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Is there some kind of financial incentive for anti F-35 press? 55% is an acceptable rate. I recently (like this week) decided to make a spreadsheet analyzing th

Is there some kind of financial incentive for anti F-35 press? 55% is an acceptable rate. I recently (like this week) decided to make a spreadsheet analyzing the claims of the F-35's high incident rate and airframe loss. From what I can tell, the F-35 is our safest fighter aircraft by a mile. I'll post my numbers here, but please don't take them as fact, this was done for personal curiosity. incidents|fatal accidents|lost airframe|total flight hours Typhoon |11 |7 |10 |650,000 Gripen |16 |1 |9 |337,500 F-35 |14 |1 |3 |721,000 F-22 |14 |2 |6 |300,000 Rafale |10 |2 |5 |600,000 F-16 |732 |195 |652 |19,500,000 F-15 |219 |71 |190 |7,350,000 V-22 |49 |11 |19 |666,750 incidents/100kH |fatalities/100kH |losses/100kH Typhoon |1.69 |1.08 |1.54 Gripen |4.74 |0.30 |2.67 F-35 |1.94 |0.14 |0.42 F-22 |4.67 |0.67 |2.00 Rafale |1.67 |0.33 |0.83 F-16 |3.75 |1.00 |3.34 F-15 |2.98 |0.97 |2.59 V-22 |7.35 |1.65 |2.85 All incident/fatality/loss data are from aviation-safety.net. Flight hours are from various sources and some are extrapolated. *Fatalities is a count of the number of accidents which resulted in the death of one or more PILOTS, not bystanders. The loss of 2 pilots is counted once.

elashri 3y ago
I think you should also factor out the cost. The cost of one F-35 airframe might exceed a squadron of some jets in this list.
- KyleBerezin 3y ago
  A F-35A is 70M, and the F-35B is 80M. This is pretty cheap compared to most other jets that are still in production. I don't have perfect numbers for all of them, but the Typhoon is 124 million, the Rafale is 100-120 million, the F-15EX is 80 million, and the Gripen is 85 million. I think the only one that is actually cheaper is the F-16v at 63 million. These are just base procurement costs, when a country buys combat aircraft, they also but a lot of supporting equipment like simulators and maintenance systems. The F-35 is going to cost more per flight hour to maintain than most of these non-steath aircraft though. Especially the Gripen, which was designed specifically to have a very low cost per flight hour.
KyleBerezin 3y ago
Edit: There is an error in the numbers, the F-35B wasn't included in the F-35 numbers. Aviation-safety.net tracks the F-35A/C separately from the F-35B. The new numbers are F-35 |28 |1 |8 |721,000 F-35 |3.88 |0.14 |1.11 Still the safest aircraft in our inventory that I know of, but more airframe loses than the Rafale.

elashri 3y ago

I think you should also factor out the cost. The cost of one F-35 airframe might exceed a squadron of some jets in this list.

KyleBerezin 3y ago
A F-35A is 70M, and the F-35B is 80M. This is pretty cheap compared to most other jets that are still in production. I don't have perfect numbers for all of them, but the Typhoon is 124 million, the Rafale is 100-120 million, the F-15EX is 80 million, and the Gripen is 85 million. I think the only one that is actually cheaper is the F-16v at 63 million. These are just base procurement costs, when a country buys combat aircraft, they also but a lot of supporting equipment like simulators and maintenance systems. The F-35 is going to cost more per flight hour to maintain than most of these non-steath aircraft though. Especially the Gripen, which was designed specifically to have a very low cost per flight hour.

KyleBerezin 3y ago

Edit: There is an error in the numbers, the F-35B wasn't included in the F-35 numbers. Aviation-safety.net tracks the F-35A/C separately from the F-35B. The new numbers are F-35 |28 |1 |8 |721,000 F-35 |3.88 |0.14 |1.11 Still the safest aircraft in our inventory that I know of, but more airframe loses than the Rafale.