[leeG]

Originally Posted by John Youngs

Witness the recent USAF decision to buy the Airbus for it's tanker needs - 'Nuff said... - JY

Yeah, the first Tanker go around Boeing got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. This time there was actually a fair competition decided on technical requirements, not sweetheart post-government employment deals or lobbyist money. This is all good news for the US taxpayer. The main reason our new weapon systems cost so much is there very little "real" competition in military procurement. Look how many legendary names in US aircraft manufacturing have been consolidated down to just a couple of international corporations. Boeing is fully capable of competing on technical merit and keeping costs down, but only if they face a real competitor. Now they have one and we are all better off. I worked in major acquisition programs with the government, and your true blue patrotic US corporations have absolutely no qualms against stealing the taxpayer blind given any chance or opening, while waving the flag all the way to the bank. Real competition. It just works.

[FormerViperDriver]

Originally Posted by John Youngs

FVD - I don't disagree with much of what you've said - however, at $338 million per copy (for an F-22 Raptor), THAT, in my opinion, is pure BS!! This sort of crap is exactly why the US is gradually falling behind Europe in A/C design & acceptability. Yes, I understand all about social government subsidies (such as France's Airbus Industries, etc.) and programs which allow aircraft companies to crank out planes that they, themselves, would otherwise never be able to produce. But in the spirit of $600 toilet seats and $700 hammers, etc; enough is enough!! Stealth and avionics technologies are the two remaining aircraft industries the US still excells at - and we're going to lose those soon, if we don't wake up! Witness the recent USAF decision to buy the Airbus for it's tanker needs - 'Nuff said... - JY

The marginal cost of an F-2 is $130 million. The only reason program cost is over $300 million is because of the reduced buy from 750 originally palnned to 183 at the present time. The same thing happened to the B-2. Considering what we are getting, the cost is NOT excessive. What is BS is that we are unwilling to make use of the investment we have made in development of the aircraft and its super-advanced technology by actually BUYING enough of them. This is utter stupidity.

The A330 tanker win is a good thing, but IN NO WAY indicates superiority of European designs, in any area of aeronautics whatsoever. It only indicates in this particular instance that Boeing bet on the wrong airframe (767 versus the 777), and did a terrible job pushing their proposal due to over-confidence and arrogance. As a reminder, Europe is buying C-17s, C-130s, F-35s, KC-767 (Italy), and F-16s from us. Their Rafale and Typhoon fighters are not even comparable to our latest, and are themselves extremely expensive (check it out). We'll see about the A400 program and how that goes (I think it has the potential to be a very good airlifter, but we'll see). As for the rest of the world (Asia, Australia, South America), well, American aeronautics rule, and Russian products are second. Western Europe a distant third. Their products are just not competitive.

Using the A330 win to generalize is very mistaken. Look at the bigger picture, it is far more illuminating.

FVD

[John Youngs]

Originally Posted by FormerViperDriver

The marginal cost of an F-2 is $130 million. The only reason program cost is over $300 million is because of the reduced buy from 750 originally palnned to 183 at the present time. The same thing happened to the B-2. Considering what we are getting, the cost is NOT excessive. What is BS is that we are unwilling to make use of the investment we have made in development of the aircraft and its super-advanced technology by actually BUYING enough of them. This is utter stupidity.

The A330 tanker win is a good thing, but IN NO WAY indicates superiority of European designs, in any area of aeronautics whatsoever. It only indicates in this particular instance that Boeing bet on the wrong airframe (767 versus the 777), and did a terrible job pushing their proposal due to over-confidence and arrogance. As a reminder, Europe is buying C-17s, C-130s, F-35s, KC-767 (Italy), and F-16s from us. Their Rafale and Typhoon fighters are not even comparable to our latest, and are themselves extremely expensive (check it out). We'll see about the A400 program and how that goes (I think it has the potential to be a very good airlifter, but we'll see). As for the rest of the world (Asia, Australia, South America), well, American aeronautics rule, and Russian products are second. Western Europe a distant third. Their products are just not competitive.

Using the A330 win to generalize is very mistaken. Look at the bigger picture, it is far more illuminating.

FVD

FVD - Ok - I wasn't aware of the great cutback numbers of the F-22 - yup, that would definitely
make a heckuva difference! Thanks for the illumination on this point! - JY