So we are building new stealth bombers

[dudalb]

The B3 is something that the air force desperately wants. I'm not sure why you're bringing up tank refurbishments that the army didn't want.

I think the point is that ALL military spending is bad.

 

[logger]

Surprised? Apparently everyone is. The entire program was black and is only now coming to light. Also coming to light is the question: do we really need $80 billion worth of snazzy new stealth bombers?

Hopefully the adults will continue to build our defense so as to actually perform the duties the federal government is suppose to do.

 

[casebro]

So what's wrong with using Drones?

Bad for the economy, when compared to tanks and manned aircraft?

I'm pretty surprised we still need tanks, bombers, and aircraft carriers. And without carriers, we can scrap a bunch if their escorts.

Drones above and few lightly armed spec ops squads to accept surrenders.

 

[theprestige]

So what's wrong with using Drones?

Nothing. Drones are great. We should use more of them as quickly as the technology matures.

One drawback to drones, though, is that it removes human judgement from that point in the decision chain.

There may be times when we don't want to send an autonomous killbot to rain death from the sky without direct human supervision. And there may be times when the target area is one where remote data links are not reliable enough to permit remote human supervision. For those times, only a manned bomber will suffice. And that bomber should be as protective of its human crew as we can afford to make it.

 

[anglolawyer]

21.4 billion for design and engineering? How much? Can someone break that down a little? It seems preposterous.

 

[The Norseman]

Hopefully the adults will continue to build our defense so as to actually perform the duties the federal government is suppose to do.

The United States was never supposed to have a huge standing army in the first place. Aren't you a strict constitutionalist?

 

[Ziggurat]

So what's wrong with using Drones?

The B3 will be able to operate as a drone.

 

[Mikemcc]

21.4 billion for design and engineering? How much? Can someone break that down a little? It seems preposterous.

Initial design, prototyping, testing, redesign, rebuild and retest until it meets the desired specs. Probably also allowing fudge factor for all the changes the DoD will demand before it even enters service. The In Service Date (ISD) will only be for conventional weapon loads, nuclear certification will come later. The figure will also include anticipated mid-life upgrade. Then there's the development of the tooling and jigs to start building the production aircraft.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Ironically, transport aircraft are a great candidate for "simple and cheap". But only if you don't pile on complexity and cost by trying to make them into multirole bombers instead.

Where is the profit to be made on simple and cheap?

 

[ponderingturtle]

So what's wrong with using Drones?

How are you supposed to carpet bomb cities with drones?

 

[ponderingturtle]

21.4 billion for design and engineering? How much? Can someone break that down a little? It seems preposterous.

Well that is long before the inevitable cost overruns.

 

[anglolawyer]

Initial design, prototyping, testing, redesign, rebuild and retest until it meets the desired specs. Probably also allowing fudge factor for all the changes the DoD will demand before it even enters service. The In Service Date (ISD) will only be for conventional weapon loads, nuclear certification will come later. The figure will also include anticipated mid-life upgrade. Then there's the development of the tooling and jigs to start building the production aircraft.

Oh I don't doubt the list of things is long. But 21 billion? And another 0.4 on top?

Someone once wrote a funny letter to The Times after the government announced a £6,000,000,000 contract to equip the NHS with computers (I'm making up the numbers). He worked out this came in at three grand per computer and offered to do it himself at half the price.

I just can't imagine what could be going on to cost that amount of money. How many people will be working on this phase? How much floor space, light and heat do they need? What materials do they require? They're designing a plane and not doing it from scratch either. I mean it's been done before, hasn't it?

 

[anglolawyer]

Well that is long before the inevitable cost overruns.

Goes without saying.

 

[Mikemcc]

Oh I don't doubt the list of things is long. But 21 billion? And another 0.4 on top?

Someone once wrote a funny letter to The Times after the government announced a £6,000,000,000 contract to equip the NHS with computers (I'm making up the numbers). He worked out this came in at three grand per computer and offered to do it himself at half the price.

I just can't imagine what could be going on to cost that amount of money. How many people will be working on this phase? How much floor space, light and heat do they need? What materials do they require? They're designing a plane and not doing it from scratch either. I mean it's been done before, hasn't it?

I would think anyone that thought they could provide that many PCs, the network infrastructure, and the software to go on it on their tod would be delusional. Especially if the contracts are whole-life cycle.

There will be 100s of thousands of people involved in this project by the time you look down the whole supply chain. Probably 10s of thousands actively involved in the design and test phases across a raft of specialties.

Nor can it be thought of as 'something we've done before'. That's something you can do for a carrier. The individual systems can be substantially different from carrier to carrier, but the overall format doesn't change. Aircraft design is very different and each design will be unique and have it's own issues.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[anglolawyer]

I would think anyone that thought they could provide that many PCs, the network infrastructure, and the software to go on it on their tod would be delusional. Especially if the contracts are whole-life cycle.

There will be 100s of thousands of people involved in this project by the time you look down the whole supply chain. Probably 10s of thousands actively involved in the design and test phases across a raft of specialties.

Nor can it be thought of as 'something we've done before'. That's something you can do for a carrier. The individual systems can be substantially different from carrier to carrier, but the overall format doesn't change. Aircraft design is very different and each design will be unique and have it's own issues.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

I don't think the point of the letter was that the guy could do the job on his own. Whatever. Say there are 50,000 involved in design and testing. Aside from wondering what they are all supposed to be doing, that's $400,000 each. What are they all doing?

 

[The Don]

I don't think the point of the letter was that the guy could do the job on his own. Whatever. Say there are 50,000 involved in design and testing. Aside from wondering what they are all supposed to be doing, that's $400,000 each. What are they all doing?

I suspect that this isn't intentional but that does sound like an argument from incredulity. Large and complicated projects are just that, large and complicated.

Just considering the manpower costs, or basing an argument from incredulity on manpower costs alone fails to take into account the fact that they may only represent a tiny fraction of the overall costs. Heck I've been involved in projects several orders of magnitude smaller than this where the software licence costs have run into the £ millions for all the various servers and workstations and even these were dwarfed by the costs of providing office space for the, in this case many hundreds, of people involved in the project over a period of several years.

For a large engineering project like this even licencing the patents to use in the design processes will cost tens or hundreds of millions.

Sure a breakdown of the $20bn may be illuminating but it'd likely cause outrage for each individual line item.

 

[Mikemcc]

I don't think the point of the letter was that the guy could do the job on his own. Whatever. Say there are 50,000 involved in design and testing. Aside from wondering what they are all supposed to be doing, that's $400,000 each. What are they all doing?

And if that is 5 years work for all of them that's $80,000 per annum each, pretty typical for aircraft engineering. That's not factoring in the overheads for each person, the prototyping, material costs, etc. In that case either there are fewer people involved or the average wage bill is lower to be able to shoe-horn it into that figure.

 

[slyjoe]

I don't think the point of the letter was that the guy could do the job on his own. Whatever. Say there are 50,000 involved in design and testing. Aside from wondering what they are all supposed to be doing, that's $400,000 each. What are they all doing?

$400,000 is about the cost to the government of a senior engineer, per year. This isn't their salary; it includes overhead and various carrying costs. Figure $200,000 for a junior engineer. That's per year.

The other driver is government requirements. That $600 toilet seat? With the government requirements that have to be demonstrated you met, plus the fact it's on an aircraft, the cost was probably not unreasonable. Change what is expected and the costs will come down.

 

[Belz...]

The F35 was supposed to be just like the F22 only way, way cheaper.

Really? I was always under the impression that it would cost a lot more, although it did look super cool in that Die Hard movie, so I guess it's all ok.

 

[Belz...]

Nothing. Drones are great. We should use more of them as quickly as the technology matures.

One drawback to drones, though, is that it removes human judgement from that point in the decision chain.

There may be times when we don't want to send an autonomous killbot to rain death from the sky without direct human supervision. And there may be times when the target area is one where remote data links are not reliable enough to permit remote human supervision. For those times, only a manned bomber will suffice. And that bomber should be as protective of its human crew as we can afford to make it.

You're aware that drones are actually piloted by humans, right?