Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

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Can't seem to read its tail code and number.

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1st503rdsgt wrote:

huggy wrote:

Folks, we just lost a front line fighter worth $350M. This is not insignificant.

How much does the F-22 cost again? I get confused. I've heard everything from 120mil to 700mil (and every number in between). I tend to see the higher numbers most of the time; but when the F-35 is in the picture, the Raptor's price always seems to drop well under what you quoted.

I think the flyaway cost for a Block 30/35 F-22 is $147 million. I think sarge is factoring in R&D costs (which shouldn't really matter at this point).

Less than 1% of the average Joe Taxpayer (and even less media slugs) could distinguish fly-away versus total program costs (to include R&D, DEM/VAL, infrastructure, etc.). Sarge ain't exaggerating about the $700 million reference. Some ignoramus on a blog somewhere actually posted that. Which makes it that much more difficult to explain to people how it really works without firing up a titanic Power Point presentation to do it.

And by-the-by...the last unit cost I heard was $137 million when the program started to wind down. Slightly more than a new Silent Eagle or Rafale today. May have gone up since then.

LinkF16SimDude wrote:

And by-the-by...the last unit cost I heard was $137 million when the program started to wind down. Slightly more than a new Silent Eagle or Rafale today. May have gone up since then.

That was FY2008 "Common configuration". FY2009 Went up to $183m The last jets were $151m each, according to the FY2010 budget.

Dare I say it out loud, because of all the politics in FY2007-FY2010, it would have been cheaper to buy more Raptors at a higher rate. In FY2008, the cost of each jet, as delivered was $255m, FY2010 was $350m.

My wife goes to Nordstroms. They have some sort of purse sale. By two, get one free,
She comes home and shows me her "free purse". I find out the real story, and mention the two that she paid a LOT for.
"Sunk cost", she tells me. "I was buying them anyways."
So it depends how you look at it, I guess.
Through my eyes, my bank account has dropped substantially. I take that cost, divide it by 3, and now know what the price of each purse was.
If you want to say an F-22 only cost the taxpayers $147M, that's great. May I please have back the taxes that were paid for the other $200M?

huggy wrote:

My wife goes to Nordstroms. They have some sort of purse sale. By two, get one free,
She comes home and shows me her "free purse". I find out the real story, and mention the two that she paid a LOT for.
"Sunk cost", she tells me. "I was buying them anyways."
So it depends how you look at it, I guess.
Through my eyes, my bank account has dropped substantially. I take that cost, divide it by 3, and now know what the price of each purse was.
If you want to say an F-22 only cost the taxpayers $147M, that's great. May I please have back the taxes that were paid for the other $200M?

That depends on the argument you are trying to make. If you were arguing developing the aircraft at all, then the program cost / # of aircraft is relevant. If you are arguing building more or less of them, only the marginal cost of the last airframe is relevant.

huggy wrote:

If you want to say an F-22 only cost the taxpayers $147M, that's great. May I please have back the taxes that were paid for the other $200M?

You mean the development costs?

count_to_10 wrote:

That depends on the argument you are trying to make. If you were arguing developing the aircraft at all, then the program cost / # of aircraft is relevant. If you are arguing building more or less of them, only the marginal cost of the last airframe is relevant.

I am talking about the budget(marginal) cost of each jet as delivered. The R&D costs or program costs were not included in my quoted figures. The last Raptor 10-4195 is a Block 40, combat coded jet delivered to the 525th FS

Bottom line fellas...

Fly away cost can be figured for every jet produced, per year, using the publicly available AF budget from the comptroller site.

You are NOT supposed to factor in R&D costs. Those monies are specifically for that and do not flow into production of specific airframes.

Raptor haters have factored in those monies for years to grossly and falsely inflate the price of the jet in the effort to get production cancelled. They were successful.

If you were supposed to factor in those costs, then no one would be looking at Raptors. Instead they'd be looking at killing the C-17 among MANY other programs.

Oh...and if you want to look at accident rates...apparently you should look at the F-16. Wow...I'm pretty sure that has killed more aviator's than almost any other aircraft.

checksixx wrote:

You are NOT supposed to factor in R&D costs.

Says who?
If those costs are directly related to producing a new aircraft, they are part of each aircraft,... hence the reason folks like you always point out that building 1,000 of them is cheaper per unit cost than only building 187.
You cannot have it both ways.
How much was the space program to get us to the moon? Are you just counting the costs of the vehicle?
So, sure,... if we could build another F-22, it would only cost another $150M.
However, that aint happening.

So,... how much was spent on "creating the fleet of F-22 aircraft"? Once you know that, divide by 187.

Wrong huggy...

What would have made it cheaper when buying more aircraft is the purchasing and cost of the parts from all the contracted vendors. In almost every situation, when you buy more, the cost goes down. R&D costs...again, since I stated before for those who read...are NOT normally factored into the per-airframe cost. These monies are allotted separately and do not translate to airframe manufacture.

Coming from a DOD-trained acquisition killer, both views are correct. What matters is the perspective.

1) Buying more jets cost more in total but less by average cost. The reason the average cost goes down is manufacturing learning curve and "bulk" rates on material etc... Big surprise, right? Also keep in mind that the more jets you buy, the more stable the workforce and therefore less risk. And risk = $$
2) When planning or debating future buys, the fly-away or marginal rate is the proper bean to count
3) When starting a new program or taking a historical look, total program cost is correct.

Issue is, folks pick (2) or (3) based on which side of the "buy" argument they are on and the less informed don't know enough to ask the question. Those of us that are not in that camp just pull our hair out or cry...

I like to think of it this way:

After all the money spent developing the F-22, buying only 187 is like paying for a Z06 Corvette... only to park it in your front yard as a lawn ornament because you found out that the premium gas it requires is more expensive than the regular.

Roscoe wrote:

Coming from a DOD-trained acquisition killer, both views are correct. What matters is the perspective.

I appreciate your take on things but no, both views are not correct. Absolutely ZERO ($0.00) dollars of Raptor R&D money went toward the purchase of production aircraft. Its not my opinion, its fact. You can be upset all day long that all that money was spent in R&D for an aircraft that we only purchased in limited numbers...but it doesn't have a shred to do with the cost to actually manufacture and assemble the aircraft.

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Raptor Down at Tyndall