US Marines buying our Harriers at a knock-down price?

[John]

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2011/11/n ... s-111311w/

Does any one know how true this is?

Kind regards

John

[DaveB]

Interesting article John

ATB
DaveB

[basys]

We paid ~$30 million each new.
US gets 74 off for $50 million total.

Someone's taking the........


Elsewhere -
"The Ministry of Defence has scrapped nearly £1 billion of spare equipment.
The Royal Navy alone disposed of £570 million worth of material,
Peter Luff, the defence minister, has disclosed in response to a written parliamentary question. "

[DarrenL]

They aren't new though. Besides what's better, $50million in your pocket or 74 unused Harriers taking up space, storage and maintenance costs and slowly depreciating in value. If you want to know how much a single Harrier costs contact Everett Aero, they have an FA2 (complete & ready to fly) and a GR7 along with spares for sale. I can tell you one thing, it won't be $30million.

You can be sure that there's also a "you scratch our backs, we'll scratch yours" trade deal behind this. The Harriers being sold are probably just the public face. If someone wanted them sell them, the other stuff scrapped no one probably wanted.

I'd rather they sell them and put the money towards the long overdue Red Arrows upgrade to Hawk T2s.

[jonesey2k]

I'm rather pleased that these aeroplanes will be given a new lease of life with the US Navy/ Marines. Better then them being cut up and scrapped.

[DaveB]

Yes.. or going somewhere else to be used for counter insurgency I'm sure what Darren said is right too.. there's a 'hidden' bit to the deal us mortals aren't privy to

ATB
DaveB

[Chris Trott]

It may be part of a bigger deal to compensate the UK for the F-35 delays. It wouldn't be the first time that an FMS delivery delay was paid for by buying "unused" aircraft. That the USMC may get use out of them is simply a bonus.

As for confirmation, I've seen the story published in 3 aviation industry magazines that don't make a habit of reporting sales that they can't confirm through official channels, so it's probably legit. Not to mention that while these airplanes are being bought for what is essentially scrap value, much of their avionics will need to be changed anyway to match up with the other US aircraft as much as possible, so it'll be costing the USMC quite a bit more to put them in the fleet, all the UK's sold them are airframes and maybe the engines.

[ChrisHunt]

According to the article the $50m is for spare parts only with the Harriers subject to a separate deal. TBH that's not bad for something that has no value if not used to maintain our own fleet.

Regards,
Chris

[DarrenL]

According to the article the $50m is for spare parts only with the Harriers subject to a separate deal.

Doh!










Come on, did you expect us to read it as well.

[Garry Russell]

Maybe they shuld hold off a bit and see if they come up on Ebay