The low-cost* fighters to serve tomorrow’s air forces (BBC) {*relatively speaking}
By Angus Batey
At this summer's Farnborough Air Show in England, the talk was dominated by the mishaps of one plane: the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter. Due to be adopted by major air forces in the decades to come, it was supposed to be the star of the show. But in the end, the $100m-a-unit jet failed to turn up to its coming-out party after an engine fire in one of the production models grounded the fleet.
But another new jet fighter, which had taken less than two years to design, build and fly, did make it to Farnborough. The Textron Scorpion costs $20m, still not exactly a bargain by most people's standards, but a fifth of the cost of the F-35. It suggests that not every advanced defence project has to necessarily come in years late and billions over budget – and points to a new twist in not only the future of fighter-jet design, but also in more humanitarian roles that a budget jet could carry out.
As Textron AirLand president Bill Anderson has said, the majority of work devoted to designing and developing fighters over the last several decades has focused on creating expensive, sophisticated machines. Whether it's Lockheed’s F-35 and F-22 Raptor, the Eurofighter Typhoon or the Boeing F/A-18, the designs have reflected the desire for advanced performance over affordability. Yet in today's economic environment, cost is becoming an unavoidably compelling issue for even the richest western nations.
Budget busters
Textron aren’t the only ones creating the tech to address this issue. The single jet fighter JF-17 is a Chinese design, currently being built in collaboration with its sole export customer, Pakistan, and is said to be available for around the same per-plane price of US$20m. Meanwhile, a Russian design, the Yak-130, has also been touted as a low-cost plane to carry out everything from air combat to reconnaissance, as well as train pilots.
***
more: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140903-low-cost-fighter-jets-take-off
= new reply since forum marked as read
