F-35B Block 4 software upgrades will cost Britain £345m Britain will spend £345m ($486m) upgrading its F-35B fighter jets to the most recent, combat-ready, version of the aircraft’s operating system. The figure was indirectly revealed by defence procurement minister Guto Bebb, in response to a Parliamentary question. “The UK’s contribution will be around 4.5 per cent of F-35 …
Did I get my maths wrong?
Nope, and neither did Lockheed Martin. You're probably thinking "wow, that would be three and a half thousand man years of effort, that can't be right?"
But those figures are the price the customers will pay, not the input cost to LM. As usual, the original bid was a loss leader, in the certain knowledge that vast profits could be creamed on all the variations. It isn't as though the buyers can get anybody else to do the work with any hope of success (look what happened when the Clowns of Abbey Wood decided to meddle with the flight control software of the Chinook Mk3).
Is traditionally held to be its 2nd best air force.
I'd assume Britain will remain in the top 10 and won't have to fight the US, is out of range of China and not at war with France (unless Rees-Mogg becomes PM). I can't see a direct war with Russia happening so it would be fighting Russian proxies in minor wars and the squadron of F-35's would probably come home safely against the squadron of MiG's or Sukhois that Moscow would donate when things kicked off which would be the main decider on whether to deploy them in the first place.
It makes a kind of sense if the UK government intend to keep getting involved in these things. Alternatively if they ploughed all the money into buying Hawk/Goshawk variants they could increase the number of pilots, hours flown and people working in aerospace.
minor wars and the squadron of F-35's would probably come home safely against the squadron of MiG's or Sukhois
They are not donating those any more. All recent donations are S300 with S400 and S500 donations in the queue. Any discussion of aircraft have been strictly sale or lease at nominal value. The days when Brezhnev gave the Arabs whole squadrons of Migs are long gone.
If they will be facing S300 or S400 some of those F35s will probably not make it home. They are not THAT stealthy.
Old joke: Why did the Soviets give the Arabs so many aircraft?
Oldie but Goldie.
Here is a real one from a participant (not saying which country he is from). When the Israeli launched Mole Cricket 19 to clear the Syrians from the Beqaa valley they managed to take out ALL Syrian SAM sites in one day. Except one.
The one which was not yet handed over to the Arabs and had instructors from the Warsaw pact country (not USSR) doing the hand over.
It was not taken out because the head of the handover team immediately figured out what is going on and forced the issue for the site to relocate to the backup position.
In order to do that, he had to shoot at the ground in front of the feet of the Arabs so they f*** move instead of sleeping on the job. As a result the site relocated and was the only one the Israeli's did not take out. However, the Syrians took offense and got the team "evicted". With the expected result - that battery was taken out next day.
So the official lesson taken away by the Warsaw pact from the Becaa valley engagement in 1982 was completely different from the bollocks in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19
It was "move or die". I had friends who caught the last 1-2 drafts in the same country before the fall of the wall and served in AAA. They were trained on the lessons from that and they have some unpleasant recollections (moving a SAM battery 4 times in a day is not a walk in the park).
The other lesson is that whatever weapons you give to arabs they will still f*ck it up. Exactly as in the oldie but goldie.
>With a slight difference - it was a prayer time, so locals refused to do anything else.
Israel was attacked during Yom Kippur because that is an important day in the Jewish religious calendar. One should not be too surprised Israel returns the favour with high speed tickets to the afterlife being handed out during prayer times. Which is just how many times a day?
That also happened in the falklands.
I remember reading about a howitzer battery that kept pounding british forces, and lasted a looong time before being hit.
What they did is follow the instructions: shoot a couple of times, immediatly redeploy in order not to receive counter fire. Bad soldiers and leaders would stay in place.
that the cost of these aircraft would pay for every persons medical and education for 20 years if it wasn't spent on death machines for a war that will never happen?
I doubt that. The entire UK defence budget is about 40% of what is spent on health, and about a 70% of what is spent on education (and incidentally about 25% of the spend on welfare and pension benefits).
Looking in a bit more detail, the US whole-life costs have been looked at even if MoD are too stupid to ask, and are reported at $1.5 trillion across 2,400 aircraft. That gives a cost per aircraft of $625m, which seems to pass a common sense test. Using today's rate of $1.40 that's around £450m per aircraft. The UK is thinking of ordering around 140, so that's a UK programme cost of £62bn. Given the current annual levels of education (£86bn) and health spending (£147bn), the entire fifty year whole-life cost of the UK F35 programme would pay for the health and education programme of the nation for a period of four months, so not quite twenty years.
Even so, I think we'd both agree that £62bn appears only to buy us a vastly over-complicated, over expensive piece of foreign made crap.
buy us a vastly over-complicated, over expensive piece of foreign made crap
Indeed. When we have so much over-complicated, over-expensive home-made crap that they could buy!
(Who was it said that it would have been cheaper to give every Westland employee a million quid and buy working helicopters from somewhere else?)
Who was it said that it would have been cheaper to give every Westland employee a million quid and buy working helicopters from somewhere else?
Might have been cheaper on that day, but then the makers shut up shop, the skills and capability is lost, and we have no choice but to buy foreign kit in future. And this happens very quickly, like when that smug toffee nosed twat Cameron cancelled Nimrod MRA4 and we then had to go grovelling to the Yanks to buy Boeing P8s a scant few years later.
A large part of the argument for "cheaper off the shelf" isn't because we can't make something cost effectively, but because MoD come up with stupid ideas that make things cost ineffective. On MRA4 if was the criminally stupid idea of hand-crafting a load of new Nimrods rather than fitting the avionics into a commercial platform, such as an A321. And sadly the same applies when MoD buy foreign kit anyway - look at the shambles that is F35, or the Watchkeeper. That last one is particularly galling, because MoD took a $2m per ship Israeli drone from 20 years ago, and then managed to end up with bugger all working and still have a cost approaching £20m per airframe.
And this happens very quickly, like when that smug toffee nosed twat Cameron cancelled Nimrod MRA4
They could have built a maritime reconnaissance and patrol aircraft (with a possible early warning secondary function) out of A330 ten times for the amount of money spent on the Nimrod. The whole idea of rebuilding airframes (the new wings) of a 1960-es aircraft is criminal in its stupidity. It is a classic example of UK military procurement gone mad.
Main cost is testing. Not development.
It is not dissimilar to any management system. While the "decision" modules are expensive, the real cost is in the testing especially if you have to test integration with things which cost tens to hundreds of thousands (some missiles).
Seems unacceptable for early adopters to have to pay so much for bugfixes on systems that are being sold while essentially still in beta (unkind souls might even say alpha).
Witness the early block F35 that the USAF won't be able to upgrade.
This is truly scandalous.
Icon cuz that's what I would want to happen to that program. Skip to a 2030 timeframe gen 6.
Things are moving on at a breathtaking pace, for here there be Leads to Follow and be Sublimely Shared with All Others via Global Operating Devices
Does the Royal Air Force have a Secure Cyber Space Control Fleet Air Arm ...... AIMaster Pilots on Special Virtual Manoeuvres with Grand AIMaster Pilots ...... Kindred Free SuperNatural Spirits Engaging and Entangling with Thoughts of Even Greater Grand AIMaster Pilots ..... and sharing IT all here too, for free ‽ .
How would you proceed with what you then and now know to be Perfectly True. Would you fear or rejoice to realise IT Alien.
The money shot question is ..... Does RAF Command do Capital Mars Ventures .... on COSMIC Missions from Stellar Sources?
And the upshot of all of that is, if RAF Command want to, they now can.
Something for Mr Hammond to find Special Funding for Project Programming Controls, methinks, for RAF Cyber Space Command to Feed and Seed with Future Prime AIMoves.
Hmmmm :-) .... Does that Present the Chancellor a Quandary Dilemma?
From the frowned-upon new-sites, we hear:
On Monday, the Monmouth University Polling Institute released the results of a survey that found that “a large bipartisan majority… feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a ‘Deep State’ of unelected government officials…..
According to the survey:”…6-in-10 Americans (60%) feel that unelected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Just 26% say the right balance of power exists between elected and unelected officials in determining policy. Democrats (59%), Republicans (59%) and independents (62%) agree that appointed officials hold too much sway in the federal government. (“Public Troubled by ‘Deep State”, Monmouth.edu)
The survey appears to confirm that democracy in the United States is largely a sham. Our elected representatives are not the agents of political change, but cogs in a vast bureaucratic machine that operates mainly in the interests of the behemoth corporations and banks. Surprisingly, most Americans have not been taken in by the media’s promotional hoopla about elections and democracy. They have a fairly-decent grasp of how the system works and who ultimately benefits from it. Check it out:
“Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington.…Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist.” Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group…”
So while the cable news channels dismiss anyone who believes in the “Deep State” as a conspiracy theorist, it’s clear that the majority of people think that’s how the system really works, that is, “a group of unelected government and military officials…secretly manipulate or direct national policy.”
I took Simon's Programming Tale to Represent Current El Reg Interests.
Globalised AI Gamification of/at Levels into Virtualised Strategy for Total Practical Tactical Advantage would be Introducing ITs Products in CyberIntelAIgentWares here and now.
And for every day hence since then to be recorded as the Past, even as IT Explores AI Virgin Futures. ....... Quantum Communications AIMachinery with Deliveries for Production of Tomorrows.
With NEUKlearer Media Teams Astonishing True Stars .... and even themselves too.:-)
As a SMARTR Business, what Price to Markets be Globalised AI Gamification of/at Levels Worthy for/of Command and Control Levers to AId Virtualised Strategy for Total Practical Tactical Advantage?
Methinks Fort Knox would be gladly drained for the Privileges such Advantage Commands with Prime Futures in Control, and at the Controls.
Are future visitors here an alien species ........ and Special Air Sources doing TS/SCI MOD Work in Strange Works ...... https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/3/2018/03/22/f_35b_block_4_upgrades_cost_uk_345m/#c_3463768 ........ which Just Appear to Appear and Work Exceptionally Well.
Or are they Far Distant Travellers Returned Enlightened with SMARTR Leads Following Future Directions with Virtual Instruction on Real Practical Leverage in Advantage Given and Received ....... A Mutually Satisfying Program which has all the advantages and disadvantages of being hooked and captured by the simplest of sweet temptations if you be so gifted and lucky :-)
Man and Woman as One in Mutually Satisfying Spontaneous Orgasms has both Travelling Stellar Class to Other Space Places that Seed a Need and Feed that has to be Seen and Experienced to be Believed.
After Perfect Journeys is Nothing ever as IT was before ..... and the Future Beckons with Delights Beyond Compare to Savour and Nurture, or whenever used and misused and abused for the Generation of Money for Deficit and Debt, would Propagate and Plunder be more APT.
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