Dan Luke wrote:


"Bob Noel" wrote:

Congress has been upset about the astounding cost of the Raptor,
which
has gone from around $90 million to nearly $200 million per plane.

Congress has this insane ability to be astounded at cost growth, even
cost increases they inflict on the system. :-/

Well, *I'm* astounded at a $200M fighter that was supposed to cost
$90M (which would have been bad enough), how about you?

From the Project on Government Oversight:

The F-22 fighter development and testing program is dragging behind
schedule and attempts by the Air Force to control costs are failing
miserably, according to a new report by the U.S. General Accounting
Office (GAO),
Tactical Aircraft: DOD Needs to Better Inform Congress about
Implication of Continuing F/A-22 Cost Growth, GAO-03-280.

The new report, released late Wednesday by Representative John Tierney,
(D-MA), concludes that the Air Force has been unable to implement the
cost-saving measures it promised and has essentially kept Congress in
the dark about excessive cost overruns.

The report further states:
a.. At the current rate of spending, the Air Force will be able to buy
only 224 F-22s, and not the 339 planned as recently as last fall.


b.. The Department of Defense failed to disclose $1.3 billion in F-22
program cost overruns.


c.. The F-22 program is on target to exceed cost limitations imposed
by Congress.

"The story of the gold-plated F-22 fighter just gets worse with every
financial analysis," said POGO Senior Defense Investigator Eric Miller.
"We hope that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld will finally say 'enough is
enough' and pull the plug on this overpriced and unneeded Cold War
relic."


History repeats itself.

In the late 60's early 70's the "Fighter Mafia" and others showed how the
numbers of planes the USAF could buy kept going down donw donw from one
conflict to another. They argued that if we continue to gold plate our
fighters we'll end up with 10 solid gold planes.

A good brief analysis (tho not the only point of view) can be found in the
book "The Mind of War".

So anyways (according to the book) at that time the USAF was adding more
and more to the F-15 - gold plating - and that's when others started
pushing for the F-16. The USAF was forced into it because the Sec Def was
on board with the idea. They were told to have a hi-low cost mix so that we
could field a decent number of fighters.

Later on, all the USAF press releases sounded as if Hi/Lo was their idea
all along. Just one of the myths of the era, I suppose.

Same thnig seems to be happening now, with regard to gold plating and fewer
squadrons.

My concern is that we haven't fought a first rate, numerically equal or
superior, quality-equal Air Force in a long long time. Some day I expect
that we will. But when will that be? And will the F-22 be what we want
then? And if the fight is 10-20 years down the road, would it have been
better to field a few F-22's and get to work on the next one?

My pet theory is that the next time we are in a long term all out war with a
first rate power, all the fancy gizmos will be used up within 3 weeks and
we'll be back to bullets, grenades, and bayonets. I may exxaggerate
slightly but you gt my point. We don't have the manufacturing ability to
put out dozens of F-22's every month. And that kind of manufacturing
capability isn't build overnight.

--
Saville

Replicas of 15th-19th century nautical navigational instruments:

http://home.comcast.net/~saville/backstaffhome.html

Restoration of my 82 year old Herreshoff S-Boat sailboat:

http://home.comcast.net/~saville/SBOATrestore.htm

Steambending FAQ with photos:

http://home.comcast.net/~saville/Steambend.htm