Impossible to tell as the MoD have only ordered 48, and as such have only produced figures to Parliament based on that number (£18.4bn to buy and operate to 2048). You could extrapolate on that but it might not be accurate due to the higher unit cost and running cost, plus upgrades, for the earlier production aircraft. I'm also unclear if that figure includes associated fixed costs like Meteor integration etc. A further cost could be if Marham was capable of housing and supporting more than 48 aircraft? Would we have to upgrade another airfield? Or further expand the facilities at Marham? The RAF seem to be happy with c60 fighter aircraft per airfield at present (see Coningsby, Lossiemouth and Marham in Tornado days..). But more than that? The cost to upgrade Marham was c£500m...and it was a fairly modern, in use airfield. Culdrose or Yeovilton would easily cost as much (and would not have HAS). Depressingly the only RAF airfield that is left 'unused' with HAS on that would be suitable is Leeming. All the rest have gone, or are in use for other activities.Roders96 wrote:Apologies if this has already been discussed - but if we wrote off the f35 order at 48 airframes - how much cash would that leave tempest to play with?
I've said it before but any chance to buy any further F-35, to get to a more credible figure of 70ish or 90ish needs to happen before 2030 (realistically order in 2028 for delivery in 2030). There are 5 years 2023-2028 where we've not got orders for any further F-35 and before the money is sucked up by Tempest even more. If we could order 5/6 per year in that period we'd be in a good position. 6 per year would mean we could keep the 5 oldest 'combat capable' F-35 as Block 2/3F training only aircraft and exclude the 3 ITF aircraft to leave us with 70 'fully combat capable' aircraft. If we found some spare money later we could always upgrade the training aircraft. 70 aircraft would enable us to deploy a full 36 on a QE Class with ease, with an element of stretch if we were going full 'Falklands'. To get 36 on both carriers in a 'Falklands' type situation we'd need 90+. Which would mean ordering 9/10 per year from 2023/8. And that isn't going to happen (mind you neither is 5/6...).