Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

snypa777 wrote:

Unfortunately it is`nt just the media is it? There are various ex generals, USAF and the like whom have written the same twaddle.... Riccioni for example.

Riccioni is fun to hack up his F-22 arguements. However a lot of the mil industry complex stuff he says is correct.

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snypa777 wrote:

Unfortunately it is`nt just the media is it? There are various ex generals, USAF and the like whom have written the same twaddle.... Riccioni for example.

Rant begins:

Yes, it is true it isn't just the media, but a lot of it is.

Regarding Riccioni. I respect him and appreciated what he pushed for as a member of the so-called "Fighter Mafia" over 30+ years ago. He is one of the reasons why we have the F-16 today, although he (and Boyd) are still not satisfied with what the F-16 has become as its not what they originally envisioned.

But regarding the F-22 Raptor, his views and reasoning are TOTALLY WRONG! He, and other "ex"/"retired" personnel or other so-called aviation experts (who are using whatever media outlet that will listen to them to voice their views) that has never been part of the program, has never been given a good briefing of it's capabilities, has never flown in, against, or seen it's capabilities first hand, and has never looked at the data, is basing their views on that 30+ year old idea when the F-16 was born and built.

Even worse than him believing we don't need the capabilities of the Raptor, he assumes that we will/should never go up against a large threat with advanced capabilities. Wrong assumption to make. Going up against a large and determined opponent with a decent Air Force using ever more advanced aircraft and weaponary being proliferated around the world and advanced IADS that was never contemplated since early to mid 1970 is something Riccioni nor any other "Fighter Mafia" member could have ever imagined as threats. Has Riccioni or other so-called aviation experts tried to fly a 20-30 year old aircraft design in enemy territory over lapped with advanced Russian double-digit SAMs and more modern 4th generation fighters performing CAPs with their ever increasingly advanced and capable A2A weapons? All of these are available to anyone with the will and the cash to buy them. I don't think so. And nor would they really care as Riccioni and the "experts" NEVER will, thus not their lives at stake. It is the pilots that flies today and the maintainers that crew them that are effected.

Unless we, the U.S., assumes that we will NEVER, EVER fight a large and determined foe in a large-scale war again and if we somehow EVER are forced to, are we willing to accept a large number of losses and fight a war of attrition with 70s/80s technologies? That in turn will cause our ground and naval forces to not operate as effectively in a hostile AOR and thus may prolong a conflict and increase casulties? Unacceptable and why the F-22 exists.

Rant ends.

Could anybody be so kind and comment about the numbers if F22 originally planned (for that 100 million $ price) and the number that is currently planned to be purchased (for the 338 million pricetag)?

Roscoe can check me on this but IIRC, the original plan buy was for 438, then went to something around 350, now I think it's down to less than 200.

Found the text to an interesting statement from Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) back in 1999 before a congressional committee regarding program management and reported cost overruns. A portion of his statements are as follows (I've added bold text for emphasis):

"Cost overruns in the F-22 development program amount to $3.5 billion, which amounts to about 5% of the total program cost. Of these overruns, 41% or $1.55 billion, were caused by congressional funding changes. There is a clear principle at work here. Every time Congress changes its mind about the funding parameters it has set, a ripple effect requires changes (to) the program and often causes delays, which cost money. If critics of the program are looking for explanations for overruns, they need look no further than Congress for a large part of the answer. (Can I getta Amen?!! Thumb

)

In addition to inaccurately arguing the program is mismanaged, some critics charge that the F-22 carries an overall price tag that is too high even without overruns. This is not the case either.

The Air Force estimates that the total 20-year cost to develop and build the F-22 is $63 billion (not accounting for inflation). In constant 1999 dollars, the total development and production cost of each of the 341 F-22s would be $172 million. Since the plane has been under development since 1991, much of this money has already been spent. The cost to actually build each F-22, which does not include R&D costs, is estimated at only $85 million.

Since we’ve already spent billions to develop this aircraft -- which is the most expensive step for the program -- it seems extraordinarily shortsighted to attack the program now.

With an average aircraft "sticker price" of less that $85 million, the F-22 will cost less than one percent of the Department of Defense budget during its production period. In its most costly year -- 2003 -- the F-22 will consume less than 5.6 percent of the Air Force budget; 1.7 percent of the defense budget; and 0.25 percent of the total federal budget. Air superiority is the foundation of practically every American battle plan on the books. When you consider the importance of its task, the portion of the defense budget we are committing to it is quite small."

The full text can be found here on www.globalsecurity.org.

And before you jump on it, yes...I realize Barr's district included Marietta so he had his constituents (and donors Wink

) interests in mind, And yes, this was way back in 1999 and well before 9/11, Afghanistan, and OP Iraqi Freedom, so the numbers have obviously changed. But I don't think the current perceived "excessive" flyaway costs are entirely the USAF's or Lockheed's fault. Despite the ongoing war operations, Congress seems to make the mentioned funding changes based on the public opinion du jour or some GAO reports that personally I think are more suspicious than not. Yet they constantly fail to understand those decisions have huge ripple effects across the program that ultimately will no doubt drive up program costs. You've got people to pay to make the changes, engineering updates, materiel issues, labor, contracts, yadda, yadda, yadda. All that has to be paid for with less and less monies available. Personally, I don't think we'll really know the final unit cost until all planes purchased are built and the final money spent is tallied up. And that could take a decade or more.

OK lets see:
X development cost
Y production costs per airplane

1.
X + Y *178 = 338 * 178
X + Y * 178 = 60164

2.
X + Y * 438 = 100 * 438
x + Y*438 = 43800

OK does not make sense, It CAN NOT Be ceaper to build 438 planes then to build 178 planes (total costs)

OK, if we go with 85 million production costs and want to find out how many planes you need to build to end up with 100 million total costs it would go like this

1.
X + 85 * 178 = 337 * 178
X + 15130 = 60164
X = 44856 depevlopment costs

then
2.
Z= number of airplanes
44856 + 85*Z = 100 *Z
44856 = 15 * Z
44856 / 15 = Z = 2990,4
If production costs of 85 million would be true, to reach a total price of 2990 planes would have to be build

OK I know that production costs are not totally constant as numbers go down so lets say you need to build 2000 planles (almost 1/3rd less then calculated above) to reacj that 100 million pricetag

Total program costs would then be
2000 * 100 + 44856 = 245 Billion $
compared to 60 billion right now

hans....you're falling into the old "add the development cost to each unit" trap. In government contracts, you DO NOT do that. Just like Roscoe said earlier (and he should know), development costs are monies already spent and are not spent AGAIN by factoring it into each unit. Once production ramps up, there is an initial high production cost but that gets significantly lowered as the process is perfected and streamlined and is lowered even more when spread out over a large production run (400+ vs. <200). You find better, more cost-efficient techniques and methods to build it so your final unit cost is reduced. There's also a version of "supply and demand" in there too. During the Cold War, why were Russian MiGs so much cheaper to buy than their American counterparts? 'Cause they were inexpensive to build (for the Soviets anyway) and there were LOTS OF 'EM. The supply met the demand. If there were only a few, the supply lags demand so the price goes up. Likewise if demand lags supply, the price goes thru the basement and you either lower the price or go broke. Like it or not, believe it or not, that's the essence of the market.

Now if you're a private citizen and want to market an invention you devise, you do have development costs associated with getting whatever it is you invented to a production stage. Then once your idea is in production, the development cost can be factored into the retail price. But once development costs are recouped, any sales after that, minus production costs, is pure profit. Your "profit margin" widens giving you more wiggle room to adjust your selling price up or down as the market demands or will support, or as competitors come online with their competing items (and they will).

As another example, look at today's PCs. I recently bought a 3 GHz Pentium with almost a half terabyte (500 GB) of hard disk storage for under $1500 (I got a GREAT deal!) That kind of machine was UNHEARD of back in the early 1990's. You know what an early sub-100MHz 386 machine with less than 50MB of hard disk space was going for in 1990? Almost $3500 US! Why then is such a better machine (relatively) so much cheaper now? The PC industry found better and more efficient ways to build CPUs, memory modules, hard disks, and PCs and that ended up widening their profit margins and thereby lowering your final buying price. They then can elect to roll a portion of the profits into new R&D for better products and the cycle starts all over again. I LOVE the free market!!

Critics of defense spending (and I'm not directing that at you personally), rightly or wrongly, almost always interperet production costs incorrectly because few if any were schooled in the complexities of macro-economics or economies of scale. They're so focused on hard and fast numbers (or in most cases a political agenda Evil or Very Mad

) that they fail to recognize where and how those numbers work in the project.

Last edited by hansundfranz on Mar 18, 2006 - 08:35 PM; edited 1 time in total

Building airplanes is not building PCs and the system price is total costs divided by number of planes or in other words, production costs per plane + development costs divided by the number of planes. Sure you can increase efficinecy A BIT (a bit is the keyword here) if you buy larger numbers.

With military airplanes you must plan to break even with the intial contracted planes as you never know if you are going to sell more. F22 won´t be exported and without WW3 it won´t be bought in substantial numbers by the US, too.

So there is nothing wrong with my calculations.

I wonder why you want to ignore development costs completely. Sure the money is spent and you can ony save production costs by cutting numbers.

Just because the money is spent already does not mean you did not pay it.

if I want to build a house I can spent money on design and planning and labour and material costs and if I spent a shitload to design a skyscraper and then only have the moen yto build the first 10 floors I wasted money and thats what the US did with the F22.

in the F22 program it was misjudged how much money can be spent and so you to much was spent on development leaving to lille for production, so you end up with not enough planes.

Last edited by LinkF16SimDude on Mar 18, 2006 - 08:34 PM; edited 1 time in total

Fine.....I'm not in the mood to give an Econ 101 lesson. You go on runnin' your numbers and keep coming up with what you believe is correct. I'm sayin' you're still gonna be wrong. This is not a for-profit program like Boeing selling 747s on it's own initiative to an airline. A government defense contract defines development and production as seperate animals. They award one contract for DemVal, another for IOT&E and yet another to produce the thing in deployable numbers. Once development money is spent, it's spent. That's it. Can't get it back no matter how many jets you cut from the production run. What's getting reported is being portrayed as a fly-away price that is grossly innaccurate and paints an unfavorable picture of the program to the average Joe and Jane who isn't familiar with how defense contracts work and will have a personal cow when they think they're paying for a fighter costing over a third of a BILLION bucks a pop. At that's exactly what opponents of this program are banking on. I'm sorry if you don't get that but I can't put it any plainer. Maybe Roscoe can do it for me:

Roscoe wrote:

NO, it is not up to $338M each. That is more bad reporting. That number includes the already-spent-never-gonna-get-it-back development money. By saying $338M each folks think they will save that much for each jet not built.

In reality they are around $130M now with the hope that with production learning curve and higher production rates it can get down to $100M flyaway cost.

And if you just refer to his creds, you'll see he knows what he's talkin' about.

Out.....

Link, dude, so how much was spent on development? How much was and will be spent on production.

No one says you can safe 338 million by buying one plane less but it still true that one plane is costing the tax payer that amount.

You are just following the partly line without understanding anything it seems

hansundfranz wrote:

No one says you can safe 338 million by buying one plane less...

But that exactly what the report is implying. What did I just say in my last post? Once more: anyone unfamiliar with how gov't contracting works will see that "$338 million" and think, well...gee...let's cut 10 or 20 and save us 5 or 6 billion. They have no clue that at least half of that is money they can't get back cause it's already spent.

Quote:

...but it still true that one plane is costing the tax payer that amount.

No. It's not. If we started full rate production tomorrow (or maybe we already have?), we will NOT be writing a check to Lockheed for $338 million for each plane. Again, from GlobalSecurity.org (I love that site):

Average unit flyaway cost includes the costs associated with procuring one aircraft, including the airframe, engines, avionics, other mission equipment, and certain nonrecurring production costs. It does not include “sunk” costs for development and test and other costs to the whole system, including logistical support and construction. The average unit flyaway cost for the F/A-22 in 2003 was about $178 million, while the unit flyaway costs for future annual buys were projected before the budget decision to decrease to $127 million, $111 million, and $108 million in fiscal years 2007, 2008, and 2009 respectively...

Quote:

You are just following the partly line without understanding anything it seems

I could say something nasty but won't. See my handle? 12 years as a government contractor who's sustanance depended on contracts says otherwise.

I'm done with this particular conversation.

No IFs, theres nothing in sight where you need full rate production of the F22.

Face it you get 178 planes for 338 million each (if not more are cut in the future), Only a late death of the F35 could realisticly increase the number of F22 and reduce the total unit price.

With a slightly less ambitious plan and with doing the smart thing and developing only one multirole plane for the airforce and forget about the F35 you could have saved a shitload of money that is desperatley needed elsewhere.

You might also consider seriouly reducing the number of ships the navy has. When I look at that I realy wonder who you want to fight at high seas?
the EU russia and china together all at the same time?

With the money saved there the USA might be able to fix what they broke in the middle east.

hansundfranz wrote:

You still pay 340 million per plane. It is totally foolish to forget about RD costs. just because the money is gone alredy.

The EF despite all the delays and international compromise costs 140 million, including R&D and in the case of austria..ots of support a 200% offset 10 year payment plan.

Anyway, how many F22 have been planned for that 100 million target price?
How many are on contract right now to make that 338 million figure?

That is just stupid. $200M times however many we now plan to buy is money that is gone...spent. That cost makes sense when pitching the program on day one, but not now. The cost should be what it takes to complete the sale. The entire world thinks we could save $1/3 billion by canceling the F-22 because of that bad argument. Crap. After R&D is completed, the only number that matters is flyaway cost. The rest is gone...

Let me present a totally different example. The USAF spent an ungodly amount of money developing a Millimeter Wave landing system. They were 95% of the way to completion (and it had some overruns but in general was going OK) when it was suddenly canceled. Why? Because the cost to replace it with the brand new differential GPS was less than the cost to FINISH the MLS. I had an engineer arguing that the sunk costs should be considered ("throwing all that money away") yet it was gone, no longer mattered...no longer part of the equation.

At any point in the program, Leadership and program managers never consider sunk costs in a decision to continue or cancel. The decision ALWAYS comes down to cost to complete from WHERE WE ARE TODAY.

Today you are in a situation where you did sunk to much money into development and don´t have enough money left to buy, therefore the nuber of planes is way below what you´d need.

the USA did not plan properly when deciding about the F22, their predictions about available money were totally off and no timely corrections were made. Result. You pay a insane amount of money for not enough airplanes.

Sure it would be nice not to think about the sunk costs and just buy as many planes as you want/need. Problem is you do not have enough $$$ to do that.

If you want to cook fine food for 20 guests you can fly to paris and make a cooking course witha famous chef, Then you fly back and ups, you have only monely left to buy the food to create a small first course.

Maybe you should not have invested so much money into R&D, skipped flying to paris, done your training with a proffesional but not famous chef at home and have enough money left to buy the food neded for a fine 5 course menu.

For those of you that speak English and are obviously very ignorant about the F-22 please look up what the word "potential" means. In other words, BFD! Rolling Eyes

At least we got a real jet, not a nose wondering piece of crap like the Euro thingie someone tried to point out the costs on earlier. And by the way at least we can afford the best... LMAO

After spending a lot of time under "Poncho Barnes" bell talking with Raptor drivers it gives you a real appreciation for how mediocre the rest of the world has just become. Slap

Forum: General F-22A Raptor forum

Potential flaw found in F-22A fighter jets