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From: wyatt@cfa.harvard.edu (Bill Wyatt)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Bat Plane Bux
Message-ID: <13081@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 12 Jan 90 04:46:58 GMT
References: <12981@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: wyatt@cfa.harvard.edu (Bill Wyatt)

>>I love the B-2. It looks so... well, deadly. I am, however, quite
>>amazed at the price of the thing. [...]
>>NUMBERS:
[...]
>>    Base price					$532,000,000.00
[...]
> per production unit at 232 million. [...]
> 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. 

I'm not quite sure who you're saying is lieing. I think it's the DOD
(after all, how many future cost overruns are there going to be?). I
love it when the various media stories cover the test flights of the
`500-million dollar plane'. In fact, until and unless the entire
production run is built without any more cost overruns,
         THE B-2 IS A 22 BILLION DOLLAR PLANE! 
That is, the cost of the entire development effort up to now has built
only one plane. Think about how nervous they must be about crashes!

Bill Wyatt, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory  (Cambridge, MA, USA)
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