Strategic Bomber Cost

[Jane-DoH]

As I understand it, when it comes to attack/light-bombers: The A-20 Havoc costed around 75,000 dollars; the A-26 Invader around 245,000 dollars; the B-57 Canberra around 1.2 million dollars.

When it comes to medium bombers: The B-25 Mitchell costed around 96,000 to 145,000 dollars; the B-26, around 120,000 and 125,000 dollars; the B-45 around 1.1 million; the B-47, around 1.9 million dollars; the B-58 Hustler, approximately 12.4 million dollars.

In regards to heavy-bombers: The B-17 costed around 240,000 dollars, the B-24, around 300,000; the B-29 around 640,000; the B-36 costed 4.1 million (all of which were heavy bombers).

Now with all this said. I'm wondering how much the B-52A, and the B-52H costed, and how much the B-70 would have costed assuming 250 of them were built as the USAF intended?


R.C.
No, I'm not a bean-counter!

[VIProds]

JD Courtesy of wikipedia,:

B-52 B US$14.43million
B-52 H US$ 9.28million (1962)
B-52 H US$53.4million (1998)
B-70 Valkyrie US$750million

[Jane-DoH]

VIProds

I'm aware of the 750 million dollar figure for the B-70 as only two were produced. If 250 were produced, do you know how much it would have costed per unit? I assume more material and facilities would have had to been set up to build all these things, more engines would have had to been built and so forth.

[Cpt_Pugwash]

J-D,
An estimate of the upc can be obtained by the application of Learner theory (http://cost.jsc.nasa.gov/learn.html)
You would need to know the Year of Economics of the $750M cost and a realisic estimate of the learner rate of the company based on historical performance.

Putting the $750M figure into the calculator on the NASA site, using the Wright method with a learner factor of 85% gives a UPC for the 250th article of $157M.

What you were doing in your first post is called a Historical Trend Analysis (HTA). If you plot the costs on a chart, you can use linear regression techniques to predict future costs.


I've clearly been associating with bean-counters for far too long!:sad:

[keesje]

An earlier stealth fighter/attack jet, the Navy's A-12, was canceled due to cost overruns -- but only after nearly $5 billion had gone down the tubes. And the B-2 bomber, with its $2.2 billion price tag per plane, has a design life span of only 30 years. That's a depreciation of some $8,300 an hour -- whether it's in flight or not, whether it's invisible or not.

The Pentagon's 300-Billion-Dollar Bomb | Mother Jones (http://motherjones.com/politics/2000/01/pentagons-300-billion-dollar-bomb)

[Blacksheep]

The B-17 costed around 240,000 dollars, the B-24, around 300,000;To put that in perspective, the Royal Navy's 1,350 ton Fleet Destroyers (Classes A to I ), crewed by 145 (peace-time complement) cost £300,000 pounds apiece, as commissioned.

[Lonewolf_50]

Jane, are you using a constant year dollar figure (inflation adjusted) to arrive at your costs?

Given how big production runs were for B-17, B-25, and B-24, is the cost comparison very useful?

We didn't get half way to three digits on the B-2 ... which I think informs us a bit on its outrageous costs.

[Ali Barber]

Blacksheep - to keep comparing oranges with apples: that gives the B-17 a return of $757/mph against the Fleet Destroyers $8,571/mph.