Stock of the United States’ largest defence contractor Lockheed Martin was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank by 14.5 percent, with a price target of $523
Far more expensive compared to SU-57 that’s actually been proven effective in combat against NATO air defence systems. This is how actual weapons are developed:
The Russian Air Force has demonstrated high confidence in the Su-57’s stealth capabilities, and has deployed the fighters for high intensity combat operations to parts of the Ukrainian theatre with particularly high concentrations of Ukrainian air defences.
The Su-57 program has prioritised reducing maintenance needs and operational costs to avoid the very low availability rates that have plagued America’s F-117, F-22 and F-35 stealth fighter fleets. One notable means by which this had been achieved is through reduced reliance on radar absorbent coatings, which was achieved by using innovative solutions such as radar absorbent fibreglass. In contrast to American stealth fighters which consistently cost far more to operate than their fourth generation predecessors, this approach allows the Su-57 to potentially achieve lower operational costs than its direct predecessor the Soviet Su-27, thus allowing Russia to move its fleet into the fifth generation without either significantly raising sustainment funding or contracting the number of fighters in service.
What’s the su57 cost per hour taking into account maintainer income differences? I don’t see any numbers. And weren’t you criticizing the F22 for only having 200 units?
F22 was introduced in 1996, SU57 is a new platform that’s still being tested and hasn’t been put into mass production. The manufacturing only started in 2019, and there are already 32 produced. Let me know if you need help crunching the numbers on that one.
What’s the su57 cost per hour taking into account maintainer income differences?
The cost of the entire jet is a mere $35 million. Here’s an article you can read discussing the lifetime cost comparison
If you’re saying it’s still pre production, then it’s production delay is worse than the F35. It’s first flight was in 2010, so that puts it at 15 years from first fight to lrip and counting. F35 only had 10 year timeline between first flight in 2001 and lrip in 2011.
First, maintenance costs are fundamentally different from sticker price. To find maintenance cost, you’d want to find the maintenance factor, how many hours of maintenance per flight hour, and the cost of replacement parts per flight hour.
Comparing quoted sticker price isn’t much good either, since they haven’t sold any, and as you said it’s still pre production, so even if the cost wasn’t subsidized, it’d still be way off from final numbers.
If you’re saying it’s still pre production, then it’s production delay is worse than the F35.
I’m saying it’s still being tested in actual combat conditions and kinks are being ironed out before mass production starts. This is how you avoid having a debacle like F35 where you start producing something in volume and then discover crippling problems down the road.
Also, not sure what argument you’re trying to make regarding the cost being subsidized. The cost is labor and material used to build it. It costs the Russian state 35 million a pop. There is absolutely no reason to think this cost will go up dramatically once mass production starts. In fact, what happens is that economies of scale kick in and costs go down.
The article I linked above talks about lifetime costs. Just to be clear, are you seriously trying to argue that the maintenance cost of SU-57 is comparable to that of F-35. Just want to have that on record here.
I’m trying to say we have no idea what the maintenance costs are on the su57. Russia doesn’t report things like that. I don’t know if they even track it themselves. So you can’t just blanket say the su57 is cheaper to maintain unless you bring data.
One thing that works against Russia in maintenance is they tend to run their equipment much harder. To get good performance on their engines, they sometimes push them so that they only last a couple hundred flight hours. Doing the same with many components would indicate a very high maintenance factor.
Expensive maintenance compared to what? Have you looked at the operations rates? It looks like F35 costs about the same per hour as the F15EX.
https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/documents/rates/fy2023/2023_b_c.pdf
Far more expensive compared to SU-57 that’s actually been proven effective in combat against NATO air defence systems. This is how actual weapons are developed:
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/first-look-stealth-optimised-al51f-1-powering-russia-su-57m
What’s the su57 cost per hour taking into account maintainer income differences? I don’t see any numbers. And weren’t you criticizing the F22 for only having 200 units?
F22 was introduced in 1996, SU57 is a new platform that’s still being tested and hasn’t been put into mass production. The manufacturing only started in 2019, and there are already 32 produced. Let me know if you need help crunching the numbers on that one.
The cost of the entire jet is a mere $35 million. Here’s an article you can read discussing the lifetime cost comparison
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/06/23/how-su-57-dodged-the-f-22-f-35s-lifetime-crippling-cost-bullet/
If you’re saying it’s still pre production, then it’s production delay is worse than the F35. It’s first flight was in 2010, so that puts it at 15 years from first fight to lrip and counting. F35 only had 10 year timeline between first flight in 2001 and lrip in 2011.
First, maintenance costs are fundamentally different from sticker price. To find maintenance cost, you’d want to find the maintenance factor, how many hours of maintenance per flight hour, and the cost of replacement parts per flight hour.
Comparing quoted sticker price isn’t much good either, since they haven’t sold any, and as you said it’s still pre production, so even if the cost wasn’t subsidized, it’d still be way off from final numbers.
I’m saying it’s still being tested in actual combat conditions and kinks are being ironed out before mass production starts. This is how you avoid having a debacle like F35 where you start producing something in volume and then discover crippling problems down the road.
Also, not sure what argument you’re trying to make regarding the cost being subsidized. The cost is labor and material used to build it. It costs the Russian state 35 million a pop. There is absolutely no reason to think this cost will go up dramatically once mass production starts. In fact, what happens is that economies of scale kick in and costs go down.
Anyway, let’s talk maintenance costs. You have any data?
The article I linked above talks about lifetime costs. Just to be clear, are you seriously trying to argue that the maintenance cost of SU-57 is comparable to that of F-35. Just want to have that on record here.
I’m trying to say we have no idea what the maintenance costs are on the su57. Russia doesn’t report things like that. I don’t know if they even track it themselves. So you can’t just blanket say the su57 is cheaper to maintain unless you bring data.
One thing that works against Russia in maintenance is they tend to run their equipment much harder. To get good performance on their engines, they sometimes push them so that they only last a couple hundred flight hours. Doing the same with many components would indicate a very high maintenance factor.