Estimating the Real Cost of Modern Fighter Aircraft

By: flex297 - 10th July 2006 at 11:08 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

I found the article very interesting. There are some disturbing little mistakes like JSF being described as twin-engined multirole combat aircraft, for instance. I also find the data about F-35 LRIP program cost per unit ($112.5mil) lower than actual unit procurement cost ($115mil) as somewhat doubtful..

Other than that, I find the subsequent economic analysis as very informative.

By: Spectral - 10th July 2006 at 15:50 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

I was going to post the url to it, but you beat me to it :cool:

By: sferrin - 10th July 2006 at 16:45 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

I was going to post the url to it, but you beat me to it :cool:

Actually it was already posted in another thread anyway ;)

By: djcross - 10th July 2006 at 16:50 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00

Cute article. Unfortunately for the author, government procurement accounting doesn't work like accounting in the for-profit commercial world. Government accounting is done on a year-by-year basis and follows political whims not a logical development path that a commercial company such as Microsoft or Intel would use to bring a new product to market.

Examine the political shenanigans that occurred during F-22 development. F-22 started during the Reagan administration and had strong support. After the Berlin Wall fell, the moderates in Daddy Bush's administration began the process to wound the F-22 program with a quantity cut.

The doves in the Clinton administration wanted to kill F-22 outright, but were afraid of the "soft-on-defense" image that would create. So they decided to use the "death from a thousand cuts" approach. During Clinton's 8 years, the F-22 program was suspended 5 times (reorganized) and quantities were cut twice with the realization that each suspension and quantity cut would increase the unit price.

USAF and LM both realize the F-22 program has been mortally wounded. USAF will never get the airplanes they want and LM will not get the profit they expected from their $1.5B initial investment. This is also why F-35 is so important to both USAF and LM...USAF gets 1000+ "Raptor light" and LM gets profit (dividends for stockholders).

Government procurement splits a weapon procurement into "non-recurring" and "recurring" pools of monies. Non-recurring activities (R&D) get treated like they're made of rubber (stretched) based on political budget whims as the product isn't obvious to the voting public. Recurring activities require committments of dedicated monies to build airplanes. The public understands that it takes $XB per year to build 20 airplanes, so its tougher for poloticians to play budget games.