600 dollar Hammer? Hold my cup

[Zorba]

My assumption is more that a certain spec was required for the cups and the AF was the sole purchaser of the cups from a sole manufacturer. The airforce said it would no longer buy the cups or significantly scaled down its orders starting in 2016 so the manufacturer - having no other customer - let go or reassigned workers and potentially the mfg equipment. The Airforce then came back with small, one off orders so people\equipment needed to be rehired\tasked but without the volume necessary to provide notable cost savings.

Edit: Looks like I was on the right track:





So the FAA would need to certify a replacement for use on any of the planes the AF wants to use them on. I'm not sure how much that costs but my guess is that it was cheaper to keep buying the cups until 2016 when prices started increasing. I would also guess the new orders came in small batches so it took some time to realize the full cost vs FAA certification. Glad to see they are now able to 3D print replacement parts but I am curious if the FAA has\had to be involved in that process

Yup buying stuff for airplanes is expensive. The government orders like shit so you never get a bulk discount. The systems in place to prevent waste and fraud push out vendors that don't want to deal with it and add a ton of cost and BS to those who do.

As to this specific cup, it is explosion proof, 400 hz, and has to comply with many more specs your than your Yetti mug.

The government also pretty much never fixes anything that costs less than $1000 due to cost of repair, so this has probably been an X code for a long time and price has recently gone up. Parts also don't get much attention by the military if they are available, the people in DLA buying these have no idea what they are, the guys in the field don't have a good way of notifying the SPO, and the SPO is spending their time and money on parts that are currently unavailable or are driving fleet downtime.

They could pay for a redesign or spare parts, but have probably decided not to because they don't like paying for engineering and requalifung a redesign could cost a couple of million. And they have a budget that isn't based on ROI.

I've worked for airlines and military and parts are just expensive. The government anti-waste policies then add even more cost.

 

[Sonikku]

Didn't the Air Force get in trouble years ago for having millions of dollars worth of parts on order that were already scheduled for decommissioning?

 

[Zorba]

Don't they output at 28 volts too?

This is probably 120Vac, 400Hz. If not that, it'd be 28Vdc.

 

[Zorba]

Apparently personal kettles are worthy of 1280 dollar per cup to some. What a deal. Bringing a Thermos full of hot coffee totally escapes the air force.

Will that work for a 40 hour flight? Or prevent spills on $100k avoinics?

 

[mizzou]

This reminds me that I tried to justify a $1,400 superautomatic coffee machine to my wife.

Some day she will be mine!