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Astronomical costs of new generation military equipment

joko104

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The costs of next generation military equipment is astronomical. For example, the F22 was cancelled as it's costs came to exceed $300 million per aircraft, with $60,000 per hour operational costs. All the equipment is like that. There are now aircraft that all in all including aboard approach or exceed a billion dollars each.
Every price a missile?
Drone?
The military contractors absolutely rip the taxpayers. If a bolt is needed, the military has to buy an entire overhaul kit for that system. If a computer needs to a piece of software re-loaded or modified, the contracting company refuses, claiming it is copyrighted/patented - requiring rebuying the software.
In addition, equipment costs, operational costs and maintenance costs, are the costs of maintaining full time maintainers and specialists to keep it operational and up to date.
Price a new ship - even little ones? The cost of operation and maintenance?
Our personnel costs aren't cheap either. One tour of duty and we pay in many ways for that person - and even possibly their family - for the rest of their lives - averaging over half a century - adding about 200,000 more to the list each year.

By comparison, other countries pay less and many pay much less.

And we want to be able to police the entire world, make certain all borders never ever change again, to be able to have bases all over the world, to be able to stop China expanding, Russia expanding, Iran expanding, Muslim militancy from expanding in Africa, and win war against anyone and everyone anywhere and everywhere - being in an arms race with China and Russia - mostly China. A lot - China. Do we have 1/10th the industrial capacity of China? Can we win the arms race with China on an economic level?

Just how much will and can we pay to do all that - endlessly and increasingly?

What are your thoughts on this?
 
The military-industrial complex is so entwined within our government that to reign them in at this point would be impossible. Most retiring generals get a well-paying job with a defense contractor when they retire. All of congress gets reelection money from the MIC. I wonder how many of the kids of Congressmen work for the MIC?

We spend more on defense than the next 22 countries below us COMBINED. Isn't that ridiculous?
 
The military-industrial complex is so entwined within our government that to reign them in at this point would be impossible. Most retiring generals get a well-paying job with a defense contractor when they retire. All of congress gets reelection money from the MIC. I wonder how many of the kids of Congressmen work for the MIC?

We spend more on defense than the next 22 countries below us COMBINED. Isn't that ridiculous?

The military-industrial complex doesn't actually exist anymore. It died with the end of the Cold War when the U.S. military was reduced in size from 30-40%.
 
The military-industrial complex doesn't actually exist anymore. It died with the end of the Cold War when the U.S. military was reduced in size from 30-40%.
Reagan ramped up the military as strategy to beat the soviets. How many companies there are also do not disprove a military industrial complex, the relationship between defense contractors and their funding of politicians matter more.
 
The military-industrial complex doesn't actually exist anymore. It died with the end of the Cold War when the U.S. military was reduced in size from 30-40%.

Yeah, right.

Why do you claim the Cold War ended? It has never ended. The military industrial complex and intelligence agencies need trillions more to defend Europe against the extinct USSR.
 
Yeah, right.

Why do you claim the Cold War ended? It has never ended.

Because Germany isn't divided anymore into Communist and Democratic/Capitalist countries. The Cold War was largely based on the division of Europe along those lines. That division doesn't exist anymore. Our current issues with the Russians are basically an extension of resistance to Russian expansionism that was a factor prior to World War One.
 
The costs of next generation military equipment is astronomical. For example, the F22 was cancelled as it's costs came to exceed $300 million per aircraft, with $60,000 per hour operational costs. All the equipment is like that. There are now aircraft that all in all including aboard approach or exceed a billion dollars each.
Every price a missile?
Drone?
The military contractors absolutely rip the taxpayers. If a bolt is needed, the military has to buy an entire overhaul kit for that system. If a computer needs to a piece of software re-loaded or modified, the contracting company refuses, claiming it is copyrighted/patented - requiring rebuying the software.
In addition, equipment costs, operational costs and maintenance costs, are the costs of maintaining full time maintainers and specialists to keep it operational and up to date.
Price a new ship - even little ones? The cost of operation and maintenance?
Our personnel costs aren't cheap either. One tour of duty and we pay in many ways for that person - and even possibly their family - for the rest of their lives - averaging over half a century - adding about 200,000 more to the list each year.

By comparison, other countries pay less and many pay much less.

And we want to be able to police the entire world, make certain all borders never ever change again, to be able to have bases all over the world, to be able to stop China expanding, Russia expanding, Iran expanding, Muslim militancy from expanding in Africa, and win war against anyone and everyone anywhere and everywhere - being in an arms race with China and Russia - mostly China. A lot - China. Do we have 1/10th the industrial capacity of China? Can we win the arms race with China on an economic level?

Just how much will and can we pay to do all that - endlessly and increasingly?

What are your thoughts on this?

While a certain part of the exuberant cost in military hardware can be traced back to the MIC execs wanting to make money, but the fact is that modern military equipment is just flat out more expensive. They are vastly more capable; a modern BCT could wipe out a US Army WWII Corps handily.
 
Note that in regards to modern military hardware a substantial reason for the cost increases are efforts to SAVE money. Classic example being the F-35 fighter. The F-35 was mandated by Congress as a way to save money by using ONE basic aircraft design to replace from 4-6 different aircraft in service with the U.S. and its allies. Needless to say this has caused all sorts of problems which continue.

Likewise the Ford class aircraft carriers have included a range of design features meant to save money in the long run. For example they are supposed to operate with fully 1,000 crewman and airmen LESS than the older Nimitz class vessels to drive down lifetime personnel costs.
 
The costs of next generation military equipment is astronomical. For example, the F22 was cancelled as it's costs came to exceed $300 million per aircraft, with $60,000 per hour operational costs. All the equipment is like that. There are now aircraft that all in all including aboard approach or exceed a billion dollars each.
Every price a missile?
Drone?
The military contractors absolutely rip the taxpayers. If a bolt is needed, the military has to buy an entire overhaul kit for that system. If a computer needs to a piece of software re-loaded or modified, the contracting company refuses, claiming it is copyrighted/patented - requiring rebuying the software.
In addition, equipment costs, operational costs and maintenance costs, are the costs of maintaining full time maintainers and specialists to keep it operational and up to date.
Price a new ship - even little ones? The cost of operation and maintenance?
Our personnel costs aren't cheap either. One tour of duty and we pay in many ways for that person - and even possibly their family - for the rest of their lives - averaging over half a century - adding about 200,000 more to the list each year.

By comparison, other countries pay less and many pay much less.

And we want to be able to police the entire world, make certain all borders never ever change again, to be able to have bases all over the world, to be able to stop China expanding, Russia expanding, Iran expanding, Muslim militancy from expanding in Africa, and win war against anyone and everyone anywhere and everywhere - being in an arms race with China and Russia - mostly China. A lot - China. Do we have 1/10th the industrial capacity of China? Can we win the arms race with China on an economic level?

Just how much will and can we pay to do all that - endlessly and increasingly?

What are your thoughts on this?
The military gets ripped off on hardware, but the mic is part of it but not all of it. For proof look at our main military competitor russia, their state owns or controls most of their military production ie they do not have a mic, for their own needs they are pretty much getting their stuff at or barely above cost, but when it comes to exports, their prices to make profit are not much lower on many things than america.

For example a t-90 tank is a few mil cheaper than an abrahms, but not radical enough to warrant competition on price alone unless dealing with a third world nation, their su-27 flanker series in base configuration is more expensive than a base series of the f-15(neither of them count for much as the base series means without the goodies installed ie barely any better than when first introduced) and for other comparisons you can actually start looking up prices on common hardware.

Much of the big gotcha is on contracts and spare parts and training. A base model f-16 was 15ish million in 1998, but a deal for ten of them might be 3-5 billion. Not adding up on price right? Well that is because the big contract would include spare jet engines and major parts, all common maintenance parts for x amount of years, training on flight and training on repair.

Spare parts often make more money that the original purchase, am general did that with the hmmwv, things fail on a regular basis, often things that would not fail on a normal vehicle, but in many cases things that would not cripple the vehicle but force repairs based on military standards. Talking to osh kosh, am general and other contractors in the past, parts is where they make the money, for example that hmmwv new was around 14k, and 14k even for a military vehicle in the 80's-early 90's was not that bad, but the repairs, upgrades etc kept the money flowing, many of those trucks are still using the old 998 platform, and have been refitted and upgraded numerous times through it's lifecycle.
 
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