Cost Of Buying & Operating Fighters

mil-avia · Aug 12, 2015

The low-cost fighters to serve tomorrow’s air forces

Will S. Korea’s FA-50 Emerge As A Low-Cost Alternative To Western Fighter Aircraft?

Peaceful Civilian · Aug 12, 2015

mil-avia said:
Is it time for a low-cost stealth fighter? Why air arms won’t see sense (Dec 5, 2013)

Low cost for Stealth fighter?? No way. For example Even if You save money for not adding additional Ram coating then it is not stealth fighter. It is compromise on stealth over its cost!

Taygibay · Aug 12, 2015

What you are asking for, @Nav , simply cannot be computed by normal people due to
inability to collect all necessary data for all aircrafts. Here's why :

Country A uses only expendables costs :
fuel for an hour of flight + hour pay of pilot + hour of ownership of fighter.
Even in this simplest of calculations, the last one above can be derived in many ways :
cost of acquisition divided by life cycle hours = hour cost … or
cost of acquisition + maintenance costs over life cycle divided by life cycle hours = hour cost … or
cost of acquisition + maintenance costs over life cycle + afferent immobilization costs ( ground equipment
like say hangar or refueling equipment, etc , personnel charged with aircraft related services, personnel
charged with maintaining the Air Force base itself and so on ) divided by life cycle hours ... and so on.

Even then, each cost metric can vary.
Do you compute a Rafale acquisition cost for France or Egypt? In France, the VAT tax applies at 20%+-
but not for Egypt since it's an export and not subject to the internal tax. Do you then use PPP ( parity of the
monetary device and inflation and … ) or just exchange market value for each currency? And so on.
Here is a document on acquisition costs :
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/dae/articles/communiques/FighterCostFinalJuly06.pdf

Do maintenance costs relate to all operations done on a single fighter? Does country A's govt count engine
replacements? Do they evaluate each component's life cycle cost separately so that shorter lived ones are
given with 2, 3 or 4 renewals over the aircraft's life cycle added? Does it include hourly pay of the people
involved in acquisition of those replacements although they are mere pencil pushers and sales reps? ETC.

Do immobilization costs include the whole chain of infrastructure? For example, do you take the value of the
hangar over its own life cycle ( most likely longer than that of the fighter itself ) and divide that by life cycle
hours? And are those the hangar's lifecycle hours or that of the plane? Do you add the cost per hour of the
other building next to it where the spare parts are kept? Or that of the one housing the Commanding Officer's
office? How about the airfield strip? Does the hourly salary of the guy standing guard at the air base entrance
count? Are all those adjusted for inflation? And so on …

Here we are with a single country considered and no certain way of understanding life hour calculations.
Unless they openly state it somewhere but then, for comparison purposes, we'd need Countries B, C, etc
to also disclose their methods. If these differ, we'll need to adjust metrics to get an even field.

Let us suppose hypothetical country B to use all means related to the use of a fighter in their hour cost.
The salary of the General that heads their Air Force is included, maybe that of the Defense Minister too.
They compute in the use of refueling aircrafts because you need those for proper warfare. But do they
just add hourly costs for these to the equation and along which lines of measurements? All variations
above for fighter costs are implied here as well. So that on a mission using refueling ACs, cost soars!
But how many Fighter missions require these? 20%, 50%, 75%? How do you compare Switzerland's
use of their F-18s to that of America? The former have such a small territory they don't use refuelers;
the later has a fleet of them bigger than that of most nations fighter force!!! That will change an hour cost!
Then again, USA airspace is so many times bigger, almost worldwide if you count ext. bases and carriers.

One step further :
Let's keep Switzerland as Country A and let's use a smaller one by half as Country B!
Let's assume they use the exact same method of computing their fighters' hourly costs.
Would you be surprised if I said that Country B has a flight hour cost ten+fold that of A?
Even if it was Israel? ( Switzerland -41K sq. km vs Israel -20K sq. km )
But Switzerland's AF only works on open hours, 9-5 not week-ends and never in exterior operations.
Israel's fighters are constantly active and bomb neighbors regularly. No surprise that at ISO calculations,
the latter spends a lot more, huh?

I'll stop now as I am sure all of you can carry on from here and find other differentiating factors :
How many hours flown per year? How much maintenance? Do you include armament value and if so,
how does the wear and tear of a cruise missile compare to that of dumb bomb? and so on …

As in many other evaluation processes, any result in flight hour costs is fine for a general idea at best.
Anyone trying to use these as proof of value of the concerned aircraft to air force is clueless.
As indication of an order of magnitude sure but all that will tell you is as useful in real life & combat as …

… suddenly discovering that an SR-71 costs more to operate than a PC-21!!!

Good day all, Tay.