A nice puff piece about signing up for the third batch of the Tornado replacement, the Eurofighter. Gordon Brown announced the decision saying it would strengthen Britain's defence capability and "create new jobs in advanced manufacturing that Britain needs to emerge stronger and fitter from this global downturn".
The reality is not quite as heart-warming as the piece suggests. UK government has been exploring every possible legal avenue to escape from buying a very expensive and unnecessary third tranche of the Cold War planes, designed to defeat the USSR's SU 27. Under the original deal for the aircraft -- being built by Britain's BAE Systems, Italy's Finmeccanica and EADS for Germany and Spain -- Britain was obliged to buy 232 planes. The majority are already in service, but the third tranche, which involves a further 88 aircraft for Britain and others for Spain, Germany and Italy, has yet to go into production.
The Eurofighter project, announced in 1988 was originally costed at £7 Billion. Then £13 Billion. By 1997 it was £17 Billion, then £20 Billion. Since 2003 the Ministry of Defence have refused to release updated cost estimates on the grounds of 'commercial sensitivity'. The MOD press release said that at peak production, the Typhoon programme will help sustain 5,000 jobs at BAE Systems, 4,000 throughout aero-engine maker Rolls Royce and its supply chain and up to 16,000 in total in the UK aerospace industry. So around 25,000 jobs. No small amount. But with a conservative estimate of say £27 Billion it would have been as cheap to pay 25,000 people 1/2 a million quid each for 20 years and to buy the latest USA F16/E. At 27 million each we could have had 500 of them. {Actually as MW points we couldn't. £250 billion that would cost. Which is high even for defence contracts.! }
Ironically it is the MOD itself who created the problem. Some 15 years ago the UK, desperate to tie the Germans into a deal that they wanted to back out of, wrote the contract so that it was almost as expensive to pull out of the deal, and receive no planes, as it was to just pay for them. The UK might incur fines of up to £2 billion, more than the cost {£1.6bn} of the next 40 planes the UK must take.
The Ministry of Defence can't afford the aircraft and will probably try and sell them on, at a loss. When defence cuts, that have to start in autumn 2010 other, more necessary programs will be axed instead. Another in a long line of successful defence procurements ....?
21 comments:
" at £27 Billion it would have been as cheap to pay 25,000 people 1/2 a million quid each for 20 years"No it wouldn't, because that would have cost £250 billion.
Who could well sell them onto?
I am guessing there are fairly tight conditions in the contract so they don't fall into the wrong hands. Anyone in the market for fighter hets would probably buy them from the Americans anyway?
Would you do aircraft carriers next, when you have a moment Mr Q?
MW - No doubt mT Q will change that. Still could pay them nearly £50,000 a year oddd. This has to be one of the worst ever defence procurement projects. A fighter we don't even need anymore!
MW : Quite right. Edit coming up.
Guess that means just £100k each and 250 odd planes. Doesn't sound so good.
RE: We had Japan,Singapore and Saudi Arabia lined up. Singapore decided against because of the advanced ground attack capability not being ready in time. {2005 ish that was}
HG: Is that project still going?
So what are the Eurofighters for? Bombing and strafing Hackney if there are security problems at the 2012 Olympics?
informative as ever on the reality between the lines.
howvever im not sure proposing an even older model (over 40 years) is fair. and as you pointed out a while back about sailors for the two new carriers, what about more pilots for the extra f-16s?
i appreciate your real point is poor precurement, but isnt that the endemic problem. the military say they want something it takes ages to turn up, then its virtually obsolete once in the field. whats the name of our radio system? i saw somewhere that the US are using ipod applications in many instances!
i wouldnt say we dont need this anymore. isnt one of your many themes a resurgence of russian belligerence? putin is already on the comeback trail. in that event, what price keeping this sector and its skill going?
i suppose one way out of defense expenditure is to pull our horns in fully and become a neutrality?
Demetrius: It was a bit of shame that before the Eurofighter left the drawing board the main threat, the Soviet airforce, had vanished.
But a country will always need a good frontline fighter/bomber aircraft. Not much use in Afghanistan. Limited use in Iraq since Iraq 1.But who knows where next. would be very useful against the iranian or Syrian airforce for example. The Eurofighter is good. Its just very expensive.
ROYM. If we had chosen the F16's we could have had them at the time Top Gun was in the cinemas.
There is about 10 years life in the F16 but I wouldn't propose buying them in 2009, but it would have made sense in 1989.
The RAF seem very pleased with their new plane. Its just that we were never going to need so many.
The maths was done to make the cost ratio development to aircraft smaller. If we had taken just the 100+ that we really need then the cost/plane would be staggeringly high.
The final 88, if not sold, will almost certainly never fly. Partly for the pilot, maintenance, armament and ground crew issues that you indicate.
At least the RAF got a decent aircraft that mostly does what was promised. Sometimes MOD spend the money and 10 years later the forces receive nothing as the project is abandoned.
Lewis Page says the gossip is we have been talking to Saudi Arabia, India and Japan about buying surplus Eurofighters. Japan is a long shot as they strong U.S. links.
BTW Lewis Page has an extreme rant about this today: "Eurofighter Tranche 3: Oh please, God, no".
Well I'm a fan of the Typhoon, I'm not sad to see the Tornado go now and I won't be sad to see the Harrier replaced by the F-35 in a few years.
Thanks rwendland .
I like Mr Page.Anyone who the establishment dismiss as an out of touch , barely informed crank must be good. They are good articles.
Stephen L. No one wants the UK to soldier on with outdated equipment. Its the horrendous cost that we wish to avoid.
Anyone think those carriers are coming in at the estimated £4bn?
I don't. More like £10bn. And that will be just for the two.Probably without the F-35's.
Bill, I hate to point this out, but there is neither sight nor sound of an F-16 in Top Gun. Little Tom Cruise cruises around in an F-15...
Anyway, if we're going to sell these Typhoons on, I hope the MoD chooses the paint & options well to retain the re-sale value. Metallic silver, I assume, with aircon, satnav and a sunroof? :o)
Patently.
I had a line originally in the post along the lines of "I know there are no F16's in Top Gun but the cool image applies." Must have been deleted it with the maths edit.
At the time our Harriers were still being thought of as world beaters.
5 years on the F16's took out Saddam's defences with their state of the art missiles and smart bomb/ radar guided packs while the RAF was denying that Tornados were being shot down by AAA because they hadn't got the state of the art equipment to do anything but barrel along at zero feet as if they were 633 squadron.
Seems the Eurofighter conversion to fighter bomber role from dogfighter is going to be a similar experience for the RAF.
See rwendland's links.
Anyway, why sell them? Why not give a few away in return for airbases?
BillQ you'll have to stop these defence posts, you're bringing out the laptop general neo-colonalist in me.
And on the costs front, what would you prefer - tax credit fraud or generation 5 fighter planes?
Patently - You are are correct, no F-16s in Top Gun. However, I then have to rain on your parade and point out the aircraft featured in Top Gun was the F-14 Tomcat, not the F-15.
We need something like the Typhoon but maybe not too many. More useful would would be a cheap ground support plane like the Pucara used by Argentina in the Falklands. In an environment where we have air superiority we dont need fast jets to do everything.
Trouble is the jet jockeys who run the RAF dont want to know about beasts like the Pucara. It would make sense for it to belong to the army but then the RAF would throw a wobbly about their right to monopolise fixed-wing combat aircraft.
A Pucara-like aircraft could be built pretty much entirely in the UK, it wouldnt need cutting edge technology or foreign partners, easily do-able I would think.
More on the Pucara ground attack plane...
Numbers are hard to find but I believe Sri Lanka bought some for $2.3m each in 1994.
My maths is probably crap but that seems to amount to @ £2.6m today. Im assuming we would build these domestically and that would alter the numbers again but that means for the price of a single Typhoon - £400m - we could have maybe 150 Pucara type planes. The army would wet themselves over that - ten squadrons!
Set against that 150 Pucaras would cost more to run than one Typhoon. But not 150 times as much.
non:
Didn't the Pucara suffer badly in the Falklands?
I think the Paras shot some down and they only had our ineffective Air to air shoulder missile.
Many were destroyed but a lot by the sas on the ground.
I think a decent attack helicopter would be better.
We bought Apache and one day it may even cleared for airworthiness.
I was with some Westland people the other night, one of whom has just volunteered to test the future Lynx in Afghanistan.
Thats a great idea, if risky. Test the aircraft in the type of harsh environment it will be used.
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