Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
The final answer is, nobody knows for sure. Modern aircraft being made of exotic materials and expensive electronics...it sure won't be like turning out 24 P-51Ds a day! The best guess for the F-16 is about 15 days from start to finish. How much this could be cut down is up in the air, that's why I crack jokes about GD going to three shifts a day, it really is the only way to produce enough F-16s to match the needs.
*snippage*
I tried to reason out a logical chain that would allow the RAF to pick up F-16s, but the major problem is this is a bird that the Brits do not fly, have no pilots tried to fly it and no support crew trained to maintain. It is very doubtful that the Falcon would ever serve in the RAF. The needs of the USAF/USMC/USN would almost certainly keep all front-line production for their own use. As one previous poster has noted, the Army seized tanks, certainly aircraft can be seized as well.
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Thats actually one of the reasons I can see the F16 being exported, even during the war, its the only plane built at that time with little in the way of advanced materials. The FA18 is a bit more complex, and uses advanced materials, and the F15/F14 is just too complex to build rapidly. One of the reasons why aircraft take so long to build is that it helps with job preservation, and I am not saying that cynically either: By drawing the process out, while they pay more in wages, they can keep the line going longer, allowing for an efficiency in scale that drives over all costs down. If they put the man hours into the line, got the suppliers of other bits and pieces to do the same, its not unreasonable to drop the build time to 5 days: and remember, thats 5 one shift days. You put on 3 shifts a day, and find other ways to cut time, which I am sure could be found, a fighter a day isn't too out of the realm of possibility. The complexity and the addition of advanced materials is why I agree that there will not be any exporting (Maybe the odd one or two FA18 here and there once the carriers start to get trimmed back) of any of the other front line fighter types. F4's? By the bucket load, but 15, 14, and 18? Not likely.
But the last bit is a fair cop: *If* the RAF picks up the 16's before the war kicks off, good deal. If they try it during the war, its pure barney. Too many things that can go wrong when you don't have the time and the assets to fix.