Reply to thread

And any such proper benchmark analysis would have to compare the additional deck maintenance caused by downwards thrust to the maintenance required to keep arrestor gear and steam catapults operational… Even if you had to resurface after every carrier cycle you wouldn’t even be in the ballpark of cost and labour demands to keep four wires and two catapults running…




Not quite. Production costs are actually been pushed down every year. With ~5% savings over predicted cost this year and last year. The predictions of additional cost to the developmental program are based on benchmarking delays in F-35 development with that of fourth generation aircraft delays (F-14, etc). There is no serious benchmarking being made on actual technical issues. Just comparative schedules which don’t take into account the huge differences in development engineering brought about by the past 30-40 years of technology progress (ever heard of the computer?).


If the F-35 doesn’t require any significant changes to its production standard (unlike the F-22) then because of the scale of the program (more than an entire F-22 production per annum) it will return strong savings. If there is one thing modern defence aerospace can do it is drive down cost of established aircraft production lines. You can benchmark every production program from F-14 to F-22 (except F-16 but let’s just forget that first wing that didn’t work) to see how such savings emerge.


Back
Top Bottom