Of course! These bombers must have CPUs. So, all you gotta do is buy the cheapest processor possible and overclock the hell out of it! Do you realize the kind of aircooling you could get in an airplane going 1000 MPH at 30k feet? That's some cost savings right there!
Of course! These bombers must have CPUs. So, all you gotta do is buy the cheapest processor possible and overclock the hell out of it! Do you realize the kind of aircooling you could get in an airplane going 1000 MPH at 30k feet? That's some cost savings right there!
I'd love to see you rule a country. Think of all the money you'd save by having no military. I bet you'd put together a nice, modern, peaceful place. It would sure make others envious of your utopia. So much so that they'd simply take it.
Mermaidman
Diamond Member
- Sep 4, 2003
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- Aug 23, 2003
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Is this your standard MIC apologist reply?
Was Vietnam, Korea or Iraq an invasion threat? Do you still listen to Bush's bedtime stories about mushroom clouds in your backyard?
Providing for a national defense could have been $1 trillion cheaper if our President didn't have a hard-on for Saddam.
Comon, are you really going to use such a stereotypical attack like "you're not even old enough to vote or pay taxes yet", in this topic? Isn't that angle a bit worn? Do you use that same line on your children, if you have any? Does it ever get old? Will you ever get over the fact that you have to pay taxes and you don't have direct control over how it's spent? Go run for public office, or take part in something other than bitching about how shitty things are.
Why are you even bothering to compare your measly tax burden to that of the cost of a 1.2 billion dollar military plane? Why do you even bother to bring up your miniscule amount of tax dollars you actually shell out? In your entire lifetime you won't even earn enough to pay for the radar reflective coating that goes on that plane. Yet you bring up your tax dollars as if it matters. Hey guess what, I pay taxes too! Join the club! Get over it and get over yourself.
Can you ever just step back for one minute, drop all of your tired hate filled political rhetoric, and say "hey that is a really cool plane and piece of technology"?
Is that too much for you? Is the stick lodged THAT far up your ass?
I'm no war mongering right wing slut, nor am I happy about the amount of money spent on the military. Though I can sit back and say to myself, "man that is one goddamn cool plane".
Be great if it actually worked. Heard of the Tamara anti-stealth radar? That's how they shot that F117 down over old Yugoslavia. IMHO that makes the bombers hardly worth $1.2 billion (or $2 billion depending on who you believe); we might as well just strap a couple bombs to one of the old Blackbirds and use the throttle to outrun enemy missiles. Stealth technology? We don't need no stinking stealth technology!
Not to mention that whole not being able to fly in the rain thing.
The Stealths could have been great. But they weren't. At least the F-22 seems pretty awesome, although the F-15 crowd claims that it could be almost as good if they put in the same avionics.
- Aug 23, 2003
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So what? Those are money pits too. I thought this thread was about a $1.2 billion flaming pile of metal?
I'm not easily amused, sorry. The B-2 Spirit was a perfect example of military overspending during The Cold War under the guise of national defense. The quick collapse of the Soviet Union cut procurement from 135 planes to just 20, and the actual program/production cost of the plane was $2.1 billion each.
The SR-71 was a cool plane. Developed when our enemies were an actual threat. In terms of 2008 dollars, they were roughly $225 million each, and had a long, purposeful operational history...setting some pretty cool records along the way.
What's so cool about the B-2? Looks like a f**king boomerang.
Another program that had lofty goals, but reality set in and procurement was cut drastically as costs skyrocketed. Total program/production costs of the F-22 is $339 million per plane; by comparison, an F-15 runs about $33 million, and the brand new F-35 is about $70 million.
Look, the B2 HAD a purpose and that purpose was dropping nuclear weapons on the most highly deffended Russian targets. However that use is now obsolete, not only does the threat of nuclear war no longer exist, but ICBMs have negated the need to sneak nukes therough an air defense grid. There should be no doubting that this was the B2s purpose. That being said we can still imagine that in this day and age there would be a new use for it but really that use is very limited, its first strike cabability on a well defended country (say Iran) is nice, but even there you can use much cheaper aircraft at a slightly higher risk, you just have to fly in wings with some planes designated to clear a path through the SAMs with HARM missilies. Or more simply you can just launch standoff weapons like the Tomahawk cruise missile or the JSAM which can flay hudrneds of milies on their own avoiding anti aircraft. Now to the B2s defense none of these things were fully operation during its development so there was no way the developers could have known that it would be obsolete, but the fact of the matter is TODAY it is an obsolete piece of equipment, it is good at its roll, but its price means no new ones will ever be built. I'm not trying to say that the B2 sucks, just that it is far more expensive than its advantages are worth.
IAteYourMother
Lifer
- Nov 3, 2004
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They don't actually cost 1.2 bil to make, that figure includes all the R+D which went into it, which was a fuckton of R+D. Plus that R+D went to other uses as well.
that's 1.2 billion for 21 aircraft. Build 100 of them and that number goes down significantly. The R&D costs are rolled into that 1.2B amount, the more you build the cheaper they are.
- Aug 23, 2003
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Like padding a contractor's bottom line.
Take a look at Lockheed, the largest US defense contractor.
In 2000, times were rough. It was near the end of Clinton's term, we weren't involved in any large scale conflicts, and Lockheed's profits dropped year-over-year. In Q4 1999, their profits were $217 million.
Fast forward to 2008; we now have troops on the ground in two major conflicts, military spending has been on the up-and-up (especially after 6 years under a rubber-stamp Congress), and Lockheed's Q4 2007 profits were up year-over-year 10% to $799 million. Quarterly profits are up a staggering ~300% from the Clinton era. Grumman didn't do bad either (they are the #3 US defense contractor). But that's expected, when you have $3+ trillion national budgets and record-setting defense spending.
War does wonders for the balance sheet.
"The more you spend, the more you save!" - Random Infomercial
I'm disappointed not to see any tin foil hat theories about where it was going! 
I suppose we'll also never know what went wrong...
I suppose we'll also never know what went wrong...
I'm not saying that Bush isn't an idiot, but I am saying that most of the money we spend on the military is worth it. Even when Clinton was in office our military spending was high, it's not like it's solely a Bush thing.
1. Only one stealth fighter was shot down, which makes it hard to determine whether they actually were vulnerable to enemy radars of if the enemy simply got a lucky shot.
2. The Tamara anti-stealth radar is not what was used to shoot down the F-117. It was shot down using an SA-3, which is from the early 1960's.
3. The F-15 would never have the same capability as the F-22 even with the same radar because part of the F-22's advantage lies in its stealthiness. While the F-15 with new radar would be able to detect enemies further, it still has a large radar cross section and itself can be detected from long distances. The F-22 has the huge advantage of detecting enemies from afar and not being able to be detected from afar.
It is extremely misleading to cite the amortized cost of each aircraft as a reason to reduce the number procured since the very act of decreasing the number procured increases the amortized cost.
The money spent designing the aircraft and building manufacturing equipment/facilities is already spent before a single aircraft is produced. If you build 100 aircraft, that R&D money will be spread out among 100 aircraft. If you decide to build only 10 aircraft, the R&D cost per aircraft will increase by 10x, making it sound much less attractive to buy. As a result of this flawed logic you get situations like the B2 program where you spend tens of billions of dollars designing the aircraft and you only get to amortize that cost among 21 aircraft. The actual flyaway cost of the B-2 is around $500-$700 million. Still not cheap, but only a third of what is commonly claimed.
Escalating Costs of the B-2
.......Year.......Number of Bombers......Total Estimated Program Cost...Estimated Cost per B-2
....... 1986.................133...........................$58.2 Billion...........................$437 million
.June 1989.................133...........................$70.2 Billion...........................$528 million
early 1990.................133...........................$75.4 Billion...........................$567 million
.April 1990..................75...........................$61.1 Billion............................$820 million
........1994..................20............................$44.65 Billion..........................$2.2 Billion
You can see that the big jump in cost was when they cut the number of aircraft. Between 1990 and 1994 when they cut the procurement number from 133 to 20, the cost of the program didn't even decrease by half, yet they received only 1/6th as many bombers as they would have if they kept the procurement number the same.
This is the same mistake as before. The flyaway cost of the F-22 is actually about $138 million. When dealing with the cost per plane, you cannot compare the amortized cost of F-22's $339 million against the $33 million of the F-15, since that takes into account the number produced. In other words, if you wanted to buy another F-22 it will cost you $138 million, not $339 million. Also, if you wanted to buy a new F-15, is would cost about as much as buying another F-22 since the facilities for building them have long since been shut down and would need to be rebuilt.
SSSnail
Lifer
- Nov 29, 2006
- 17,458
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It's very funny that you guys don't know shit about costs in the military are arguing about it. One of the reason shits cost so much to build in the military is because of the MIL-SPEC bullshit.
You take a screw that you can buy at Home Depot for 5 cents, tag it with MIL-SPEC, and sell it to the military for $20 (no, there are no decimals missing). There's your cost.
You take a screw that you can buy at Home Depot for 5 cents, tag it with MIL-SPEC, and sell it to the military for $20 (no, there are no decimals missing). There's your cost.
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