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Subject: Combat Aircraft Are Safer Than You Think
SYSOP    12/20/2012 5:17:15 AM
 
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giblets       12/20/2012 8:07:52 AM
"The damage caused will cost about $1.8 to repair"
 
remarkably cheap that! :D 
 
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wastral    1.7   12/20/2012 2:18:42 PM
$1.7M is the cost of all the meetings for brass eggs and braid properly getting their air time showing their "betters" how they are "on top of 'it'" and really doing a "great job" enabling them to climb the ladder. 
 
The actual damage is probably $100,000 at worst.  
 
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Reactive       12/20/2012 3:36:10 PM
How can you be so sure? Surely the F-22's coatings and aeroshell have been adequately-documented as enormously expensive in materials and man-hours simply to maintain to assume that repairs on these elements are known quantities by now- if surface elements needed replacing the cost in replacement parts alone could make up the lion's share of that $1.7M figure.
 
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bikebrains    Brilliant    12/20/2012 4:59:09 PM
With just one wave of the accounting pen,  Class A accidents have been reduced by huge percentage or eliminated.   CYA at its best.   Figures don't lie but lairs can figure. 
A factoid:  In 1959,  Lt. William Byrne was killed when he was attempting to land in a dense fog. His widow, Jane Byrne,  became a supporter of John Kennedy because he was trying to reduce accidents in the military.   She became more involved in politics which led her to becoming the Mayor of Chicago. 
 
 
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wastral    Reactive   12/20/2012 6:07:49 PM
Reactive, have you ever worked in the defense industry?  Its not just the eggs and braid.  They are simply the instigators as they require reams and reams and reams of documents for the simplest of tasks.
 
The egg and braid start, then they bring in the civis along with their hordes of management who are all there to be seen and heard, as if any of them know the first thing about repairing anything.  Don't forget all their lawyers and grabbers on tagging along as well.  They all require vast amounts of proposals to properly document $0.10 screws to replace a part requiring maybe $1500 to replace.  Each employee from management down to the engineer and repair tech on average will be paid about $200/hour if not $400/hour once all benefits etc are entered into the equation.  Of which 1/100 of all hours logged will actually be repairing the aircraft and all other 99/100 hours will be used to document that $0.10 screw to make sure the government isn't getting "screwed" or stolen from.  So, that $0.10 screw now requires 4 hours of documentation, 10 seconds to actually install of actual work and now costs everyone a tidy $2000 just to make sure no unethical selfish bastard stole a few screws and sold them on the scrap market. 
 
The parts and materials cost absoloutly nothing in today's world.   Material cost is not even 5th on a list of cost for any product.  l) Labor 2) Insurance 3) Lawyers/contracts 4) R&D 5) Tool set up 6) Material cost.
 
Welcome to Federal Government project realities.  
How can you be so sure? Surely the F-22's coatings and aeroshell have been adequately-documented as enormously expensive in materials and man-hours simply to maintain to assume that repairs on these elements are known quantities by now- if surface elements needed replacing the cost in replacement parts alone could make up the lion's share of that $1.7M figure.

 
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Reactive       12/20/2012 6:39:39 PM
I'm not suggesting that your appraisal of the bigger picture is not accurate, I'm just saying that the cost of the spares required to repair the damaged components would be factored in as part of the overall repair cost and pretty much any part of an F-22 you damage is going to run into the millions surely for that reason alone?
 
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wastral    I would be shocked   12/20/2012 7:12:31 PM
I would be shocked if any of the damaged parts doesn't cost more than a few 10's of thousands to replace in reality.  The rest is eggs and braid with a heavy sprinkled dose of LM sugar coating the cake with a VERY heavy dose of icing.
 
 
 
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LB       12/20/2012 10:49:46 PM
Comparing manned and unmanned aircraft by accidents per flight hour can be misleading.  The Predator flies many times more hours per sortie.  Thus the UAV might have 10 times more accidents per flight hour in reality it might be around 50 times more likely per mission.  The much longer duration missions of UAV's tend to mask the typically more dangerous time for aircraft which is take off and landing.
 
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BD    Once Upon a time...   12/21/2012 8:11:54 AM
there was in a Marine A-6 squadron a damaged leather hood for the B/N's radar and sensor display.  It was a simple enough piece of gear but I think the list price for the replacement was in the $40,000.00 dollar range or something like that.  This was a downing gripe for night ops and really all ops so the plane was down until it was repaired.  There was for some reason some delay in obtaining the item from the normal supply system.  So one of the guys in the survival euipment shop (seat shop I think but they were also responsible for flight suits et al) had some spair leather lying around and looked at the hood and said he could make that and he did for something like $0.75 cents.  He even drew up a pattern so that other other seat shops could do the same thing.  Part of his family had worked in the garment district I believe and he was even looking into finding a supplier for the leather.  He also made pretty good flight jackets that were hard to get but thats a different story.
For a while he was a hero until the contractor's lawyers found out and I was told latter our hero was lucky not to have been court martialed or at least given a serious NJP. 
 
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