Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: animal@isis.rice.edu (Carl Rosene)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Bat Plane Bux
Message-ID: <12981@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 10 Jan 90 03:28:53 GMT
References: <12850@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: Rice University, Houston
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From: animal@isis.rice.edu (Carl Rosene)

In article <12850@cbnews.ATT.COM> cmr@cvedc.Prime.Com (Chesley Reyburn) writes:
>
>I love the B-2. It looks so... well, deadly. I am, however, quite
>amazed at the price of the thing. I have been thinking about just
>how in the heck $532 million is getting used. Herewith I submit my
>first approximation:
>
>NUMBERS:
>    Airframe					$124,000,000.00
>    Computers					 $10,000,000.00
>    Communications gear				    $250,000.00
>    Electronic Warfare gear			    $150,000.00
>    Other Avionics				  $1,500,000.00
>    development cost per production unit	$130,100,000.00
>    Mark up (profit) of %50			$266,000,000.00
>
>    Base price					$532,000,000.00
>

Sec. of Defense Cheney, on one of those Sunday-morning-news-ghetto
shows indicated that the incremental cost for a B-2 is
300 million dollars. That puts your development cost
per production unit at 232 million. Actually, I think
it's quite remarkable that they are able to build a B-2
for only about twice the cost of a 747. Looks like a
bargain to me.

When Congressmen(and women) debate the 532 million price
tag they are perpetuating a little lie. Mainly, that they
(or, rather, you) have already paid roughly 200 million 
per plane (assuming 100 planes) for the production
line. 

Which brings up another point. The B-2 is, to my knowledge,
the only military plane for which the prototypes came off
of the production line. This was done because of the
tremendous confidence placed in the computer simulations of
the aircraft. This allowed a greatly sped-up and cheaper
program. (Now this fits into sci.military.) Of course,
that means you have a LOT of confidence in that software...

Carl Rosene
Rice University-Home of the 1990 Economic Summit.