The news of the planned conclusion of a contract for the supply of 76 Su-57 aircraft clearly did not appeal to many American military observers. And the point here, as one might have guessed, is the price. The fact is that the newspaper "Kommersant", citing sources, published information that the cost of the contract planned for signing at MAKS-2019 will be "about 170 billion rubles." In other words, one Su-57 will cost our VKS slightly more than 2.23 billion rubles, or 34.5 million dollars at the current exchange rate.
The essence of the problem
Naturally, such news is capable of blowing up the infospace of American military analysts better than Nikita Khrushchev's “Kuzka’s mother”. That is, at a time when the American military industry, gaining labor victories, is stubbornly fighting to reduce the costs of the F-35 program and vowed to reduce the price of everything to something in case of a large-scale order - oh, wey! - $ 85 million, Russians will buy 5th generation aircraft for $ 34.5 million ?!
And after all, if you think about it, the figures of 34.5 million dollars for Russian and 85 million dollars for American aircraft do not convey the comic nature of the situation.
The fact is that the Russian Su-57 is a heavy multifunctional air supremacy fighter that can also work on both land and sea targets. And the F-35, in all its three guises, never dared to do this, in fact, it is focused on the functionality of a lighter fighter like the F-16. That is, the Su-57 and F-35, of course, are 5th generation aircraft (although there are serious questions about the F-35), but they are representatives of different classes of multifunctional fighters, and all other things being equal, the lighter F-35, of course the same, should be cheaper than the Su-57 - and much cheaper. Not many times, but not tens of percent. Meanwhile, we see a completely opposite picture - the F-35 is more expensive, and precisely at times.
And so, taking into account the above, it turns out that the cost of an American fighter is not even almost 2.5 times higher than the Russian one, but much more seriously. This is both unpleasant and offensive, and taxpayers may end up asking various uncomfortable questions.
What's the answer?
The American edition of The Drive decided to write it off as a mistake. An aircraft of the 5th generation for 34.5 million dollars is impossible, because it can never be. After all, this is "less than the estimated price of the Su-30MKK, which Russia sold to China almost two decades ago"! And this means that the sources are mistaken, they have confused something or were not so understood. And in fact, 170 billion rubles. - this is the price not for the entire batch of 76 aircraft, but only for the first 16, but the rest of the aerospace forces will have to be paid additionally.
Having expressed such a hypothesis, The Drive started calculating - if 170 billion rubles. there are only 16 aircraft, then one Su-57 will cost 10.6 billion rubles, or more than $ 164 million. Uff! This, according to American analysts, is quite a reliable figure - the Russian plane turned out to be almost twice as expensive as the F-35. There is no reason to panic!
Well, let's try to assess how realistic the price of 170 billion rubles is. for a batch of 76 Su-57.
Let's count a little
As a basis for our calculations, we will take a five-year contract for the supply of 50 Su-35s, the price of which was agreed by our Ministry of Defense in January 2016.
At the same time, according to very serious sources ("Vesti", the bmpd blog, etc.), the cost of the contract was "over 60 billion rubles." Of course, "over 60 billion rubles." - a very vague figure, because a trillion, in fact, is also over 60 billion rubles. But still, usually under "over 60 billion rubles." meaning the figure is from 60 to 70 billion rubles. And so, if we assume that 50 Su-35s eventually cost us 70 billion rubles, it turns out that the cost of one fighter of this type in January 2016 prices was 1.4 billion rubles. How correct is this price?
On the one hand, the first contract, signed back in 2009, provided for the supply of 48 vehicles for 66 billion rubles, that is, 1.375 billion rubles. per plane. A lot of time and one economic crisis have passed since then, so experts expected the cost of a batch of 50 aircraft to rise to 100 billion rubles. However, the price for the Su-35 has hardly increased - why? There may be several reasons for this.
Firstly, according to some reports, the payback of the Su-35 project came with the production of 72 fighters, so that with a further increase in the series, the notorious "economies of scale" worked, which reduced the cost of the product.
Secondly, in 2015, we signed an export contract for the supply of the Su-35 to China - of course, the manufacturer earned something on this, but it is possible that the military, having decided that the permission for export deliveries has already been overly "blessed" plant, we decided to tighten the nuts on the next batch.
How much would the Su-35 cost if the contract for these 50 aircraft had been concluded today? Taking into account inflation - about 1.6 billion rubles.
Interestingly, the Su-30SM cost about the same money - in 2015 it was noted that its average cost was 1.5 billion rubles. True, there were rumors that in the new contract for the supply of the Su-30SM, which could be concluded at the end of 2018, the plane could rise in price to about 1.9 billion rubles. But there is no confirmation of this data, and if we recall that the price of the second batch of Su-35 was also forecasted for a long time at the level of 2 billion rubles. a piece. Again, there were rumors about a very deep modification of the Su-30SM with the installation of a new avionics on it, etc., and who knows, maybe at a price of about 2 billion it was about an improved version?
Now let's get back to the Su-57. Its estimated cost under the contract is 2.23 billion rubles, which is 39.8% more expensive than that of the Su-35 under the latest contract, recalculated at current prices. And also remember that the manufacturer initially defended a 20% higher price.
That is, according to the initial proposal of the UAC, the Su-57 should have cost approximately 2.68 billion rubles, or approximately 68% more expensive than the Su-35. Given the fact that these aircraft have a lot in common, such an increase in cost looks quite logical and reasonable.
Recall that the Americans developed aircraft in the Su-35 logic - that is, they took the old "platform" F-15 or F-18 and modernized it with some of the latest technologies developed for 5th generation fighters that could be applied to them. As a result, reaching the 4 ++ generation, the F-15SE Silent Eagle or F / A-18F "Advanced Super Hornet" aircraft turned out to be much more formidable fighters than their "ancestors", but their cost was very close to the cost of aircraft 5- th generation. For example, the price of the Silent Eagle was indicated at $ 100 million. And the Edvanst Hornet, although its cost is unknown to the author, is unlikely to be cheap, because the price tag for the latest Super Hornet modifications has already approached $ 60 million.., and "Edvanst Hornet" clearly should become significantly more expensive.
In other words, the price gap between the American 4 ++ and the F-35 is not too large. As for our aviation industry, the situation is something like this.
Most likely, the manufacturer's "Wishlist" is a price tag of about 1.9 billion rubles. for the Su-35 and 2.68 billion rubles. for the Su-57, but, in the process of "trading" with the Ministry of Defense, it turned out to be "squeezed" to 1.6 (1.4 billion in prices of the beginning of 2016) and 2.23 billion rubles. respectively. Probably, the KLA was overly squeezed at the price, and our aircraft manufacturers will not get the profit rate set by them by law for these machines.
And what is the conclusion?
Most likely, the fair price for the Su-35, when the Ministry of Defense does not overpay, and the plant receives the profits it owes, fluctuates somewhere in the range of 1.6-1.9 billion rubles, and the fair price for the Su-57 is in the range 2, 23-2, 68 billion rubles. That is, the real price of the Su-57 may indeed be in the range of $ 34.5-41.5 million. for our videoconferencing will be higher than these figures.
What about export contracts?
Everything is very simple here. The export price of the Su-35 may well go up to $ 100 million. But you need to understand that the export contract includes a lot of things that, when delivered to our Aerospace Forces and the US Air Force, are subject to other items. That is, there will be maintenance, and training of pilots, and ammunition, and maybe something else. And the most important thing.
The price for our aircraft for the Aerospace Forces is determined by the cost of these aircraft. This is exactly how pricing takes place - the manufacturer agrees with the military representatives the amount of costs for the production of a batch of "products" in the quantity, according to the contract, and then winds up on these costs the rate of profit laid down by law.
But the price of our aircraft on the foreign market is determined by the supply and demand of military equipment. And if the price / quality ratio of the Su-35 is such that it can easily be bought for $ 80-100 million, then why would we sell it cheaper?
But what did the president say?
A lot of fun on the Internet was caused by the words of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin that, thanks to a 20% decrease in the price of the Su-57, it became possible to buy not 16, but 76 such combat vehicles without increasing the cost of the contract. This is not surprising - after all, this is arithmetically impossible. However, let's still quote V. V. Putin literally:
“The armaments program planned to purchase 16 such aircraft by 2027. We analyzed the situation yesterday, Minister [Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu] reported that as a result of the work done, as a result of the fact that we agreed with the industry, the industry actually reduced the cost of both aircraft and weapons by 20%, we had the opportunity to purchase much more combat vehicles of this class and, in fact, a new generation."
Please note that the cost has been reduced not for the Su-57, but for "aircraft", by which, in fact, can be understood not only the Su-57, but also other combat and non-combat aircraft purchased by the Aerospace Forces. And yet - we are talking not only about aircraft, but also about weapons. That is, in fact, the following happened - S. K. Shoigu managed to reduce the purchase prices for a number of military equipment and weapons (and not only for the Su-57), as a result of which the Su-57 was able to purchase more than planned. That's all. It's just that V. V. Putin has constructed the phrase in such a way that it allows for a double interpretation, and this, in fact, can happen to anyone.
