F-15s: In the spirit of regifting...

Japan is considering the feasibility of selling back some of their older F-15s to the US. The US would then sell them at a very steep discount to other nations in Southeast Asia. There are a handful of nations that could be: Taiwan and the Philippines, I'd think. However, selling them without a refurbishment of some kind seems a bit...less than ideal. However, I also have to wonder whether it's really worthwhile to sell the F-15s rather than merely give them as part of military aid.

I get the idea of getting F-15s to the SEA countries, but I wonder about their condition and the costs to do so. Sure, if the Philippines had 100 F-15s, that'd be great, but can they afford to just operate them? I am sure we have a bunch in the boneyard we could refurbish and send off to the same places. I think the idea of getting good equipment into the hands. I am just not sold on the costs and if the recipients will be able to afford to operate the aircraft, whether from Japan or the US.

asia.nikkei.com...

Perhaps it’s part of anything to counter China’s influence.

Give them nothing.

a reply to: anzha

Doesn't cost the US as much as giving them new build F-16's, for example.

Operations costs are spread out over the years, so presumably if they got the right deal (ie Military Assistance money deferring part or all of the acquisition costs), the Phillipines might be a lot happier paying ~$10M a year to operate 30 free F-15's than paying $50M a piece upfront hard currency for 30 Su-27's along with ~$5M a year operating costs.

Even at double the operating costs,it takes 30 years for the F-15 operating costs to equal what you'd pay for buying and operating the Sukhois. 15 years to reach the ~$1.5billion costs of simply buying (not figuring any operating costs) the Sukhois. Takes another 15 years for the operating cost savings to catch and overtake the Eagle fleet to begin "saving" money (I'm just using it as an example bc it's roughly half the operating cost so makes easy math. I also assumed ~120hrs a year or 12 hrs a month to get $10 and $5M a year for the same reasons. Reasonably likely figure, but with a lot more hours the Sukhoi could catch up quicker). Using those same baseline numbers a $50M x 30 F-16 buy would take the same time for the $1.5B upfront to equal out, but you'd catch up more quickly after that because the operating costs are a third or so of the F-15's.

Everyone prefers deferring costs to paying upfront. So it might be reasonably attractive to them. And keeps the money rolling in house, so to speak.