Estudio del instituto Mitchell analizando el "coste por effecto". Aunque no se centra en el F-35 exclusivamente, sí trata su caso directa e indirectamente:
https://a2dd917a-65ab-41f1-ab11-5f1897e ... 49d024.pdf...
Cost-per-effect: The total cost involved with achieving a specific mission outcome. This includes mission aircraft to execute the actual task, as well as direct support assets. These include aerial refueling tankers, electronic jamming platforms, and surface-to-air missile suppression efforts. It also includes aircrews and requisite infrastructure like basing and related maintenance support.
Per-unit acquisition cost: The cost of procuring an individual aircraft, relevant armament, etc.
Cost-per-flying hour: The hourly cost involved with flying a single aircraft tied to its consumables, such as fuel, associated maintenance expenses, and aircrew costs.
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Como ya se comentó en este hilo, desde este punto de vista, el F-35 supone un indudable ahorro respecto a los aviones de generación anterior. Pág. 5 y 6:
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3. Fifth-Generation attributes of stealth, electronic warfare, sensors, processing power, communication links, fusion engines, and real-time command and control (C2): Too often incorrectly derided as “gold plating,” these attributes greatly increase force effectiveness and efficiency by ensuring available combat tools can partner in a highly supportive fashion to maximize combined strengths, while minimizing vulnerabilities. A choice not to invest in these capabilities will drive significantly higher force structure requirements such that the Air Force will not be able to meet national defense strategy objectives.
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Y esto se suele repetir en la lista de deseos para la sexta generación, más carga interna y alcance:
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4.Aircraft range and payload: Missions that must be executed over significant distances, entail long inflight loiter times, or involve attacking a large number of targets per sortie are often more efficiently served by aircraft with long ranges and large payloads.
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También se hace hincapié en las armas "inteligentes" como medida de redución del coste por misión. Otro de los puntos que toca es la comparativa entre el F-15EX y el F-35, a partir de la pág. 14:
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To be more specific, interesting data has recently emerged that will support more accurate cost comparisons between the Air Force’s future F-15EX “4th generation-plus” fighter and the F-35. While the details surrounding the F-15EX’s specific unit cost are not entirely clear, it is known that the initial tranche of aircraft will cost roughly $98.3 million, with follow-on tails hopefully costing closer to $80 million per unit.29 The F-35, the only 5th generation fighter currently in production and roughly comparable in terms of mission focus to the F-15EX, is seeing its price—contractually defined—fall from $89.2 million for production Lot 11 to $77.9 million by Lot 14. The F-35, despite its far more advanced stealth design and information dominance strengths, is slated to cost about the same as or even less than the F-15EX.
A comparison of flying hour costs tells a similar story. While the F-35A currently has higher operating costs than the anticipated F-15EX—$35 thousand per flying hour versus a projected $27 thousand respectively—cost-per-effect assessments greatly favor the F-35A. The long-touted “stealth cost penalty” is really a small percentage of what it used to be for earlier generation stealth aircraft. Today, the more significant cost drivers are associated with a combat aircraft’s sensors, processing power, and data links. For instance, if one inflates the unit cost of F-15Es procured in 1998 to 2020 dollars, it comes in around $50 million per jet.30 The difference between the F-15E at $50 million versus an F-15EX at $80 million is largely the result of the latter’s upgraded sensors, processing power, and data fusion capabilities. If this is the case, it makes far more sense to integrate these capabilities into an airframe that has a much greater chance of executing a mission and returning home safely thanks to its stealth attributes.
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También deja alguna que otra curiosidad, pág. 16:
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A prime example of this increased mission complexity and cost occurred in the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom when theater airbase availability limitations required F-15Es to fly from Kuwait to strike targets in Afghanistan. In an incredibly impressive display of airmanship, four F-15Es each carrying nine 500-pound GBU-12s, two AIM-9Ms, and two AIM-120Cs flew a 15.5-hour mission from Kuwait to Afghanistan and back, of which 9 hours were spent over the target area.
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Esto trae otro de los debates de la sexta generación. Si se hacen los aviones con mayores autonomías y se aumenta el tiempo de misión, quizás los monoplazas no sean la mejor solución.
Otra curiosidad más, es cuando toca el famoso cañón de las 1.000 millas, asegurando que la aviación ofrece un mejor "coste por efecto", o cuando compara al B-17 con el F-117, pág. 20 y 22:
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Such assessments must also happen across services and must focus on mission effects, not parochial service control absent meaningful results. For example, is the Army’s pursuit of a new cannon with a 1,000-mile range really the best use of resources when strike aircraft, remotely piloted aircraft, and bombers net the same mission results more effectively, survivably, and efficiently? Those are precisely the kinds of assessments that need to occur when mission demand will be on the rise and available dollars on the decline.
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This progress is a dramatic illustration of the benefits of measuring the relative value of an aircraft in the context of meeting realworld mission demands. With both sums normalized for 2019 dollars, the F-117, at a unit cost of $50,560,960, was dramatically more expensive to acquire than the B-17 with a unit cost of $3,383,450.50 However, in the example cited in the vignette above, 863 World War II-era bombers were needed to eliminate one target, whereas only 20 F-117s were used to strike 28 separate targets in just one hour of a conflict scarcely 50 years later. Using a simple cost-per-effect model, it cost roughly $36 million for an F-117 to strike a target, far less than $292 million per target for the World War II bombers. And yet, this latter figure wholly ignores the cost of the bombers’ fighter escorts; the fact that each World War II bomber was crewed by ten airmen versus a single pilot for an F-117; and the relative cost of spare parts, fuel, logistical support, and basing infrastructure. More importantly, the comparison does not consider the far more important human costs involved in the loss of so many bombers.
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