Air Force Poised to Buy New Bomber, Avoid Acquisition Death Spiral

[unhappycamper]

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1995



Air Force Poised to Buy New Bomber, Avoid Acquisition Death Spiral
By Sandra I. Erwin
10/23/2015

As the Pentagon prepares to tap a contractor to build a new stealth bomber — projected to be the largest weapons procurement in a decade — Air Force officials are making it known that they have taken every precaution to keep the project from suffering the same grim fate as other big-ticket acquisitions.

It was a telling move when the Air Force in 2011 assigned the management of the long-range strike bomber program to the secretive “rapid capabilities office” that is known for being leaner and more efficient than the conventional Air Force acquisition corps. The RCO made it an imperative that contractors use “mature” technology to ensure the bomber would not get bogged down in complex development. Two designs have been in a head-to-head competition — one by Northrop Grumman Corp. and another by a Boeing-Lockheed Martin partnership.

Procurement process and technological performance aside, the success of the new bomber ultimately will depend on whether it can stave off cost overruns. To keep prices from going over the set threshold, the Air Force must buy no fewer than 100 bombers. For the contractor, the ability to produce 100 bombers at $550 million apiece is a “pass/fail” requirement, said top Air Force acquisition executive William LaPlante. Like all new weapon procurements, he said, the first one will be “more expensive and the last less expensive.”

The $550 million target is a bit misleading, though, because it was set in 2010 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, the so-called average procurement unit cost will be over $600 million. And it does not include an additional several billion dollars in development costs, which puts the total value of the program at about $70 billion to $80 billion.

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I call bullshit on the half-billion dollar estimated price tag. If you read the article you will see that as quantities drop the price goes up. Prior experience with the B-2 and F-22 programs show as the price rises, quantities are shaved down and the price goes up.

The last time I checked the F-22 costs around $418 million dollars a copy and B-2s are now at $3 billion dollars a copy.

A $550 million dollar stealth bomber. Really?

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