Contemporary fighter production rates

[apparition13]

I saw a story, I think linked to through here, that Saab was saying they could raise their Gripen production rate to as much as 20 per year.

After a bit of digging around, it seems as if Dassault can handle 12 Rafaels per year right now, though they are talking about opening a second line to double that rate, but there is no guarantee their subcontractors can, so 24 may be opitmistic. Eurofighter has four lines able to produce a total of - 43 - if I remember correctly. That's a maximum of 75 (87 if a second Rafael line is added) a year for European production, which is less than the Israeli's lost in three weeks in 1973.

For the US, LM says it can build up to 17 F-35s per month, or 204 per year. Add that to Europe, and it's about half of the total Israeli and Arab losses in three weeks in 1973. With production numbers like that, it seems any war would quickly devolve to infantry walking around shooting at each other, since the production capacity to build replacements in sufficient numbers just isn't there.

Does this seem accurate? And do we have figures for the F-15, F-16 and F-18? Or Russian or PRC numbers?

 

[GARGEAN]

Production rates today have little to nothing to do with wartime exhausting rates. At best you will receive fresh ammunition during conflict. Today it's all about who stacked more before war.
As for ru numbers - in meatiest year it was 62 T-10 airframes per year (Su-30SM/M2, 34, 35). Today it's around 35-40 per year. Plus some minuscule MiG-29 numbers, plus some export.

 

[totoro]

Any increase in production rate would take two years (or more) to materialize. Getting to really high production rates of hundreds of planes per year is also possible, but that'd take even longer, until all the personnel is trained and the whole production chain is upsized. Then again, it's also possible wars could last years, depending on the situation.

On the other hand, it's also perhaps not realistic to expect there'd be battles with hundreds of planes each day, in some big war. Perhaps hundreds of planes would be in air, but actual planes engaged in battle would be less. And actual planes lost, out of those in battles, would be fewer still. It's perfectly conceivable that "only" a few dozen planes would be lost in combat per day. Again, depending on the war. And the less planes one has, the less they will risk to future ops, so loss rates would likely drop due to lower sortie rates.

 

[Trident]

I was struck by a similar but more general realization a couple of years ago - in a modern (which amounts to, basically, anytime post-1960) peer-on-peer war, the belligerents are forced to pretty much fight the entire war with the order of battle they have on day one. This is of course obviously true for a superpower nuclear exchange, but appears to also be the case for all-out conventional conflicts between great powers from what I can tell. The much vaunted Desert Storm strategy of the 5-Ring-Model seems applicable only to asymmetric scenarios, where one side has assets to spare for use against centers of gravity other than the enemy's fielded military and its immediate logistics infrastructure. Devoting too many resources to holding national long-term prospects hostage (population, economic infrastructure) seems to invite defeat in the field, given the combination of high attrition and finite assets in large-scale, high-tech combat.

 

[apparition13]

Why can't Dassault increase production to meet the new demand? Twelve per year is anemic, especially given the numbers Dassault was capable of. Frankly if I were looking at purchasing fighters and felt a sense of any urgency I'd be going with F-35 or Typhoon since they at least seem to have excess capacity.

 

[TomcatViP]

Dassault-Aviation CEO plays a strange game of raising artificially their share value by managing a significant backlogs of orders. For various reasons.

In order to play that game, given the age of the program and their relatively low total nbr of order, you absolutely needs an anemic production rate. Something that doesn't match their main customers expectations.

I fear the situation won't change much until he's retired.

So yes, buying F-35 might be a patriotic move, whatever he is fairly known to say against this.

 

[Deltafan]

Why can't Dassault increase production to meet the new demand? Twelve per year is anemic, especially given the numbers Dassault was capable of. Frankly if I were looking at purchasing fighters and felt a sense of any urgency I'd be going with F-35 or Typhoon since they at least seem to have excess capacity.

MSN

www.msn.com

(...)
An order book of more than 250 or even 300 aircraft therefore appears to be a possible scenario.

Will Dassault be able to deliver all these planes within a reasonable time? The challenge looks daunting. Like the players in the sector, the group is faced with shortages of raw materials and electronic components. "For now, we're holding on, but it's everyday gymnastics," admits Eric Trappier. In this difficult context, Dassault will have to succeed in its ramp-up: the aircraft manufacturer is in the process of going from one to two, then three aircraft produced per month.

Most of this ramp-up will be carried out from 2024. For the year 2023, the French aircraft manufacturer plans only 15 Rafale deliveries from its Mérignac plant (Gironde), i.e. only one more than in 2022 "This situation is due to the schedule of contracts, explains Eric Trappier. This year, we will deliver almost exclusively to France: 14 Rafale to France, and one to Greece. Deliveries of contracts Egypt (31 aircraft), Emirates (80) will arrive in the following years."

In the mid-2020s, the annual production of Rafale could thus reach 30 to 36 aircraft per year. “We can go a little above 3 devices per month if the orders require it”, assures Eric Trappier. But the group is not considering a second assembly line for the moment.
(...)

 

[H_K]

Why can't Dassault increase production to meet the new demand? Twelve per year is anemic

The customers determine the production rate more than Dassault. The aircraft delivered in year X are typically aircraft that were ordered in years « X minus 3 » or «X minus 5 ».

So in 2021 for example Rafale production was high (25 aircraft) because of the large Indian and Qatari orders in 2016/2018. Those orders were completed by mid-2022. The next big orders weren’t till late 2021 (Egypt 30 aircraft) or early 2022 (UAE 80 aircraft) so those aircraft are currently in production for delivery starting early 2024.

Often times the clients are the ones spreading out deliveries to suit their budgets/training constraints or because they want to customize their aircraft. When the customer pays for quick delivery things can go quite fast - witness the 6 Greek new builds which were delivered in 21 months, which very few fighter manufacturers could do.