US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

gelgoog said:

So in other words the amount of aircraft produced keeps going down as costs go up just like Augustine said.
FYI he used to be the CEO of Lockheed Martin.

The official inflation grew like 125% from 1980 to 2000. Consumer prices basically doubled. While prices of fighter aircraft seem to grow like 10x in the same period. F-16 vs F-35 price. Fighter prices increase faster than inflation.

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No. Because it falls to consider anything but a trend line based off improper accounting.
The Number of demands very based off class and size of the customer base. The B2 only got about 50 units. The B21 is slated for 100. The USAF order about 1200 F16 it plans for over 1700 alone. The “law” says that should be smaller. Well F35 has had delays the projection still shows buying.
Farther well in theory an F35A costs approximately 82 million dollars. An F16 is 63 million well an F15EX is about 97 million. These prices are flyaway and as with civilian aviation are based on package deals including service support, engines, spare parts. The seeming jump in prices is these days is also in part due to a change in accounting practices which include associated costs often including thing that are seemingly unrelated like facilities improvements. The Claim doesn’t account for that.

The F-16 is built by the same contractor. Lockheed Martin. They have no reason to keep prices low at all.

gelgoog said:

The F-16 is built by the same contractor. Lockheed Martin. They have no reason to keep prices low at all.

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The USAF isn’t buying F16 any more they are Export product. Targeted to countries who for whatever reason can’t get F35 or can’t afford it. They shifted production into a North Carolina plant to trim costs on overhead to reduce costs.
But since you insist. Fly away cost Jas 39 Grippen 85 million.
Export cost Eurofighter Typhoon 124 million
Rafael about 120 million.
So it is based on the Curve a low cost medium weight fighter.
Fell free to despite that but to get cheaper you have to buy a fighters/Trainer like the F/A50. Or hope to get a sweetheart deal.
So there is incentive to trim the fat.

I agree with MarKoz81 and others who postulate a positive outcome for US forces using modernized aircraft (eg F-35C, E-2D, F/A-18E/F, et al) with long-range sensors, datalinks and weapons supported by similarly modernized ships (eg, DDG-51 Flight 3, CVN-78, et al) in an essentially one-on-one scenario.

However, a First-Island-Chain scenario will not be a positive outcome. Simplistically, as I've cited before, the Hughes-Tangredi model demonstrates China's advantage: Bigger Fleets Win.

An example is the Aegis combat system -- very capable but its human operators will be overwhelmed by the multi-directional multi-threat engagements China will bring against it. Similarly for the E-2D with a smaller crew.

From the surface warfare perspective, there is the assumption only the PLAN will be present. This is unlikely as I believe China will populate the battlespace with its maritime militia as described in policy documents I've cited before.

And of course there's commercial shipping. No matter how that traffic is re-routed China will position some portion of its fleet (PLAN and maritime militia) around that route with its CCG interspersed within that traffic ready to interfere as policy and circumstances require.

One scenario I'm fond of is two dozen "trawlers" assigned to harass every naval ship accompanying the CVN. Hiding within them are a few Type 022 missile boats popping out every so often to remind that naval ship of their deadly presence. Yeah the boats have short legs but a fuel bag that accidentally falls off a trawler in the middle of the night helps with that.

So the question becomes why would the USN 7th Fleet, et al leave Japan to engage Chinese forces? China has been masterful with salami-slicing and grayzone tactics short of a casus belli. US politicians will beat their chest beforehand signalling their intentions leaving China plenty of time to pull the appropriate war plan off the shelf and arrange its military (and political) forces accordingly.

Bigger [Air and Surface] Fleets Win.

MarKoz81 said:

So the reality is that SM-6 is being introduced not because USN doesn't know how to handle Chinese missiles but because China finally has sufficient number of targets that a large and heavy SM-6 makes sense.

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China has had a significant fleet of AWACs aircraft for over 5 years now, which would have justified the US deployment of a VLRAAM.

However, the SM-6 is a suboptimal option because the rocket is only single pulse and is expensive.

In comparison, the Chinese already have an equivalent in the PL-17 VLRAAM which is a dual pulse rocket, which should mean it is far more effective against fighter jets as well.

If the US had developed a PL-17 equivalent (aka a stretched AMRAAM), I imagine it would be less than half the cost of what they're currently paying for a SM-6.

MarKoz81 said:

US is still ahead of China when the entire system is considered. There simply was no need for SM-6 to be air launched before because lack of targets. People shouldn't confuse shift from advantage toward parity in technology and China's decisive geographical advantage with China maintaining a lead in technology. These two are not the same thing.

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Before Patchwork's departure, he asserted that the Chinese had a better battle network and datalinks. At least until the US finished the development of the latest version of their battle network.

In the civilian sectors, we can see adoption of the latest technology being far greater in China than in the US.

We also have the USAF briefing which stated that China has a 5x speed advantage in developing new weapons, along with a large cost advantage in weapons procurement.

Given these data points, we can expect the Chinese military to maintain a small to significant lead over the US is terms of military technology in the future.

AIM-174 spotted in the wild.

AndrewS said:

If the US had developed a PL-17 equivalent (aka a stretched AMRAAM), I imagine it would be less than half the cost of what they're currently paying for a SM-6.

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The advantage is that it shares a production line with the SM-6. Yeah, it's an expensive missile, but it's already a relatively niche weapon.

AndrewS said:

Before Patchwork's departure, he asserted that the Chinese had a better battle network and datalinks. At least until the US finished the development of the latest version of their battle network.

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I don't think there's enough evidence to say that there is a meaningful advantage here for either side.

AndrewS said:

In the civilian sectors, we can see adoption of the latest technology being far greater in China than in the US.

We also have the USAF briefing which stated that China has a 5x speed advantage in developing new weapons, along with a large cost advantage in weapons procurement.

Given these data points, we can expect the Chinese military to maintain a small to significant lead over the US is terms of military technology in the future.

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A good litmus test will be to see how each side procures USVs and develops operation concepts for them.

AndrewS said:

China has had a significant fleet of AWACs aircraft for over 5 years now, which would have justified the US deployment of a VLRAAM.

However, the SM-6 is a suboptimal option because the rocket is only single pulse and is expensive.

In comparison, the Chinese already have an equivalent in the PL-17 VLRAAM which is a dual pulse rocket, which should mean it is far more effective against fighter jets as well.

If the US had developed a PL-17 equivalent (aka a stretched AMRAAM), I imagine it would be less than half the cost of what they're currently paying for a SM-6.

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For what it's worth, the SM-6/AIM-174 was spotted years ago, like 2019 (I think) so yes, they realized that the Chinese AWACs and tanker fleet were growing fast.

KJ-500 has been noted by numerous sources as a very capable system.

Raytheon has been pitching AMRAAM-ER/AXE (ESSM-AA version) for a while, but this is what the USN went with.

HighGround said:

The advantage is that it shares a production line with the SM-6. Yeah, it's an expensive missile, but it's already a relatively niche weapon.

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But remember the PL-17 is a dual-pulse rocket, which means it should be a lot more effective against manoeuvrable fighters.

So the VLRAAM is no longer a niche weapon and can be used against any air target. So production numbers can be a lot latger

HighGround said:

I don't think there's enough evidence to say that there is a meaningful advantage here for either side.

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But given China's speed and cost advantages, we can infer a "small to significant" advantage to remain in terms of battle network.

HighGround said:

A good litmus test will be to see how each side procures USVs and develops operation concepts for them.

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We'll have to see.
But if you had to bet money, who has the cost, production, speed and geographical advantage in terms of USVs?

America's navalists are joining Hughes, Tancredi and me in the Bigger Fleets Win theme with by Dr. Seth Cropsey, currently at the Yorktown Institute.

CBO, GAO, CRS, and Heritage Foundation all warn of the severe risk our nation is creating by having a weak Navy. There are increasing doubts that we can win the next war. Our enemies China, Russia, Iran, the DPRK, and radical Islam are all taking advantage of the perceived weakness by being more aggressive. Russia’s war on Ukraine has no end in sight. Iran is waging a war against the state of Israel, and this is bleeding our inventories dry of arms we will need to fight a looming future conflict with China. China grows ever more aggressive against Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and other Pacific nations as it asserts its hegemony against its far weaker neighbors while the U.S. mostly sits idly by tolerating their “wolf warrior” tactics.

Prominent naval experts share my concerns.

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