Finnish DefMin interested in F-35s, not Gripens

[XanderCrews]

back to Finland, the airplane that should be absolutely completely rethought in the region is the Gripen E. its a gen 4.5 fighter that is still years away. its not in service. its the least produced, least mature, least developed option and its ridiculously expensive on the eve of this amazing shift to Loyal Wingman, and with Tempest and NGAD on the horizon I have no idea why Sweden should even bother with it outside jobs welfare, and they're still 2 years from their first airplane being received and 3-4 years after that from FOC. They can nip this in the bud without having to scrap a single airplane as we speak.

This is a program that turns 15 this year, and has yet to produce even a dozen airplanes. a program that should be killed before it spreads.

Sweden should stretch Gripen C (like its already doing), invest in UAVs and await Tempest or NGAD. whats "good" for Finland should be "good" for Sweden as well. simple as

[ricnunes]

@loke

Here's a memo just for you:

Making a fighter that has significantly higher payload and range than F-35 will mean significantly more expensive aircraft to buy and operate. I think F-35 is perfect blend of payload, range and other capabilities while having reasonable costs.

[herciv]

Well, they want to use their aircraft between 30 and 40 years. 30 years at 250 hours is 7500 hours, but the Rafale has been upgraded to 9000 hours, which allows 36 years. We can think that they will not have their planes before 2024 and 2024 + 36 = 2060. So 250 hours is not too bad and moreover the standard for pilot training is 180 hours in NATO and I think that if we have 1.4 pilots per aircraft in France it is not a coincidence but a necessity to be sure to always have one when we need one.
If dassault have to make an offer it will be around 250 hours/fighter/year.
What counts is that there are 32 aircraft in a state of flight at all times, not 64 with an availability rate of 50%.
We therefore propose 43 aircraft with a guaranteed availability rate of 75% and an availability target of 90%.
The principle is simple: first everyone has exceeded the budget, then one is asked to fit in the budget strictly for the cost of the initial purchase (€ 9.4 Billion) and for the LCC (not more than 250 Million per year). All those who exceed are eliminated.
If calculations are not wrong (which implies that the arms requirements are comparable to those of India) we have calculated that Dassault could go up to 47 aircraft instead of 43 with a PBL approach, without increasing either the initial cost or the LCC. This guarantees a minimum of 35 aircraft available at any given time and a target of up to 42.
So I assume that in the war game they would take 35 available aircraft, which corresponds to 64 aircraft with an availability of 55%.

[magitsu]

Those can't be taken as is. They are almost as misleading as CPFH numbers. For example the current Hornets are going out with 4500 hours. Significantly more was promised, with the misleading idea that carrier use would obviously be more consumptive, thus it had to be true. Hornets as they rolled out of the production line wouldn't have lasted even this much without heavy metering of metal fatigue, predictive maintenance, reducing the most wearing out training maneuvers after the first decade, and such.

It's a matter of how much which amount of flight hours costs. It's variable for each fighter depending on use and the willingness to engage in major life extension projects (=cost/benefit, which also considers how competitive they still are when extended vs. new). Finland didn't do major extension projects for the Hornets. It's probably mostly due to being the last major buyer.

There are many on offer that might not be worth extending significantly because they won't be competitive by that time.

[hornetfinn]

Exactly. Finnish use is different to most other air forces as it's almost entirely training air-to-air combat and training areas are basically next to air bases (no transit flights etc). So it's very rough on the airframes for given number of flight hours. On the other hand the number of flight hours tends to be smaller and each flight tend to be quite short due to high fuel consumption (a lot of AB and high power use). Especially since Finland doesn't have own air-to-air refueling capacity. So Finnish pilots and fighters get low number of flight hours each year, but they are very demanding hours. But naturally it's the same for all the competitors. Also CPFH numbers from other countries can't be directly used in Finnish case as the usage can vary so much.

I think all the competitors are saying that their aircraft can withstand 8,000 to 10,000 flight hours. Of course flight hour is very rough measure and actual fatigue life is much more complex issue. But I think all the competitors are pretty equal in this regard.

[herciv]

Exactly. Finnish use is different to most other air forces as it's almost entirely training air-to-air combat and training areas are basically next to air bases (no transit flights etc). So it's very rough on the airframes for given number of flight hours. On the other hand the number of flight hours tends to be smaller and each flight tend to be quite short due to high fuel consumption (a lot of AB and high power use). Especially since Finland doesn't have own air-to-air refueling capacity. So Finnish pilots and fighters get low number of flight hours each year, but they are very demanding hours. But naturally it's the same for all the competitors. Also CPFH numbers from other countries can't be directly used in Finnish case as the usage can vary so much.

I think all the competitors are saying that their aircraft can withstand 8,000 to 10,000 flight hours. Of course flight hour is very rough measure and actual fatigue life is much more complex issue. But I think all the competitors are pretty equal in this regard.

Indeed but Total flight hours is one thing the other is how many hours per month. 250 hours enables FAF ou FinAF to have 1.4 pilots per airframe if you refer to NATO standards (180 hours / year /pilot).
With 1,4 or even 2 you can assume a surge of 300 hours/month during a crisis, or 1000 hours/year with each aircraft. With less pilots par airframe its hard to maintained.
ANd you also have a problem if you want to assume a high intensity and sortie rate.

[hornetfinn]

Sure herciv. It's a constant balancing between having enough airframes, pilots and flight hours to maintain large enough force with high proficiency and readiness. NATO standards can't be directly used in Finnish environment due to many differences. However the ratios are very similar and what you wrote is correct taking that into account.

[magitsu]

43 to 47 plane offer goes straight to the bin.

[XanderCrews]

43 to 47 plane offer goes straight to the bin.

These are good points, herciv, magitsu and hornetfinn. Good conversation. And I don't mean to take away from it, but 47? I thought Rafale was a little more price competitive than that. I know the Eurocanards aren't cheap. but I thought even the F-35 being offered between 50-60 aircraft was "low" -- although i know Finland eliminted the hard number requirement

[loke]

Well, they want to use their aircraft between 30 and 40 years. 30 years at 250 hours is 7500 hours, but the Rafale has been upgraded to 9000 hours, which allows 36 years. We can think that they will not have their planes before 2024 and 2024 + 36 = 2060. So 250 hours is not too bad and moreover the standard for pilot training is 180 hours in NATO and I think that if we have 1.4 pilots per aircraft in France it is not a coincidence but a necessity to be sure to always have one when we need one.
If dassault have to make an offer it will be around 250 hours/fighter/year.
What counts is that there are 32 aircraft in a state of flight at all times, not 64 with an availability rate of 50%.
We therefore propose 43 aircraft with a guaranteed availability rate of 75% and an availability target of 90%.
The principle is simple: first everyone has exceeded the budget, then one is asked to fit in the budget strictly for the cost of the initial purchase (€ 9.4 Billion) and for the LCC (not more than 250 Million per year). All those who exceed are eliminated.
If calculations are not wrong (which implies that the arms requirements are comparable to those of India) we have calculated that Dassault could go up to 47 aircraft instead of 43 with a PBL approach, without increasing either the initial cost or the LCC. This guarantees a minimum of 35 aircraft available at any given time and a target of up to 42.
So I assume that in the war game they would take 35 available aircraft, which corresponds to 64 aircraft with an availability of 55%.

Interesting, but where does the assumption of 50% availability rate with 64 aircraft come from? Also 47 Rafale sounds less than what I would expect being able to fit into the budget but I may be wrong.

In any case this is a moot discussion. F-35 is cheaper and more capable than Rafale. With F-35 they will get more a/c and significantly more capability (both per a/c but even more taking into account they will get more a/c, making things like distributed ops simpler and more robust).

[herciv]

43 to 47 plane offer goes straight to the bin.

These are good points, herciv, magitsu and hornetfinn. Good conversation. And I don't mean to take away from it, but 47? I thought Rafale was a little more price competitive than that. I know the Eurocanards aren't cheap. but I thought even the F-35 being offered between 50-60 aircraft was "low" -- although i know Finland eliminted the hard number requirement

As a base I take the Indian contract.
For the first 36 aircraft $8.8 billion which includes everything India has requested, that seems complete. And for the 7 additional aircraft $ 700 million + $ 489 million to extend the performance based logistic to 43 aircraft and 10 years.

Total 9989 million $ less than the 11 billion $ expected.

For the flight hour it will be 14,000 Euros for 10 years and then $15,400 + $7,824 = $23,224 per flight hour where the first term is the conversion to $ of the price of the flight hour and the second term is the cost of the Performance Based Logistic for an additional 10 years divided by the number of flight hours during that time.

The total cost of flight hours over 30 years will be $6.649 billion, far from 3 times the purchase price.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Recall about the indian Rafale Deal :
Basic Aircraft package ~ Euro 2.7 Bn
Financial package comprising of Cost escalation + milestone payments + other conditions ~Euro 0.5Bn
Weapon package cost~ Euro 0.70 Bn includes meteors, scalp and mica +others
Engineering Support package + Basic infrastructure support package for operations ~Euro 1.8 Bn
Customization package including high altitude performance package, hot weather performance package, Indian weapons, required thrust, India specific Training, Simulators for local language, etc etc ~Euro 1.8Bn
Logistics support package for high performance availability and spares (ie PBL) ~ Euro 0.35 Bn

[loke]

43 to 47 plane offer goes straight to the bin.

These are good points, herciv, magitsu and hornetfinn. Good conversation. And I don't mean to take away from it, but 47? I thought Rafale was a little more price competitive than that. I know the Eurocanards aren't cheap. but I thought even the F-35 being offered between 50-60 aircraft was "low" -- although i know Finland eliminted the hard number requirement

As a base I take the Indian contract.
For the first 36 aircraft $8.8 billion which includes everything India has requested, that seems complete. And for the 7 additional aircraft $ 700 million + $ 489 million to extend the performance based logistic to 43 aircraft and 10 years.

Total 9989 million $ less than the 11 billion $ expected.

For the flight hour it will be 14,000 Euros for 10 years and then $15,400 + $7,824 = $23,224 per flight hour where the first term is the conversion to $ of the price of the flight hour and the second term is the cost of the Performance Based Logistic for an additional 10 years divided by the number of flight hours during that time.

The total cost of flight hours over 30 years will be $6.649 billion, far from 3 times the purchase price.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Recall about the indian Rafale Deal :
Basic Aircraft package ~ Euro 2.7 Bn
Financial package comprising of Cost escalation + milestone payments + other conditions ~Euro 0.5Bn
Weapon package cost~ Euro 0.70 Bn includes meteors, scalp and mica +others
Engineering Support package + Basic infrastructure support package for operations ~Euro 1.8 Bn
Customization package including high altitude performance package, hot weather performance package, Indian weapons, required thrust, India specific Training, Simulators for local language, etc etc ~Euro 1.8Bn
Logistics support package for high performance availability and spares (ie PBL) ~ Euro 0.35 Bn

I am guessing that with Rafale F4 coming up the "customization package" for Finland should be much smaller and cheaper than what it was for India... this should make it possible to squeeze a few more Rafale into the budget? Not that it really matters, F-35 will be declared the winner in any case.

[herciv]

I am guessing that with Rafale F4 coming up the "customization package" for Finland should be much smaller and cheaper than what it was for India... this should make it possible to squeeze a few more Rafale into the budget? Not that it really matters, F-35 will be declared the winner in any case.

Yes this is a high probability but this time nor Dassault nor the other has gone from the challenge.
I don't think to have more rafale into the budget is the only way to change the Indian package. For example you could have more weapon for example Talios + AEROS pod or to adapt anti ship missiles

[magitsu]

Apparently Saab has trialed additive manufacturing with 3d printing a nylon patch (pic at the link as it's seen in the aircraft skin) to represent battle repairs. AM is bound to be a big chunk of the HX industrial partnership whoever wins.

https://www.saab.com/newsroom/press-rel ... ge-repairs

[magitsu]

"I have invited Finland to join the ECRS Mk2 radar programme, bringing Finnish expertise to its future development for the benefit of both our countries." - Jeremy Quin MP, UK Minister for Defence Procurement,
@DefenceES
https://twitter.com/BAES_Finland/status ... 0885384201

@RollsRoyce to put an #EJ200 production line in #Finland as part of #HXhanke bid
https://twitter.com/securitysplat/statu ... 9455114241

So the BAE offer is EJ200 production line, assembly of all Typhoons, ECRS mk 2 radar and SPEAR. Plus invitation to Tempest. Nothing surprising as they need to offer all they've got to have a chance and are certainly looking for payers for whatever they plan to be doing.