Anyone have $45 million to spare? [;)]
Yes, yes I do. Let me just go to the bathroom… The F-16 is an awesome jet! Its quite sexy, and man, just watching them you can see the power. Its very impresive!
OK, making a couple of assumptions, and even applying the full 45 million price tag for a brand new model, I calculate that it has cost each taxpayer about $45 per year to keep the Air Force in F-16s. Somebody check my math - what a bargain!
That’s about what I pay for a single model with aftermarket goodies, and about half what I pay when I take my family out for a nice dinner. It’s miniscule compared to the security this aircraft provides our country. And does it ever look like a fighter!
[:D] Hello fellow hoosier! What cornfield are you from? $45 a year is pretty much nothing considering that the pilots are putting their lives on the line everytime they fly a mission.
It’s all one vast cornfield, isn’t it. [:D] (Actually, I live in southern Lake County.)
For several years I lived near the end of the runway at Carswell Air Force Base (or whatever it is they call it now) in Texas. A great passtime was to sit on my back porch, have a beer, and watch the F-16s come and go. One of the first models I attempted when I took up the hobby was the Monogram F-16. I guess I just have an affection for them.
I got a plan!!! We get 1 million modelers over the US (or Allies) to send $45 to me, I’ll send it to the people I buy it from (I swear), and we can all take turns flying it![^]
lol, can i go first!
Who is going to pay for insurance?
yeah, a vast cornfield broken up by creeks [:P] I am a couple minutes south of you. You know where Putnam county is? I didn’t think so [:D] I am right between Indy and Terre Haute. I go over to the Terre Haute ANG base occasionally and park in the Ivy Tech parking lot and watch the F-16’s take off at night. Its quite a sight, and my daughter loves to watch them, as do I! Its pretty cool, security gave me a hard time a few times, but now the old guy knows who I am, so he doesn’t bug me any more, unless he stops to talk… I need a life[:D]
Call me a grouch, a muckraker or a malcontent, but as much as I love the airplane itself, I don’t love the fact that it was originally pitched to the USAF and the Congress at a flyaway cost of $5.2 million per copy in the mid-70’s. Inflation is inflation, but inflation in this country has not grown by ninefold in the last 30 years. And yes, I’m aware the airplane is no longer the same no-frills, lightweight dogfighter it was invisioned to be by Pierre Sprey, Col. Boyd and the others in the Fighter Mafia. Fancy Wild Weasel SEAD equipment is not cheap. But taking all that into account, the fact is, General Dynamics did what they did throughout the history of the company, including their shipbuilding subsidiary: they grossly underbid the price of the weapon and system, knowing all along it would cost much, much more, and when the USAF and foreign buyers were too committed in parts, training and everything else to back out, the price skyrocketed artificially.
It’s way past time to stop tolerating this from defense contractors. It is nothing less than theft and fraud of tax money, pure and simple. A famous general known as “Ike,” not exactly a bomb throwing lefty, as he left the White House after two terms as US President, warned the public in his farewell speach of just such shenanigans on the part of military contractors. And yet, here we are, 45 years later, just as fat and dumb and willing to pay for these sexy, overpriced, gee-whiz jets as ever.
I love the planes as much as you, David, but the Vipers are egregiously overpriced and are not worth buying at $45 million apiece in today’s environment, and if you had the cash, I would hope you’d spend it more wisely. Like maybe restoring 45 WW II and Korean War birds[;)] (I won’t suggest using that money to maybe help rebuild New Orleans, because then I’d get pounced on by people accusing me of being a communist). Oh, and BTW, David, I thought you guys on the Kalmbach payroll all had salaries that allowed you to own and fuel your own jet warbirds. I must have got some bad information.
TOM
Well, let’s see. The F-16 started out at $5 million a copy, and now it’s 45 million. That’s a factor of 9. In approximately the same time my father’s house (the only one for which I have two prices over that length of time) went from about $15000 to 175,000 thats a factor over 11. The price of a basic pickup truck has gone up from about 3,100 to about 25000 - a factor of about 8. (You might argue that today’s pickups are a lot more truck under the skin, but the same could be said of the F-16). I think the base price of a Cessna 172 has had a roughly similar increase. The price increase of the F-16 is not unprecedented compared to housing, transportation, and other necessities.
The F-16 may be overpriced. An engineer friend of mine at GD thought so. Still, I’d argue that I get more for my tax dollars from an inflated F-16 than I do from many other government programs.
Yup, I think its worth the price. I see those beutiful birds flying over my house on a daily basis. All I can think of…“man it would be cool to fly one of those”. Then I wake up and go to look at my stash and pull out those F-16’s kits. That’s about as close as I am going to get to owning one.[:)]
The inflation rate we hear about on the news is a somewhat doctored number. In the 1980s, the cost of housing was removed from the inflation statistics. From the mid-80s up until a couple of years ago, oil prices didn’t increase much. If you adjust the cost per barrel with the published inflation rate, it actually decreased. At the same time, the US became more and more dependent on overseas manufacturers for consumer goods because the salaries of American workers were getting too high.
The things that were still made in the US have mostly increased at a significantly higher rate than the published inflation rate. You point out cars and houses as two of them.
I do agree that defense contractors milk the government. Part of it is also due to the horrendously expensive procurement process. When I worked at Boeing, a friend had been involved in a military satellite project years before. At the last minute the Air Force demanded that the tools to open the hatches be included. What was needed was a plain old wrench you could get from the hardware store for $5. They tried to tell the Air Force that, but the bean counters wanted it included.
The manager heading up the project knew there was going to be problems, so he documented in minute detail all the costs associated with including the wrench. They could buy the wrench from Stanley for $5, but then they had to get it through DoD certification and write up reams of documentation on how to use it, studies on it’s tolerances, etc. By the time they were done, it had added something like $50,000 to the project. The Air Force complained about the sudden increase in cost and the manager handed over his file with the documentation. He was able to show that Boeing was actually taking a bit of a loss on adding the wrench.
The same guy had worked civil service in the Navy at a calibration lab before he went to work for Boeing. He said that there was one piece of equipment that had a huge back log in their lab because there was this one O ring that cost something like $120 a piece. Because of the price, they couldn’t keep any in stock and there were always delays in getting them.
One of his co-workers was down at the hardware store one Saturday and saw the same O ring by the same manufacturer for $0.05 a piece. He bought a whole string of 100 of them and asked the boss if they could just use those. Because they hadn’t been through DoD cert, they couldn’t. They did some comparisons in the lab and found that they were identical to the $120 part in every way.
Because of the back log, they had Navy officers come through demanding equipment in the back log about once a month. They would show him the O rings and tell him that if he could get permission from the DoD to use the substitutes, they could eliminate the back log in a couple of days. Eventually they ended up with the commander of the Pacific Fleet breathing down their necks and they gave him the same story. He had enough political connections that he eventually got the hardware store O rings cleared for use and the manufacturer got audited and fined for milking the Navy.
Every F-16 built has thousands of parts made by subcontractors. Some of the parts are over priced because of the DoD cert and documentation procedures, some are over priced because the suppliers are price gouging. Nobody has the budget to do an exhaustive audit of every supplier. Nobody has the political will to streamline the bureaucracy to reduce the ridiculousness of $50,000 monkey wrenches.
Since the F-16 was introduced, the bureaucracy has just grown like a cancer. Each new requirement requires more people be hired to do the paperwork, which adds to the final cost.
Bill
If what you say is true I don’t think we have to worry about it. With little basic industry left, we won’t be able to afford inefficiency very long. When societies live in a make-believe world, reality tends to bite back. Inept government is self-correcting, though not without price to its citizens.
What scares me is that ALL the people I know who have worked in the corporate-governmet defense network tell equally depressing stories.
Still, the F-16 does look like a fighter… but then again, my boss looked like a human being before I got to know him.
[(-D][(-D][(-D] I have worked for him [:P]