At the Dubai air show, US officers, in response to the "low cost" mantra, were quoted as saying that you could shoot down 5 JFT for the cost of one F16 - so which would Air forces want to equip themselves with?
Anyway, you suit yourself - however, you will hear less and less of this "low cost" stuff, because we are not selling low cost, but rather "high effectiveness"
totally agree
this got to be the worse choice for the primary selling point of an aviation war machine where normally performance & capability is the main concern. sadly this punchline has been used to death from top to bottom of the PAF hierarchy.
which is quiet unfair to the aircraft. it is a tailor made aircraft with what exactly PAF wanted for itself, the flexibility and in-house participation + cooperation with china brought cost benefits which were a welcome aspect but not at the expense of its performance. the benchmark has been always the front line F-16s Pakistan has had.
the American response was very fitting and I would actually like to thank him for doing that. hopefully "low cost" mantra will be dropped one day.
when the concept of F-16 was envisioned, the cost element was there but the main selling point was its agility, performance and its awesome design in order to augment the far more expensive and complex F-15s, at no point it felt as if it was a cheaper replacement at the expense of low quality.
sorry for the lack of a proper example but I will try to explain this here
fighter jets are like luxury and antique items, where prices are not the concern for the customers, in fact if you decrease the price of a luxury item it has a negative impact on its sales making the prospect customer thinking that maybe there is a problem with the product. its like if a Lawyer is expensive then he ought to be good. same goes to exclusive restaurants.
granted, that JF-17 is not made with the high end market in mind but lets not beat the "low cost" element to death.
hehe
if someone can dig my posts few years back I hated every single time when this word "low cost" was used and it looks like I have other people who have had enough of this word.
