Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Time to balance out the anti-F-35 garbage articles we see all the time.

h*tp://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/21/farnborough_raptor_eurofighter_ir/

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By posting anti Eurofighter garbage articles?

Scorpion82 wrote:

By posting anti Eurofighter garbage articles?

How is it garbage? I read it and it's mostly about the Raptor. They do however point out that after all is said and done the Eurofighter is going to cost as much as or more than a Raptor even though it has a larger production run. That should come as no surprise since it's built on 5 separate assembly lines.

The first page is about the F-22, the second about the Eurofighter. But the costs appear to be pulled out of their rears and have nothing to do with the real cost of the aircraft. How do they arrive at this ridiculous figure?

Scorpion82 wrote:

The first page is about the F-22, the second about the Eurofighter. But the costs appear to be pulled out of their rears and have nothing to do with the real cost of the aircraft. How do they arrive at this ridiculous figure?

Oh I don't know maybe based on things like published prices for Saudi Arabia. Maybe based on the GAO reports that Tiffie needs lots of additional money to fully develop it.

How about you start with page 151 item 2e here: http://www.nao.org.uk//idoc.ashx?docId= ... version=-1

Do keep in mind they only have the costs for T1 and T2. Seems the price went up so much they had to keep T3 secret.

Tranche 3 wasn't ordered at that time, they falsely spread the expected total cost for the purchase of 232 aircraft over 144 on order. That's all.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Tranche 3 wasn't ordered at that time, they falsely spread the expected total cost for the purchase of 232 aircraft over 144 on order. That's all.

Maybe you need to go back and see how the cost was derived. The NAO is the UK's official accounting organization they did not mistakenly spread the expected total cost onto the first 144 aircraft. In fact they specifically state that the current UPC (in 2008) is based on T1 and T2 only. T3 will only increase that price. But wait it gets even "better", go to page 158 and add another 436million pounds to upgrade the existing T1 and T2 aircraft to enable them to add

Quote:

The first phase of the Future Capability Programme will integrate Paveway IV and the Litening III Laser Designator Pod onto Tranche 2 aircraft from 2012 as well as interoperability upgrades without which those aircraft will be neither compliant with new civil airspace regulations nor interoperable with key coalition allies. It will also provide the Human Machine Interface for Multi-Role operations, allowing Typhoon to fulfil air-to-air and air-to-surface operations with the current, planned and projected weapons.

So where were we about tiffie cost? There is no spin here. BAE or Eurofighter cannot spin these numbers. Oh and I forgot you need to add money for an AESA too.

The claim is that they don't need AESA because no threat they will face requires it.

Well if you count in life cycle cost for upgrades etc. do the same an your super duper F-22 gets even more expensive. You either compare like with like or just do what you want and prove what kind of fool you are. Nothing more to add.

Sour grapes. The fact is Typhoon is nowhere near as cheap vs the F-22 as it's made out to be.

Fact is if you compare like with like the F-22 is still more expensive by a fair margine and the articles figure of 200 mln pound is simply nonsense. No one says it's cheap or denies that the costs hasn't increased for various reasons.

Dassault in France produced only 5 Rafales in the first half of 2010, the lowest production rate in the history of the company for decades and they still can offer the Rafale to a price well below that of the Eurofighter which enjoys ' the economies of scale' at least in comparison to Dassault...

Scorpion82 wrote:

Fact is if you compare like with like the F-22 is still more expensive by a fair margine and the articles figure of 200 mln pound is simply nonsense. No one says it's cheap or denies that the costs hasn't increased for various reasons.

Since others on the board do not consider you a troll I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you just dont understand how things are priced.

The NAO is the official accounting agency of the UK. True, just like the GAO they sometimes get things wrong but in this case their numbers are corroborated with that of both the Saudi and the Austrian deal in terms of UPC. While UPC and flyaway cost are not exactly the same they are similar enough to be able to make rough comparisons. The NAO not the article states Typhoon's T1 and T2 UPC is 69.3 million pounds. That report was published in 2008 and deals with 2006/2007 data. The number is in line with deals announced by well established and respected international financial publications such as FT and Bloomberg. The pound to dollar exchange rate in 2008 was roughly 1.75 to 1, see http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/GBP/hist2008.html

That give you a unit cost for Tiffy without AESA and without needed upgrades as previously discussed at about $121 million. Compared that to a 20 unit run of Raptors at around $140 million each. There is no mistake here and it should be no mystery that building a plane on five different assembly lines, and apportioning work share for political reasons rather than cost is going to make for a very expensive plane.

Further, adding AESA and upgrading the plane to be compliant with European aviation rules does not count as life cylce costs. The AESA is need to give the plane a semblance of competitiveness and the software upgrades for compliance and ground attack are in order to give the plane additional, needed capability.

Thumper,
the NAO report includes all kind of costs associated with the aircraft, the cost given is not fly-away price, not even close to that definition. The value of the different tranche production contracts gives you a clue about fly-away equivalent costs. I don't know the value of the T1 contract out of my head, but in 2007 there was a request from german parliamentaries to the MoD with regards to the Typhoon. One question was about costs and the answer was 53 mln € without VAT and 57mln € with VAT per aircraft. The T2 contract signed on 14th December 2004 was valued at 13 bln € for 236 aircraft that makes ~55 mln € per aircraft. The T3A contract signed on 31st July 2009 was valued at 9.1 bln € including 2.5 bln € for upgrading T1 and T2 examples. That leaves some 7.6 bln € for 112 T3A examples which makes ~59 mln € per aircraft.
Those values are fix, in other words fixed prices. They don't include development costs, spares, support contracts, equipment to run the aircraft or costs for upgrading them to later standards. This is what sums up the total cost. The ~140 mln $ fly-away figure for the F-22 doesn't include anything like that, so its the base to compare, not fly-away of the F-22 with the stated UPC of the Typhoon which includes much more.

Scorpion82 wrote:

Thumper,
the NAO report includes all kind of costs associated with the aircraft, the cost given is not fly-away price, not even close to that definition. The value of the different tranche production contracts gives you a clue about fly-away equivalent costs. I don't know the value of the T1 contract out of my head, but in 2007 there was a request from german parliamentaries to the MoD with regards to the Typhoon. One question was about costs and the answer was 53 mln € without VAT and 57mln € with VAT per aircraft. The T2 contract signed on 14th December 2004 was valued at 13 bln € for 236 aircraft that makes ~55 mln € per aircraft. The T3A contract signed on 31st July 2009 was valued at 9.1 bln € including 2.5 bln € for upgrading T1 and T2 examples. That leaves some 7.6 bln € for 112 T3A examples which makes ~59 mln € per aircraft.
Those values are fix, in other words fixed prices. They don't include development costs, spares, support contracts, equipment to run the aircraft or costs for upgrading them to later standards. This is what sums up the total cost. The ~140 mln $ fly-away figure for the F-22 doesn't include anything like that, so its the base to compare, not fly-away of the F-22 with the stated UPC of the Typhoon which includes much more.

The cost at the bottom of Pg 51 is the UPC. This is very closely related to flyaway.

Fly away cost include the costs of procuring airframes; engines; avionics; armaments engineering change orders; nonrecurring costs including production tooling, software, and other costs (if funded from aircraft procurement appropriations); divided by the procurement quantity. Flyaway cost does not include research and development, support equipment, training equipment, technical data, or spares.

Unit production cost is defined as manufacturing cost of a single unit of product; total cost of direct materials, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead for the units produced divided by the total units produced.

Pretty much the same except UPC does not specifically include COs. They are otherwise the same. Don't believe the BS Jackonicko and Swerve have been serving up. Do the research yourself. Try these for starters.
http://www.answers.com/topic/product-unit-cost
http://www.tpub.com/content/cg1999/ns99 ... 290006.htm

I would add that the disecrepency you find between the total T1 T2 contracts and what the NAO is giving as UPC is because those contract prices did not include engines, avionics or in T1s instance very much weapons integration. Add them in and your 55 Euro figure goes out the door fast.

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

EF Typhoon Article