Slower US F-35A purchases piles $27bn onto total fighter jet bill Slower purchases of the F-35 fighter jet have piled $27bn on top of the cost of buying the ridiculously expensive aircraft, according to reports. The Defense News website reports that the “estimated total acquisition cost of the F-35 program” increased by seven per cent in one year, from $379bn to $406.5bn. This figure covers …
None. We would have every vulture removing that money in minutes before it could do anything. And as a one off bump of money it would be squandered on nothing and more demanded. I would be shocked if it would be used to replace a single piece of out of date equipment, buy any drugs or even be but a moments blip on the accounting.
'.. I would be shocked if it would be used to replace a single piece of out of date equipment, buy any drugs or even be but a moments blip on the accounting.'
Oh, you cynic!
Of course the money would be spent on these things!, well, some of it, after all, there's the administration of such a windfall to be considered, the best financial 'acumen' doesn't come cheap you know, as we do so have to have those management chappies from the city, only the best for our NHS! and headhunting them can be just a wee bit expensive (and their private health plans don't come cheap, either..)
'Why would it have to be a "one-off bump of money"? Couldn't it be placed in a reserve fund and used judiciously in cases of serious need?'
Because the Treasury, you'd have to get them to completely change their accounting rules to allow for a reserve fund to be held over multiple financial years. Also it's not a one off amount to start with so the amount in any one year isn't that big, in government terms, I mean I'd be set for life.
It's also worth remembering they're still trying not to borrow ~£50 Billion a year so any savings from cancelling any government programme are probably going to go towards making that number smaller.
I perfectly agree with your sentiment. I feel it is high time we Western countries stop telling other countries how to live because our model isn't exactly a panacea either.
I would pull out of everywhere and leave other countries to progress at their own rhythm. It may be despicable to see the Taliban reign on Afghanistan, but until its own people understand how wrong it is, we cannot expect them to understand simply because we tell them.
The unfortunate truth is that simply pulling out and leaving them to their devices will most likely cause way more mayhem than keeping up a presence would. Counted in tens of thousands of lives, if not hundreds of thousands. What do you think is keeping Putin from outright invading Ukraine ? Morals ? His rating on Twitter ? No. It's NATO and, specifically, the US forces that are part of NATO.
This is the icky situation our interventionism has got us in : we can't retreat even if we wanted to. Cue ever-spiraling military budgets because the US is actually preparing to fight Russia, not the Chinese and especially not Somalian pirates.
And now for the flip side of that coin. The nutballs running those countries have an intense dislike of more enlightened countries, i.e. France, Germany, the U.K., the U.S.A., etc. They either a) slip some of their nutballs into those countries to cause murder and mayhem; b) encourage local nutballs to join their cause; c) buy/develop potent weapons to attack those countries; or d) all of the above.
What are you going to do then? Keep saying "Stay out of my country!" until the nutballs chose to listen? This "turn the other cheek" mentality gets old fast when a bully keeps hitting you because you refuse to defend yourself (especially when you are very capable of defending yourself). Or do you develop a bunker mentality and watch as your country becomes increasingly paranoid and eliminates personal freedoms in the name of security?
Depends on why you think Putin wants to invade Ukraine. Does he wants to reconstitute the old USSR? Or does he want Russia to have a buffer against NATO, and only got interested in invading Ukraine because the west wants to bring them into NATO?
I can't read Putin's mind so I don't know, but there's at the very least a decent chance that had we not been so interested in expanding NATO right up to Russia's border, that we wouldn't have to worry about conflict over Ukraine.
No doubt some of the conflict in the Middle East would have happened anyway, but would Syria be in the mess it is in today if the west had stayed out and not even provided arms support to the rebels? Are the people of Iraq really better off today now that we've "liberated" them, compared to how things were under Saddam? There were people suffering and being murdered then, there are people suffering and being murdered now - just different sets of people.
Switzerland isn't fighting a bunch of terrorist incidents. Is that because their security is so much better than other countries, or because they haven't ruined lives and turned a small segment into suicidal maniacs like the US, UK, France and other NATO countries have done?
@DougS -- I think that Putin is displaying two classic Russia traits: greed and paranoia. Greed because a bigger country is a more "manly" country. And paranoia because he has some twisted idea that NATO wants to invade Russia, when the truth is just the opposite. NATO was created to resist Russian expansionism (see the first part about "greed"). Russia has a not-so-friendly China on its southern border, but you don't see Putin trying to annex Mongolia, do you?
And if you're going to talk about "the west" supplying arms to the rebels in Syria, please expound on the Russians supplying arms to the Syrian government/dictatorship. If you want to play the blame game, then there's plenty to go around.
Well Joe you clearly know feck all about Russians, Russia is already bigger than the US by a factor of nearly two, it still has vast amounts of untapped resources and produces a high percentage of the world's gold and diamonds. That's in addition to reserves of natural gas, oil, timber, rare earths etc etc. Not a lot of need for greed there.
As for paranoia, there was a tacit agreement between the NATO forces and Russian after Perestroika that NATO would not put bases in the former Soviet states and sattelites which the US immediately ignored. The US and NATO have steadily surrounded Russia with bases some massive and allegedly equipped with nukes in a couple.
If I was Putin that would piss me off but the last thing Putin needs is to invade Ukraine, aside from anything else it would just be a money drain at a time when he is still trying to build the Russian economy in spite of Western sanctions. It would also stretch the military trying to contain a people who really would become enemies if that happened.
Ukrainians are regarded as brothers by most Russians, they don't understand why there should be so much antipathy between the two countries, 8% of Ukrainians are Russian ethnic anyway.
My opinions are based on the fact that my wife is Russian, has a large family in Russia and I have friends and workmates who are Russian and Ukranian (who get along fine).
Invading and annexing part of the Ukraine might have somerhing to do with it.
That's only the part Putin admits to.
It seems very likely that Putin's Russia also funded and supplied the rebels/terrorists who (among other things) shot down a passenger jet with a Russian-built anti-aircraft battery.
The Ukraine has a lot to be worried about.
The Ukraine has a lot to be worried about.
To be fair - Russia has the only bit of Ukraine that they care about (ie a warm-water port with access to the Med) already.
Why would they want the rest? No significant resources (compared to what Russia already has) and a huge nightmare in terms of financial drain to hold onto something that they don't really need.
It's far cheaper to play proxy wars by funding separatists within Ukraine - it keeps them nicely off-balance and provides a nice playground of Russian proto-crackers to develop their skills in a nice easy newbie zone..
the last thing Putin needs is to invade Ukraine
ROTFL! He _already_ has invaded Ukraine. Crimea was seized by Russia, and Russian troops are fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Since Putin became the new Vodj, he invaded Chechnya, Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), Ukraine (Crimea and Eastern Ukraine), maintained military occupation of Moldova (Transnistria).
His goal is clearly to rebuild a Russian Empire on the lands which were parts of former USSR. One would be fool to trust Russia, moreover if one's country has a common border with Russia.
"His goal is clearly to rebuild a Russian Empire on the lands which were parts of former USSR".
I certainly hope that the method of Proof By Repeated Assertion does not work with the Reg's readers - wildly successful as it always is with the population at large.
Proof? Facts? I think you'll find there are absolutely none. On the contrary, Russia under Mr Putin has been astonishingly self-controlled and peaceful considering its potentially huge strength.
I say again: Russia has not "invaded" anyone since 1991, and has no plans to do so. Why would it want to, when it already has twice the land area of China or the USA and vast amounts of untapped resources? Russia is virtually the only industrialised nation to be actually underpopulated, on a realistic assessment of sustainable population.
The UK, in contrast, has a maximum permanently sustainable population of 16 million or less.
Yes, Russia supplies arms to Syria, but that's a long standing relationship as they've been allies forever, sort of like the US with Israel and Saudi Arabia. It isn't like they stuck their noses in suddenly like we did.
If the Palestinians got together a more organized resistance against Israel, and Russia suddenly started supplying them arms to help, I think you'd find a lot of people in Israel and the US would be quite upset about that. That's pretty much what happened when we started supplying arms to the rebels in Syria when we had never got involved in their internal affairs previously.
>expanding NATO right up to Russia's border
Here's the thing. Everything behind that border is his business. Everything on this side isn't.
NATO didn't wrest the Baltic states, unwillingly, from its Soviet masters; they were only too happy to be able to make their own decisions - one of which was to join NATO.
I would pull out of everywhere and leave other countries to progress at their own rhythm. It may be despicable to see the Taliban reign on Afghanistan, but until its own people understand how wrong it is, we cannot expect them to understand simply because we tell them.
I think half the problem is telling, why couldn't we talk instead? I wonder where Afghanistan would be now if we had spent more time trading with it, and helping with its development and less time using it as a piece in the great game, or bombing the crap out of it. By we I mean not just us in the West, Afghanistan has been getting variously fucked up for years one way or another.
'If we spent 1/2 of that money on the NHS instead how many more lives would we save ?'
I'd guess f**k all. It bears repeating, the NHS budget is 3 times the defence budget, they get through around £500M a week, not buying 138 aircraft over ~20 years is going to make bugger all difference as you're looking at about a weeks extra spending a year. Which assumes having combat aircraft won't save lives in that time period, which might be true if our politicians weren't going to try and carry out any military operations over the next 50 years.
Think of it like ordering from web sites with quantity discounts. If you want to buy 10 widgets you pay $20/ea, but if you're willing to buy 500 you can get them for $17 and if you are willing to buy 10,001 you can pay $12. The price per F35 is increasing because we're moving down in the quantity discount category.
When it's military aircraft you're selling, you plan on making back your astronomically huge development costs within - well, guaranteed orders of aircraft, I suppose. If the number of aircraft you're going to sell for sure drops, you have to put the price up. I wouldn't be surprised if the price has been put up by more than is strictly required to cover "development costs + reasonable profit" but I don't suppose we'll ever know for sure.
Selling stuff like MS's Surface tablet is a different kind of business - development costs are less of an issue, because kit like that is 1) much cheaper to develop 2) sold in hugely greater numbers.
MS might calculate it's worth flogging 'em cheap for a bit to gain some market share to make them more popular in the long run - potentially turning a product from something which flopped due to lack of interest (rather than inherent defects) into a major success.
I expect there are other angles too - but those are some obvious points which came to mind.
With the sunk costs on this burd (bird + turd, hyuk!), I feel like we could've/should've come up with a superlative aircraft, not something that is just okay. I must apologize on behalf of America for somehow bamboozling your government into adopting the thing. I know that this article is regarding the A model, but still. Hopefully that sensor integration business comes through as a real game changer, as I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck in this thing (as-is) in a combat situation.
Absolutely no problem! We here on the other side of the Atlantic have the 'World's Reserve Currency". We can print-up Billions at the touch of a button...An illusion of prosperity for all of the world. Happy Days!! Just hope you don't live too long to suffer the inevitable....
Why?
The US Military will come up with some meaningless 10 word name that means SFA to anyone else to describe them. Then they'll ignore any referece to Escort Ships and sing 'La-la-la-la-la- can't hear you'.
The name automatically adds 500% to the price hence the $500 hammer.
Years ago, somebody noticed that the curve of ever-increasing cost of one (1) new generation military jet and the flattening curve of the US defence budget were going to converge sometime early in the 21st century. The joke was that the Air Force and Navy would have it 3 days a week each, and the Marines would have it on Sunday.
Which is pretty much what the 200NM exclusion zone around the Falklands was all about. Outside that we'd check what we were dropping depth charges on, inside that not so much.
Apparently comparing Argentine submarine movements and RN submarine detection reveals at least one rather interesting anomaly.
Is there a short-takeoff version of the Gripen that can get off a short strip under its own power (zero to wheels-up in fifty metres or so fully loaded in adverse sea conditions?) If not then it's not gonna fly off the QE carriers since they don't have catapults of any kind.
The QE carriers don't have classic steam catapults because they don't have big steam boilers like the previous generation of carriers, they use gas turbine generating plants and electric motor drive because that's how modern non-nuclear warships work these days. Adding a steam catapult system would necessitate building steam boilers and desalination systems into a hull that's already full of planes, power plant, fuel stores, weapons stores etc. Each steam catapult "shot" takes half a tonne of fresh water or so, to give you an idea of what's needed.
The new Ford-class US nuclear-powered carriers don't have steam plant either, they're electric motor drive too. They're using an electromagnetic catapult system to launch aircraft but they've got a lot of spare electrical generating capacity for just this reason, two 300MWe nuclear reactors (their predecessors got by with two 150MWe reactors). The QE carriers don't have a lot of surplus electrical power, just enough to run the ship and a bit over from their gas turbines (quick check, including some backup diesel generators they have a total electrical power capability of 109MWe). They can't drive an electromagnetic catapult system unless they build a lot of storage (probably spinning flywheels) into some space that's already committed for hangars etc.
The QE-class carriers were based on the F-35B STOVL aircraft as their primary strike fighter. There's nothing else out there with its capabilities (stealthy, Mach 2, large amount of stores etc.) that can fly off the QE decks and come back to land on them again.
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