Note that the defense guys, LockMart, Boeing and Northrop, want the deal to be a "cost-plus" arrangement, which is defense-speak for "let's rape the taxpayers". This is the biggest lie in weeks from Fort Fumble:
"The military services have worked and reworked the requirements for these programs to ensure that we do not find ourselves, after spending billions on development, with a system we can't afford to produce."Yeah, like that'll ever happen.
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Then there's Augustine's Law #16 "which shows that defense budgets grow linearly but the unit cost of a new military aircraft grows exponentially:
In the year 2054, the entire defence budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day."
Don't believe it? See the graphical proof here, with major military aircraft costs showing the way...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine%27s_laws
This time they are going to begin with a system we can't afford to produce. Bigger toys means better generals.
Northrop Grumman still has the B2 molds and could punch those suckers out for a unit cost of around $350M apiece. Upgrade with some modern robotics and you're *much* cheaper.
Note that the B-2 is a hangar queen, but that's because of the RF-absorbant coating. If you just want some unmanned B-2s loitering as bomb trucks over Afghanistan and don't care about the stealth properties of the plane, maintenance is on par with most modern jets. Same deal with cruise missiles. Right now the B-2 has no provisions to carry cruise missiles, they simply aren't useful for its primary mission of penetration. But slinging a couple of Tomahawks under its belly would be child's play if you didn't care about radar signature...
But dusting off those old molds wouldn't be as profitable as a new hangar queen, so (shrug). In any event, something has to be done to replace the B-1's, whose swing wings are coming to end of life, and B-52's, which are older than the grandfathers of the kids flying them. It's not a "has to be done tomorrow" thing, but start of development clearly has to be done *sometime* in the near future or the U.S. loses its heavy bomb truck capability. Which might be a good thing, actually, but I doubt you'll find any politicians or Air Force types who'll agree... empire is too deep in their blood.
- Badtux the Flightless Penguin
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