Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: hellfish6

And the Navy is just a little sad that it actually worked...

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ORIGINAL: jdkbph

You mean in addition to the F35? No V/STOL capability with the F22....

JD

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ORIGINAL: jdkbph

I'm aware. I was thinking in total... either - or, yeah?

The whole idea of the JSF was one airframe for all services, and then some. If you dropped the A and C model, you would still need a weapons systems program to produce the B. One way or another those development costs would be incurred. Add to that the cost of developing a navalized F22 and you're carving out a large piece of budget most likely targeted for other things... like maybe subs and surface combatants and carriers.

It's a great what if, but I don't think it's at all practical.

IMHO

JD

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1. Aircraft designed by a single country are not necessarily more expensive than those developed through international cooperation.
Gripen and Rafale were both developed by single countries, but end up costing substantially less than Eurofighter, which is produced by a four-nation consortium.

2. But single-nation development does not guarantee lower costs, as the three US fighters all cost substantially more than the two European “national” fighters, and are comparable to those of Eurofighter, a four-nation cooperative program.
Conversely, the projected unit cost of the only (partly) cooperative US aircraft, the Joint Strike Fighter, already exceeds that of Gripen and Rafale and of two other US aircraft, F-18E and F-15E, all of which are single-nation designs.
3. Long production runs do not always lead to less expensive aircraft.

The F-18E, with a production run of 462 aircraft, costs half as much again as the Rafale, which has a much smaller production run of 294 aircraft. JSF will cost twice as much as Rafale, despite having a production run almost ten times as large, and half as much again as the F-18E, whose production run is five times smaller. All three are modern, multirole combat aircraft.

4. While charges for major program stoppages and restructurings add to program costs, the increase is not proportional to the length of the hiatus. Both Eurofighter and Rafale programs were halted and restructured, adding eight or ten years to their development cycle, while F-15E, F- 18E and Gripen were not, yet this is not demonstrably reflected by the difference in their respective cost.

5. Continuity in development is the best way to avoid cost overruns. Gripen and F-18E (the F-15E is not significant in this respect) are the only programs to have avoided lengthy “freezes” and large-scale re-designs, and their production costs are notably lower than competitors’. Program unit costs of Rafale, Eurofighter and F-22 exploded after they were “suspended” for several years for major re-designs or funding shortfalls.

6. Although these aircraft were all developed beginning in the late 1980s, and for broadly similar missions, there is no common ratio between R&D and acquisition costs. Indeed, there seems to be no correlation whatsoever between these costs, reflecting each aircraft’s unique R&D itinerary and development history.
In other words, development costs are influenced not by so much be an aircraft’s actual capabilities as by a “smooth” management and development history.

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ORIGINAL: jdkbph

That is interesting. But I was referring to development costs. Dev costs can be spread out over the life of a program production run so that, all other things being equal (and I know they're not), the more you build the lower the unit cost. However, the development cost is still the same. It doesn't go up or down, whether you buy 10 units or a 1000 units. And that's what I was referring to. The point is that the F35 dev cost would be pretty much the same whether you buy as originally planned (lots of As, a bunch of Cs and a few Bs) or just buy a few Bs.

JD