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The average fighter plane will probably cost upwards of $40Millions each. When the production line starts making the fighters a new aircraft will probably roll off every few days.How is the costing worked out? How is the money spent on labor, materials, R&D? Are the profits made by the companies building the planes reasonable. I am a patriot.

2007-05-21 18:27:44 · 13 answers · asked by wally 2 in Politics & Government Military

13 answers

The costing reflects the total program costs. Think how many years and tries to make something right go into just one plane. How many people for how many years are employed on just the guidance system...the engines...the documentation? We're not talking $10 per hour jobs here...but they even have to pay their custodial workers, waste management...etc...even down to the lowest paid person, they're all rolled into the 'total program cost' when calculating the overall cost per jet. Then they actually have to get awarded a contract to make the planes once they have a working prototype. If they don't get the contract, then it's back to the drawing board. If they get the contract, then they have to tool up a production facility and pay all of the people for that. The hard part is over, but assembly is no piece of cake. Once the production line starts producing, the actual cost per plane goes down with each one produced. It becomes a better deal to buy more...if we could just pull working plans out of the air, then the planes would be more reasonably priced, based on assembly material and labor costs only. But...since we don't have alien benefactors giving us technology, we have to do it the harder way.

Remember Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas both competing for the 'next generation fighter' contract? The ball started rolling on that project in the early 80's...preliminary contracts were awarded in 86. Prototypes were not even ready until 91 when the contract went to the YF22 ... the other prototypes were mothballed.

BTW, that remark about the $50k toilet cover is wayyyy over exagerrated...sure there is some waste and padding from unscrupulous contractors, but there actually is oversight to ensure you don't buy $500 transistors...or if you do, there had better be a good reason. Did you ever think why a single aspirin in a hospital costs 7 bucks when you can buy a whole bottle at Walgreens for much less? total program cost.

2007-05-21 19:02:47 · answer #1 · answered by VodkaTonic 5 · 2 0

the fact of the matter is the government has a blank check they can write whatever they want on it and the companies that build there planes know this.

Not to mention all the testing of aircraft that is necessary to get the plane flying the repeated tries and tries again all cost money as far as research and development and such all a big money waster. Those are the things to consider they are not just paying for 1 plane so to say they are making an investment into the future planes to come and so forth.

It is a fairly reasonable price. Not to mention what these fighter planes are made of you have to take that into consideration before looking at it. But i am sure about 25% of the price of a plane is just pure profit for the company building it but when you can only sell so many it increases the price of it.

2007-05-21 19:39:26 · answer #2 · answered by josh 2 · 0 0

Russian planes cost less. Generally the factory has to be built from the ground up. There has to be R&D, the workers are highly trained and expensive, there are warrenties, fewer planes are getting built. Also the contracts deal with maintance parts which are using the most expensive metals. A common metal used on planes is titanium, which is expensive in itself.

Some of the money is get by money. There are only like three aircraft manufacturer in the U.S. because of buy outs and the cost of launching a project. That's why one will get a fighter contract, one will get a helicopter contract and the other will get a space program. Without this get by money, a manufacturer may fold and make it even hard to get a low cost on a bid.

2007-05-21 19:40:41 · answer #3 · answered by gregory_dittman 7 · 0 0

Alot of it stems from the simple fact that these are jet aircraft. They are far more difficult and time consuming to produce than previous planes. Unlike prop planes such as those in WW2, these planes require specific metals and such to actually function. They can't really be "mass produced" like in WW2. It's very labor intensive compared to prop planes. As for how the cost breaks down, I'm not entirely sure. But like I said, these are very sophisticated military instruments. Of course they aren't going to be cheap.

2007-05-21 20:08:46 · answer #4 · answered by m 4 · 0 0

They're very complex machines and are made in fairly small numbers. Take your pick of any car.. if only a few hundred were made the manufacturer would have to charge MUCH more to recoup their R&D costs as well as the cost of the plant to manufacture it. But yes.. some of the costs of these things seems pretty extreme ( The F-22 is going to run about 350 million EACH ).

2007-05-21 19:04:16 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1 1

We are not replacing "the Bat plane/Hobgoblin, super speed, Stealth fighter/ bomber" with the F35. We never had a "Bat plane/Hobgoblin, super speed, Stealth fighter/ bomber". The "Stealth fighter" - the F117 was not "super speed", and at least one broke up in mid flight in a non-combat flight. It also was a single mission aircraft, a night attack aircraft, defenseless in daylight against any enemy aircraft. The core design is 30 years old. The B2 bomber is not super speed ether, but it is not being replaced by the F35. Completely different roles. What exactly do you think the F35 is replacing? The A10 and AV8 don't fit that description ether. The F16 is closer, but it's not stealthy and not really faster than the F35.

2016-03-19 00:44:16 · answer #6 · answered by Yesennia 4 · 0 0

The most sophisticated technology in the world, why?
To protect the millions that go into training a pilot, pure and simple.
If say we fight the Soviets and they have planes that cost ten million, we will shoot down 5-6 six of these easy, who spent wisely?
Disagree with the joint fighter though, we should not share the technology with the EU. Bad mistake that will come back and bite us.

2007-05-21 18:33:38 · answer #7 · answered by Jack L. W. 3 · 3 1

It's called The Industrial Military Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in the 50's

2007-05-21 19:52:01 · answer #8 · answered by sonofmary 4 · 1 1

Don't forget that the whole project costs hundreds of billions of dollars! Lockheed Martin makes most of the money, since they engineer and build them.

2007-05-21 18:31:43 · answer #9 · answered by oozahnawahtzyl 4 · 1 0

because the ppl that make the planes want to get more and more and more money out of it.

2007-05-21 18:31:52 · answer #10 · answered by waterlily750 4 · 0 2

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