Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!paperboy!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: berman-andrew@YALE.ARPA (Andrew P. Berman)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Bat Plane Bux
Message-ID: <13082@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 12 Jan 90 04:47:01 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
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Approved: military@att.att.com
Full-Name: "Andrew P. Berman"



From: "Andrew P. Berman" <berman-andrew@YALE.ARPA>

>From: animal@isis.rice.edu (Carl Rosene)


>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.

I've seen the comparison between the cost of a B-2 and the cost of
a 747 before.  Each time I see it, it bothers me.  A 747
gets used thousands of hours a year.   I can't believe that
there is any possible war scenario in which the entire fleet of
B-2 bombers would get more than a couple of hundred hours of use, total.
A 747 generates income for it's owners, a B-2 does not.  The point
is that one is built for economic purposes, one is built for military
purposes.  The real question, I think, is, are those couple of
hundred hours of usage worth the continued investment in the B-2?

Note that if we are going to restrict the use of the B-2 to quick
actions against smaller countries, then we'd probably only need
a few of them in the air at any time.  Even given turnaround time,
it seems that a full complement of 70 would only be needed for
a major, long-term war with a superpower.  This is pure speculation
on my part, I'd be interested in an informed response.

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

Andrew P. Berman