieve the same effect as 8 (12-16) F-16s, that's 4x$25k vs 8x$20k (and possibly 12 to 16x$20k.) Now add in additional tankers, and other support assets that F-16s would need. THIS is where F-35s beat any 4th generation jets, in terms of cost.


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by magitsu » 10 Apr 2020, 09:16

wrightwing wrote:You can't look at F-16 vs F-35 in a 1:1 operational cost comparison. You have to look at mission cost to achieve X effect. (i.e. it doesn't take an equal number of F-35s to achieve an effect, as F-16s.) Let's use estimated 2025 numbers, to illustrate the difference. If F-35s are at $25k/hr and F-16s are 20 percent cheaper to operate, that works out to $20k/hr. Now if 4 F-35s can achieve the same effect as 8 (12-16) F-16s, that's 4x$25k vs 8x$20k (and possibly 12 to 16x$20k.) Now add in additional tankers, and other support assets that F-16s would need. THIS is where F-35s beat any 4th generation jets, in terms of cost.

Yeah, but it this case you can forget the other support assets. Countries that don't have them don't have the extra costs associated to them. That's largely due to the difference of defensive posture (with ground based assets) vs. US/coalition very remote offensive air campaigns.

F-35 in Finland maintenance model is being developed. It has to utilize conscripts and ultimately require less people because that has enabled the local F/A-18 maintenance to be cheaper than average.

They have to be really good at optimizing, because the model is based on bottom-up optimization. 10 Bn budget and similar upkeep than the current F/A-18 fleet. Which means that if the local maintenance model would be significantly more expensive than before, they would have to offer significantly less frames. That would jeopardize them against other candidates, which could field at best the same amount (64) that the previous buy F/A-18 was.

The last phase, performance evaluation is the only thing that gets ranked. There it's a question between operations tempo and the rate of attrition in the air. A flight of 4 will be wargamed to run a few laps of this. For the F-35 it's expected that they might have some trouble with the ops tempo (turnover time in the ground), but should ace the attrition part convincingly.

Here's what the HX project says about it:
To put it simply, no matter how well an HX candidate performs in the air, but [if it] cannot engage in combat due to slow operation tempo, its combat value remains low. Of course, the same is true if the operation tempo is fast, but it does not perform well in the air.
https://ilmavoimat.fi/uutinen/-/asset_p ... geId=en_US


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by kimjongnumbaun » 11 Apr 2020, 12:08

I mentioned this before, or maybe another thread, the missing piece is that the F-35 houses all the pods internally. The ECM, targeting pod, etc all are counted against the F_35 for maintenance when they are not counted against the F-16 or any other aircraft. Once you factor that in, that 20% difference in maintenance gets a lot smaller.


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by ricnunes » 11 Apr 2020, 15:41

magitsu wrote:Yeah, but it this case you can forget the other support assets. Countries that don't have them don't have the extra costs associated to them. That's largely due to the difference of defensive posture (with ground based assets) vs. US/coalition very remote offensive air campaigns.


Even excluding the other supports, I believe that what others are trying to say is that a mission that would require lets say eight (8) F-16s or F/A-18s - without support assets - would require four (4) or even two (2) F-35s instead. This would be drastically cheaper on the F-35 side, operationally speaking.

On the other hand I believe that you're forgetting that older assets such as the F-16 or F/A-18 requires operational training aircraft (twin-seat variants) in order to have an efficient and complete pilot training while the F-35 does not need (and does not have) such variants since the vast majority of operational pilot training is performed in simulators. This gives the F-35 a major cost advantage since:
1- Less flying hours are needed for a F-35 fleet compared for example to a F-16 or F/A-18 fleet since most training hours in the former are done via simulators while with the later it most be done thru actual flying hours.
2- With older aircraft like the F-16 or F/A-18 you need to purchase dedicated training variants and so a fleet of older aircraft (like the F/A-18) must be composed by "Combat Aircraft + Operational Training Aircraft" while the F-35 fleet can be entirely composed by Combat Aircraft.

This means that together with the need of less aircraft to perform many/most missions and less hours airborne needed (specially for operational training flights), the F-35 ends up being cheaper to operate since much less hours will need to be flown with the same or better effect, this with a F-35 fleet compared to 4th gen fleets.
“Active stealth” is what the ignorant nay sayers call EW and pretend like it’s new.


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by wrightwing » 11 Apr 2020, 18:21

magitsu wrote:
Yeah, but it this case you can forget the other support assets. Countries that don't have them don't have the extra costs associated to them. That's largely due to the difference of defensive posture (with ground based assets) vs. US/coalition very remote offensive air campaigns.

F-35 in Finland maintenance model is being developed. It has to utilize conscripts and ultimately require less people because that has enabled the local F/A-18 maintenance to be cheaper than average.

They have to be really good at optimizing, because the model is based on bottom-up optimization. 10 Bn budget and similar upkeep than the current F/A-18 fleet. Which means that if the local maintenance model would be significantly more expensive than before, they would have to offer significantly less frames. That would jeopardize them against other candidates, which could field at best the same amount (64) that the previous buy F/A-18 was.

The last phase, performance evaluation is the only thing that gets ranked. There it's a question between operations tempo and the rate of attrition in the air. A flight of 4 will be wargamed to run a few laps of this. For the F-35 it's expected that they might have some trouble with the ops tempo (turnover time in the ground), but should ace the attrition part convincingly.

Here's what the HX project says about it:
To put it simply, no matter how well an HX candidate performs in the air, but [if it] cannot engage in combat due to slow operation tempo, its combat value remains low. Of course, the same is true if the operation tempo is fast, but it does not perform well in the air.
https://ilmavoimat.fi/uutinen/-/asset_p ... geId=en_US


Even if they don't have other assets, it's still going to require fewer F-35s to achieve effect XYZ, and less tanking. As for OPTEMPO, F-35s have been achieving real world MC rates as high as 90+%.


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by magitsu » 11 Apr 2020, 20:32

ricnunes wrote:2- With older aircraft like the F-16 or F/A-18 you need to purchase dedicated training variants and so a fleet of older aircraft (like the F/A-18) must be composed by "Combat Aircraft + Operational Training Aircraft" while the F-35 fleet can be entirely composed by Combat Aircraft.

All current Finnish F/A-18D are combat coded. But yes, I guess there could be differences between current Hawk trainers and what is to come (they will continue for the first 5-10 years). Though the US buying T-X isn't really "not needing" a high performance trainer.

kimjongnumbaun wrote:I mentioned this before, or maybe another thread, the missing piece is that the F-35 houses all the pods internally. The ECM, targeting pod, etc all are counted against the F_35 for maintenance when they are not counted against the F-16 or any other aircraft. Once you factor that in, that 20% difference in maintenance gets a lot smaller.

This is an interesting angle. Also from the performance side, because for example currently the 62 F/A-18s have only 12 Litening AT pods between them. I'd wager that similar ratio appears with some offers. Whereas each and every F-35 always brings it's A game to the table.


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