Typhoon/Eurofighter costs over £138 million each!

[spacemanc]

Ive just been reading this article on the eurofighter costs and I cant believe how expensive it is! It actually points out that the cost per operational jet could reach £180 million EACH, if the extra tranche 3 jets are ordered ( quite likely ) Before someone chips in that this includes development costs - well whatever - we've still had to pay it!

From this article :

BAE aims to keep all-u-can-eat ticket at MoD pie-shop | The Register

Horrendously expensive
The other obvious project for bending over the executioner's block is the Eurofighter, nowadays known in the RAF as Typhoon. The fantastically expensive and long-delayed superfighter is now at long last coming into service. It isn't quite cutting-edge - it has no Stealth, for example - and it can't fly off aircraft carriers. Also, it will need a lot of expensive conversion to make it much good for ground attack, the main mission of modern combat jets (though they are a very expensive way of doing this job). Apart from all that, though, Typhoon is pretty good.

But it's horrendously expensive. The Eurofighter project will have cost the UK £18bn or so on completion if no more jets beyond the currently-on-order 144 are bought. The original MoD plans call for a further 88 "Tranche 3" planes to be ordered soon, pushing up the overall cost to around £20bn according to estimates issued a few years ago.

In terms of unit costs, Tranche 3 could be a good idea. The RAF's 232 Typhoons will have cost the taxpayer an average £86m with Tranche 3; without, the 144 planes would each cost £138m, in the same ballpark as the Americans' new F-22 Stealth ultrasuperfighter. (Disregard any RAF Eurofighter cost quote you see lower than £86m. These lower pricetags can be produced only after highly creative accounting, or as it is sometimes known, 'lying'.)

The big snag with Tranche 3 is that the RAF can't possibly use 232 jets. Current plans call for Typhoons to replace the former Tornado F3 and Jaguar fleets at the pre-2004 level, which would mean a total buy of around 130-140 including a generous spares allowance. The RAF has no plans to train more pilots or expand its roster of squadrons - quite the reverse, in fact. So buying Tranche 3 doesn't mean you get another 88 jets cheaply - it means you get the same operational fleet of less than 140, and 90 or 100 planes stored in mothballs. Tranche 3 puts the price per jet actually available for use at an eyewatering £150m-plus.

(In case you don't believe that the UK government would buy expensive jets and then put them straight into storage forever - effectively throwing them away - please note that it has already happened at least twice, with the original Nimrod and the Tornado F3. Both from BAE, as it happens. BAE is also, funnily enough, the British segment of the Eurofighter consortium.)

One should also note, on Eurofighter/Typhoon, that all these figures are on the optimistic side. The MoD issued those cost estimates years ago; nowadays it refuses to publicly discuss how much the jets might wind up costing. Consider this little exchange between oversight MPs and the MoD's procurement chiefs, from the appendices to the recent Parliamentary report:

Robert Key MP: It is quite difficult to get a handle on some of these things. For example, the current cost forecasts for Typhoon are restricted. Why is that so?
General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue: I shall be very happy to offer the Committee a closed brief on Typhoon, but for commercial reasons it would be quite difficult to talk about it in open session.

Chairman: We would be happy to have a closed brief, but are you not able to answer the question put by Robert Key?

General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue: Not about the cost, no.

Robert Key: In principle, why is the cost restricted?

General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue: Because we are in the middle of commercial negotiations.

Robert Key: With whom?

General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue: With Eurofighter.

Robert Key: In that case I may be able to help. There has been a report this week in the German press of a letter from Eurofighter GmbH to the German Defence Ministry saying that the bill for the Eurofighter will increase by about €10 billion more than expected, of which Britain’s share of additional spending will be €5.8 billion [£4.5bn]... Is that right?

General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue: I am not happy to say any more. I am happy to say it privately.

Robert Key: Is it not extraordinary that we can get this information from Germany but our own Ministry of Defence cannot provide it?

All in all, if the reports out of Germany are correct, it seems likely that Eurofighter's costs are to balloon even further out of control. We might see the final taxpayer payout per operational RAF plane at £180m or even more, and the Eurofighter comfortably outstripping the American F-22 to the title of All-Time Most Expensive Combat Jet. And it doesn't even have Stealth.

Getting out of Tranche 3 would require agreement from continental partners, but this probably wouldn't be too hard to obtain given the way things seem to be shaping up at Eurofighter. It's a fairly obvious way to sort out the MoD's budget snags in the short to medium term - and avoid another runaway costs nightmare over the next few years.

Why is the RAF so keen on Tranche 3, then?

Nobody is saying so plainly, but it would appear that the Tranche 1 and 2 planes aren't actually going to be much good for ground attack, though some basic capability has been hastily bolted on. In essence, they aren't going to be much use. The RAF would rather mothball a lot of them and equip itself mostly with expensively-upgraded Tranche 3 models, throwing another £5bn after the original £20bn to do so.

However, there are those who would say that in fact the RAF already has lots of bombers, and that indeed the effectiveness of chucking huge amounts of explosives about - as a means of actually bending foreign people to your will - has long been overrated. Even if it hadn't, there are many cheaper ways to do this than buying hundreds of expensively modified superfighters. The first Eurofighter batches are the way they are because that's how the RAF ordered them, after all.

[Fatal1ty]

I agree that the price is very high, but I believe its about time the country had a new superfighter which we can all be proud of
In the popularity stakes its almost up there with the JSF and the Raptor, and for what we get for the price I think it's certainly worth it

[[R-DEV]CAS_117]

Popularity is about where it ends...

[markonymous]

Originally Posted by Fatal1ty

I agree that the price is very high, but I believe its about time the country had a new superfighter which we can all be proud of
In the popularity stakes its almost up there with the JSF and the Raptor, and for what we get for the price I think it's certainly worth it

the JSF and raptor are the same aircraft... The swedish part of BAE systems have developed a new version of the JAS 39 Gripen its said to outperform the fa-22 its called the super JAS if im not wrong. Its got that new missile system that cant miss.

[Swe_Olsson]

JSF and the raptor is NOT the same aircraft

[[R-MOD]dunehunter]

Lol, yeah, all you have to do is look at them.

[Fatal1ty]

they are quite different aircraft as has been said above, for starters one can land vertically and the other can't!

IMO I prefer the raptor though due to the vector thrust nozzles thus making it more agile, and considering the problems the Brits are having with the JSF and the weapons software it's future doesn't look too bright

[[R-DEV]Masaq]

Originally Posted by markonymous

the JSF and raptor are the same aircraft... The swedish part of BAE systems have developed a new version of the JAS 39 Gripen its said to outperform the fa-22 its called the super JAS if im not wrong. Its got that new missile system that cant miss.

If ignorance is bliss... happy days all round?

JSF is the F-35
Raptor is the F-22

Very very different aircraft.



As for the JAS 39, the C and D varients are somtimes referred to as "SuperGripen". It uses the same radar system as the Sea Harrier, capable of guiding four missiles independently - it still carries AMRAAMs (same as the US and UK aircraft of similar ability, the Typhoon and F35) and is a long long way from having a system "that can't miss". If you know anything at all about air combat you know that ultimately it comes down to energy; unless you provide a missile with an infinite amount of energy you cannot ensure that it will never miss.

You can stack the odds pretty heavily by having the launch aircraft behind and higher and faster than a slow, not-very-aerodynamic target aircraft, but you can't make sure that it'll never miss.

[fludblud]

guess the french were pretty damn smart to pull out of the EF programme and develop the rafael instead of getting into this mess.

international technology development sounds nice on paper but always seems to get bogged down in bearucracy and disputes over cost. just look at ITER for example, an internationally developed experimental fusion reactor thats been in planning since 1985, expected to cost $9.3 billion and last 30 years, instead the chinese went off and built their own in three years at 1/20th of the ITER's price and started producing electricity from it in 2007.

[spacemanc]

Well as a large contributer to the UK tax coffers, Im f**king disgusted that this amount of cash is spent on a few jets. £140 - 180 million a jet is ludicous. Some people may say "british jobs blah blah" - but thats bollox - it would be far cheaper to pay them to sit at home. Others may say indigenous production capability, but again bollox - all modern jets have loads of technology from around the world.
I think that the days of fighter aircraft of this type are pretty numbered anyway. I cant think of that many situations where the UK will really need fighter jets for defence - Id rather they spent the cash on harriers.
Dont get me wrong - I like jets - I like the RAF - but hello
ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY MILLION POUNDS EACH - MINIMUM!!!!!!

and dont get me started on the Nimrod aircraft, based on 1950's airframes which cost £ 290 million EACH