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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAlmost Nobody Believes the U.S. Air Force Can Build an Affordable Bomber
by David Lerman
5:00 AM EDT
April 22, 2015
The last time the U.S. Air Force developed a stealth bomber, the planes cost $2.2 billion each and couldnt sit out in the rain.
The B-2 bomber, whose sensitive coating helps make it hard to detect on enemy radar, must be sheltered from the elements in climate-controlled hangars at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. None of the 20 planes is based overseas, where it could respond faster in a crisis.
Now, with little public scrutiny or debate, the Air Force is developing a next-generation bomber that it promises to build with advanced technology at a fraction of the B-2s cost. Few outside the Pentagon take the advertised sticker price of $550 million per plane, or $55 billion for a planned fleet of 100, at face value.
Therell be a tendency to load this thing with every toy that can be developed because its the only game in town, said Tom Christie, who watched the B-2s costs increase in the 1980s as a Pentagon acquisition executive and later served as director of operational testing for all weapons until he retired in 2005. Its worse now than it ever was.
As the Air Force prepares to award a contract within months to build the new bomber, theres also debate about whether its even needed in an era of unmanned aircraft and unconventional warfare against irregular forces.
MORE...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/air-force-promise-of-affordable-u-s-bomber-finds-few-believers
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Take half the F-35s and put bomb pylons under the wings, and call them bombers. Two problems solved.
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)leveymg
(36,418 posts)tammywammy
(26,582 posts)So the cost per plane goes up.
If the Air Force will have realistic requirements AND hold the requirements then it would be easier to maintain cost. A constant issue is that the customer frequently changes requirements and then of course the contractor has the customer pay for it and then that's when the public hears "growing cost".
Octafish
(55,745 posts)No need to rush and find a new place to spend any peace dividend from the Cold War, uh, the War on Terror:
The Pitfalls of Peace
The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth
Tyler Cowen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014
The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.
An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.
The world just hasnt had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but todays casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.
Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nations longer-run prospects.
It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not todays entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.
War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.
SNIP...
Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you dont get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but its something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.
Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0
The guy seems to specialize in Big Ticket themes:
Tired Of Inequality? One Economist Says It'll Only Get Worse
by NPR STAFF
September 12, 2013 3:05 AM
Economist Tyler Cowen has some advice for what to do about America's income inequality: Get used to it. In his latest book, Average Is Over, Cowen lays out his prediction for where the U.S. economy is heading, like it or not:
"I think we'll see a thinning out of the middle class," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "We'll see a lot of individuals rising up to much greater wealth. And we'll also see more individuals clustering in a kind of lower-middle class existence."
It's a radical change from the America of 40 or 50 years ago. Cowen believes the wealthy will become more numerous, and even more powerful. The elderly will hold on to their benefits ... the young, not so much. Millions of people who might have expected a middle class existence may have to aspire to something else.
SNIP...
Some people, he predicts, may just have to find a new definition of happiness that costs less money. Cowen says this widening is the result of a shifting economy. Computers will play a larger role and people who can work with computers can make a lot. He also predicts that everyone will be ruthlessly graded every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.
CONTINUED with link to the audio...
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221425582/tired-of-inequality-one-economist-says-itll-only-get-worse
Dr. Cowen echoes the War Party themes of "Commercial interests are very powerful interests" and "Money trumps peace." Apart from that three year intervention in the status quo in the early 1960s, it's been the official policy for most of the last century: Welfare for the Warmongers.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love Big Brother.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)The only thing that will stop this is, I am terribly afraid, a violent revolution and the mass purge of the economic elites, a la the French Revolution. And I am not yet sure I can bring myself to call for that. But I am getting closer to that point every day.
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)And I was in the Air Force for 22 years.
I could be here all day explaining why the acquisitions process is fucked up beyond all repair.
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)The ENTIRE court budget for Illinois, all clerks, sheriffs, judges, building and maintenance, security, supplies, computers, and other staff? $330,000,000.
One fucking un-airworthy flying bomb that cannot fly if its fuel gets too hot and uses extremely flammable hydraulic fluid (most military planes use stuff that won't burn) so if even one bullet strikes it, it may explode.
Let's not even talk about its helmet interface failures, the software problems, the stolen plans (China, Israel, Russia, possibly India) and the failure of the navy based version to land or take off of the specially built aircraft carrier for the F-35. Apparently, it is so heavy, and the exhaust is so hot, it would burn the ship up as currently built and designed.
Lastly, on every version, they had to degrade all the original design specs, because the more crap they added on, the worse the plane worked. It has never - N E V E R ever - reached one original spec that existed. Every time it fails to meet it, they simply downgrade the spec. PROBLEM SOLVED!
Not.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Good thing this business model wasn't in place during WW II.
Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)The point it is carefully obfuscating is that the total cost has barely changed at all.
By simultaneously drawing more green dots and fewer blue dots, it tries to create the false impression that the cost has risen as the number of planes has fallen.
Colour me unimpressed.