Cost per Aircraft Question
The question which the comparison with airliner prices really begs, IMHO, is whether we should continue the pursuit of the "perfect" aircraft, or whether we should behave more like smaller nations who buy their military aircraft "off of the peg" so to speak.
For well understood historical reasons, we in the UK have tended to seek "bespoke"solutions to our front line aircraft requirements, resulting in the MoD bearing considerable development and marketing risk with the inevitable attendant cost burden. No doubt defence contractors have been only too happy to encourage this, but the fundamental cause of the problem is the desire to specify bespoke solutions. Greater flexibility in terms of accepting solutions which are good rather than perfect could be considerably lees expensive, without necessarily compromising fitness for purpose in any meaningful way.
For well understood historical reasons, we in the UK have tended to seek "bespoke"solutions to our front line aircraft requirements, resulting in the MoD bearing considerable development and marketing risk with the inevitable attendant cost burden. No doubt defence contractors have been only too happy to encourage this, but the fundamental cause of the problem is the desire to specify bespoke solutions. Greater flexibility in terms of accepting solutions which are good rather than perfect could be considerably lees expensive, without necessarily compromising fitness for purpose in any meaningful way.
falcon900
I tend to agree, but I think I'd start with basics, like insisting on commonality at equipment level across our Services. We have aircraft where 50% of the cost is in the avionics. I mentioned a £130k radio example earlier. One reason it was so expensive was it was built to an RN spec, which needed (among other things) a specific Rx Only frequency band and very stiff harmonic rejection figures. The RAF and Army didn't need this (or thought they didn't) so went off on their own. Had they been told to use the RN spec, the unit cost would have plummeted. And embarrassment avoided years later when they were forced to nick RN radios from store.
This all about Requirements setting, which is something we do very poorly. My very last job before retiring was being handed a spec the Army thought very difficult to attain. I had a year or so to go, and they said if I delivered by then, that's as much as they could expect. The solution was already in service with the RN and RAF, trials took place the following week, and 15 sets (more than needed) were deployed to Afghanistan a week later. I'm afraid that is all too common - except the bit about knowing what's already in service. We have entire project teams reinventing decades-old wheels. The waste is astronomical.
I tend to agree, but I think I'd start with basics, like insisting on commonality at equipment level across our Services. We have aircraft where 50% of the cost is in the avionics. I mentioned a £130k radio example earlier. One reason it was so expensive was it was built to an RN spec, which needed (among other things) a specific Rx Only frequency band and very stiff harmonic rejection figures. The RAF and Army didn't need this (or thought they didn't) so went off on their own. Had they been told to use the RN spec, the unit cost would have plummeted. And embarrassment avoided years later when they were forced to nick RN radios from store.
This all about Requirements setting, which is something we do very poorly. My very last job before retiring was being handed a spec the Army thought very difficult to attain. I had a year or so to go, and they said if I delivered by then, that's as much as they could expect. The solution was already in service with the RN and RAF, trials took place the following week, and 15 sets (more than needed) were deployed to Afghanistan a week later. I'm afraid that is all too common - except the bit about knowing what's already in service. We have entire project teams reinventing decades-old wheels. The waste is astronomical.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
tuc, I remember decades ago there were 3 VHF boxes. Each could be crystalized to meet the extant complan. Now in those days a radio was very much like a, well, radio. The RAF used 2 of the boxes and the RN used the third.
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You can draw interesting government procurement comparisons by looking at DfT's current Azuma High Speed Train project for the east and west coast lines as well as Great Western. Here too, a unique, custom built design has been specified by HMG involving a "bi-Mode" solution whereby electric trains are lugging around mostly idle, underpowered diesel engines for use beyond where the wires stop. It is virtually impossible to determine the initial acquisition cost as it's a leasing deal, where the rental charges reflect capital cost but also financing cost (which the builder and its partners bare, at a higher interest rate than the state would pay) and ongoing maintenance, as well as a risk provision for the builder prepared to take on such a complex and one-off design. There are indeed suggestions that leasing cost structure is a useful way for HMG to save face by not having the data on the sky-high capital cost of this farcical fleet. A good rule of thumb is to never allow the state to specify and procure directly on complex engineering projects.
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Buying in a model as close as possible to Commercial Off The Shelf is also resulting in challenges in terms of meeting our own regulations, such as evidence for certification, or how much we recognise the opinions of another certifying body, if we cannot easily access the evidence ourselves. None of these things are quite "free", if we judge not only in monetary costs, but risks and flexibility etc as well.
