
Farnborough Airshow: The Scorpion in search of a customer - rollthehard6
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28260781
======
VLM
Something you guys haven't discussed is there's an old PR move in .mil
aviation to propose a ridiculous theoretical possible cost per hour of
operation compared to actual results from deployed weapon systems. Then when
its deployed the cost of of the new weapon system goes to the traditional
"twenty grand per hour" or so, unsurprisingly.

The problem is you can make things a little faster or slower but fundamentally
the labor cost of an air wing is about the same and the support of the support
troops is literally a constant. Replacing a wing of A-10 with this thing isn't
magically going to make the gate guard work for less money or remove the need
for a diversity officer from HQ. Inspecting a really expensive XYZ costs the
same labor as inspecting a cheap XYZ. Ditto replacing landing lights or tires
or whatever other consumables.

So take the total budget of an air wing, divide it by total hours flown (some
a/c are more or less reliable than others) and you get about twenty grand per
flying hour.

Another tradition is you pick something thats a labor nightmare. Lets say
Osprey super high pressure hydraulics. Now you can fix that in a new A/C using
somewhat better hydraulics design. But its like a murphys law that you'll just
mess up the ... engine controller or some ridiculous thing. Another way to put
it is since pre-roman era times, the troops are always complaining about
something, although what they complain about varies a bit over the centuries.
So its never all that much cheaper to maintain and operate one similar plane
over another.

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JVIDEL
Unless they can built it using plants in all 50 states then they don't stand a
chance. The F35 is already built using parts sourced from all 48 continental
states.

Defense procurement has been using pork barrel strategies for decades, its the
industry standard. You can literally sell something that doesn't works for
whatever price you want as long as you got the political backing to do so.

~~~
mikecb
My guess is they're not aiming their sights at the Pentagon, but rather medium
sized country exports. Plenty of countries want a modern yet cheap to maintain
air capability.

~~~
JVIDEL
And those countries want to build their own industries and employ their own
people as well, same problem.

Take the recent failure to sell the SuperHornet and the Rafale to the
Brazilian Air Force: they lost the bid because both Boeing and Dassault
refused to do a complete technology transfer to the Brazilians. So the BAF
went with the Grippen because Saab gave them the blueprints and code to
everything, to the point that Brazil can make their own Grippens in the future
and their own weapon systems without sharing information with the Swedes.

~~~
mikecb
I wouldn't expect Brazil to be a market for this sort of plane, but rather
more countries which currently primarily purchase used or refurbished soviet
fighters.

But then again, given their low development costs, who's to say that Textron
wouldn't approve such a production model for this plane? It's not like Saab is
losing money on the Brazil deal.

~~~
JVIDEL
And those countries will keep buying those derelict Soviet planes because
those are dirt cheap to the point most are hand-me-downs obtained for free. In
those cases the countries have a bigger problem fueling the planes.

And I wouldn't subestimate those old Soviet planes, the Indians have updated
and overhauled the old Mig-21 to the point that is a very capable fighter jet
able to compete against a block 50 F-16. There are many companies offering
updates for such planes and those are much cheaper than brand-new units.

~~~
JPKab
I thought that the "buy a bunch of old MiGs" model was blown apart by Middle
Eastern MiGs getting annihilated by Israelis in F-15s.

~~~
ovi256
If you put the Israeli pilots in the MIGs and the Middle Eastern pilots in the
F-15s, the result would probably not change. Hardware is sexy but sexy doesn't
win battles.

~~~
cafard
Remind me again where Israel is located...

------
tormeh
"The Pentagon, along with defence departments around the world, have made no
secret that the days when defence contractors would be spoon-fed dollars to
produce long-delayed and over-budget equipment are over.

Mr Peters says the Scorpion fits squarely into this new environment."

The naivete displayed here is staggering. I guess they're just trying to put a
positive spin on their chances in the procurement process, but still.

~~~
JPKab
Its very upsetting to me that you are correct in saying this is naive.

At the same time, I wish them all the best.

------
dingaling
Not a great deal that is novelty in terms of off-the-shelf here; the
undercarriage, seats, engines and avionics are, but the rest of the airframe
and structure are new or restressed ( the wings - CitationJets don't tend to
carry ordnance ). A pretty standard mix of re-use and new development for
second-tier types.

For nearly 100 years the axiom in fighter development has been: _never a new
airframe and a new engine at the same time_. All this does differently from
the F-35 is obey that.

It does look useful, sort of a sub-Northrop F-5 for the new era. The KAI T-50
and Aermacchi / Yak M346 would be in the same category, though a little more
performant; obviously their marketing departments aren't quite as aggressive
as Textron.

~~~
coob
How do the KAI/Yak alternatives compare when it comes to running costs?

------
marktangotango
Northrup tried "fast light cheap" back in the 70's with the F-20 Tigershark:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_F-20_Tigershark)

As a direct competitor to the F-16, it was squashed (IMO). Are these guys
savvy, have they learned the Tigersharks lesson? Maybe. This aircraft seems to
compete with the A10, which has been retired.

Edit: Correction the A10 is not retired yet, they keep talking about it
though.

~~~
XorNot
A _ton_ of people are irritated about the A-10 being retired to make way for
the F-35, since the A-10 is vastly better at the ground-attack missions that
are currently needed in Iraq.

Building a cheap plane with low running costs which can fulfill that roll
would make a lot of people very happy (although no one's going to fit a GAU-8
onto anything but the A-10 airframe I suspect).

~~~
Someone1234
A lot of talk about the A-10 Vs. Scorpion. I just wanted to throw a little bit
of interesting data into the mix...

Cost per hour:

    
    
      * Scorpion (3K/hour)    
     * F-35 (18K/hour)    
     * A-10 (17.7K/hour)    
     * AC-130U gunship (45.9K/hour)    
     * B-1B "Lancer" (57.8K/hour)    
     * B-2A "Stealth bomber" (169K/hour)    
     * B-52H Stratofortress (69K/hour)   
     * C-17 Globemaster (23K/hour)   
     * CV-22B Osprey (83K/hour)    
     * F-16C (22.5K/hour)   
     * MQ-1B Predator Drone (3.6K/hour)   
     * RQ-4B Global Hawk Drone (49K/hour)
    

To me that really puts things into perspective. If the 3K figure is true,
they're competing against drones not against the A-10 which cost almost as
much as the F-35.

~~~
commandar
FWIW, those F-35 numbers are flat out wrong.

[http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-
estimates-f-3...](http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-
estimates-f-35-will-cost-32000-per-hour-to-operate-386430/)

~~~
Someone1234
They're from the BBC's article linked in the OP. So take it up with them.

~~~
commandar
No need to be defensive. I was just clarifying for others reading.

EDIT:

Now that I look at the OP article more closely, it appears you may have
conflated the F-16 CPFH quoted in the article as representing the F-35 CPFH. I
don't see mention of CPFH for the F-35.

------
pjc50
I'll reiterate what I said recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009579)

Procurement is almost entirely political; whether you get something working at
the end of it is determined by how that impacts the careers of the procurers.
And it's rare that it does.

If it were actually necessary to use this plane, or any plane, to win a war,
it would be very successful. In a world of irrelevant wars of choice, it's
simply not expensive enough or high-tech enough to sell well.

~~~
icefox
Beyond the low purchase price the running cost is so low in comparison to
other planes that I can't help but wonder if grabbing these would free up
budget for more planes/men etc in your department/group which is often at the
core of politics. I wouldn't be surprised if someone said something amusing
like they could have 1 of X or 3 of these, but because it isn't as "good" they
will need to have 4. :D

~~~
commandar
I'm really a fan of this thing as a potential replacement for the A-10C since
the USAF is hellbent on retiring the Hog. It's _not_ a direct replacement, but
it's a better fit for the role than the F-35 would be and the things are so
cheap that you could field a ton of them.

It's supposed to be a sub-$20M jet and I've seen cost per flight hour numbers
in the range of $3-5000. In comparison, the A-10 runs around $15-20k/hour, the
F-16 anywhere from $15-30k/hour depending on the numbers you can find, and the
F-35 is reportedly around $30+/-5k.

~~~
mikecb
It might be cheap enough, and given the wings might have the loiter time, but
can it carry the ordinance that an A-10 can? Certainly doesn't seem to have
the same survivability characteristics either.

~~~
commandar
Nope. That's why I said it's not a direct replacement. The A-10 can carry a
larger payload than the entire dry Scorpion airframe weighs.

But it fills the slot better than the JSF which is just plain too fast a
design to fill a loitering CAS role well. The fact that the Scorpion's so
cheap to run means you could could sortie a lot more of them for the same cost
as even a single A-10 (which is one of, if not the, cheapest to operate combat
aircraft in the USAF inventory today).

~~~
mikecb
Absolutely. The idea that JSF can fill the role, even with UCAVs in support,
is laughable.

------
ranran876
Aviation Week had a pretty good article about this plane

[http://aviationweek.com/awin/textron-unveils-scorpion-
light-...](http://aviationweek.com/awin/textron-unveils-scorpion-light-attack-
recce-jet)

Outside of the politics, the bigger issue is that it lies in a kinda idiotic
middle ground. It's not good enough to go against more advanced fighter jets
(so you can't use it to ensure air superiority) and it's not as cheap as
"weaponized" trainer aircraft - which is what most governments need (to bomb
rebels or whatever)

You can buy a L-39 for ~$200K, retrofit it with modern weapon systems (easier
said than done, but still) and you won't be that much worse off than a guy
with a $20m Scorpion.

Just a cost comparison from wikipedia

Aero L-159 Alca - $13-17 million Northrop T-38 Talon - $5.9 million Embraer
EMB 314 Super Tucano - $9–14 million

~~~
commandar
Your article touches on just where it differentiates from those options,
though.

>Comparatively, Scorpion offers speed over the twin-turboprops and simplicity
versus the trainers, which are structurally optimized to withstand high G
forces in order to prepare pilots for the F-22 or F-35. And, although some
parties may want to recast Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft for air and
border patrols in the future, these UAVs remain blocked from operating in most
of the domestic airspace.

I'd also be curious to know what percentage of that price tag is made up by
the modern avionics and datalink systems that you get out of the box with the
Scorpion.

------
confluence
I found _The Pentagon Wars_ , both the film and the book, to be absolutely
brilliant at explaining how things like the F-35 can happen and why cheap,
fast, light, targeted vehicles like this aren't produced.

I highly recommended that my fellow HNers to either view the film (10/10) or
read the original book.

You will not be disappointed.

------
pseudometa
Police forces across the U.S. are now salivating at the chance to add this to
their 4th of July parades... right behind their swat team with armored trucks
and tanks.

~~~
c_plus_minus
Hey don't forget AFT, DEA, EPA... IRS. Fighters for everybody!

------
chiph
Simple and cheap can certainly do the job. Their obstacle will likely be the
pilots themselves, who may think that this aircraft isn't as survivable in a
threat environment as something like the F-16 would be.

~~~
coldcode
For small countries with mostly ground based threats it's a perfect buy. Not
everyone can even afford a used F-16 and its extended costs.

------
stan_rogers
Interesting. The Scorpion appears to be designed to fill the role that the F5
largely filled in practice. Well, up here in Canada, at least. The F5 may not
have been designed for the role, but it filled it much better than the 104 or
the Voodoo could have, and those were the alternatives before we got the F18.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have the advantage of being quite as pretty as the
F5 (which, like the Spitfire, was as much a Platonic projection of what a
fighter of the era should look like as it was a real aircraft). It looks like
what it is, and, politics aside, it's not going to tickle any fancies.
Customers, if any, will be those who realise that this aircraft is what they
need, not what they dream of.

As for the politics of procurement, Textron isn't exactly a virgin here
(although Bell has been helicopters and Cessna hasn't done much since the
T37/A37). And the F35 (well, the whole JSF debacle, going back to before the
F35 was selected) has left some rather bad tastes in some rather important
mouths.

~~~
dwd
It does have a few capabilities that would make it (unlike the F-35) quite
useful in Canada or Australia.

Twin engines: lose one and you should be able to nurse the plane home.

Awesome range: Canada and Australia have long borders to patrol and as a
tandem seater allows for a pilot and spotter. A very cost efficient platform
compared to the P-8 which probably costs similar to the E-7 to operate.
(45k/hour)

Unmanned: They plan to offer an unmanned version which could give you far more
range than a Reaper.

------
dmmalam
Isn't the main competitor to this drones and not the F35?

------
gadders
I wonder how this could work against the F35 etc when being flown by a country
with greater manpower. EG if (for the sake of argument) China could put 10-20
of these in the air for every F35, could it win an air battle?

~~~
pjc50
I don't think a WW2 style air battle will be seen again in our lifetimes;
it'll be skirmishes and deniable warfare (eg Ukraine), one-sided obliterations
of a weaker tech force on the ground (eg Iraq, Six Days War),
counterinsurgency (no opposing air force at all, minor AA), or nuclear
exchanges.

The nearest thing in recent history might be the Falklands war, in which some
Argentine aircraft were shot down by missiles launched from British Sea
Harriers.

~~~
VLM
That's political, however, rather than technical.

As one example a combination of Korea going hot again and China wanting to
maintain a buffer state at all costs.

Vietnam wasn't all that long ago, and there's no really good technological
reason that couldn't happen again.

We're also reaching a technological stage where it doesn't necessarily take
two superpowers to fight a proxy war. Could India and Pakistan fight a proxy
war without superpower involvement with a substantial air war component?
Technologically, sure.

------
fit2rule
I wish they'd just let us civilians have these things. I'd love nothing more
than to use one to go visit the relatives in Australia every now and then.

------
josefresco
This is completely random and insane; but what would a jet like this in the
hands of the "rebels" do in Syria? Would it allow the government opposing
force to compete in the air, or would Syria's air defenses and jets easily
handle something like this?

Curious to know how this jet would effect smaller scale conflicts, in the
hands of small, well financed forces.

------
smoyer
This plane and it's described mission profile remind me of the A-10 Warthog
... I'd love to see a relatively cheap and virtually indestructible plane to
replace the beloved A-10.

------
slowmover
Another US-built plane with comparable performance stats and an even lower
price tag ($2.6M 2014 adjusted):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-82_Twin_Mustan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-82_Twin_Mustang#Specifications_.28F-82G.29)

------
trhway
Iraq just bought used su-25 - about the same.

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notastartup
Impressive. I wonder how it stacks up to Korea's Goldean Eagle FA-50

