Jeff Danziger for April 09, 2009

Cartoon comments section: invaluable opportunities to give lessons on things like the inheritance tax inspired by cartoons about things like plane parts.

But Jeff, I don’t understand how F-22 parts made in states on the ground can make the F-22 go up in the air. I must have missed something in the news.

^ I thought that was quite clear. And it’s a well-developed strategy to contract and subcontract the parts of military defense products to companies operating in many different states. Too important to jobs to be cancelled, even if it doesn’t work as promised. Strategy works most times.

It’s a joke - the real reason the F-22 is being built has nothing to do with its airworthiness, but because of the “strings attached” in that it provides money to a lot of Congresspeople’s states. In other words, it’s being “lifted” falsely.

Motive, I’ve followed the F-22, V-22, and F-35 for a long time in Aviation Week and other sources. It is a dog. This cartoon demonstrates it’s only reason for existence. Quarter billion dollar piece of junk.(YES, that is the real price.)

Thanks everyone for the enlightenment. What a lot of trouble for political power. On the face of it, it sounds absurd. And a quarter billion dollars a pop? Good grief.

Signed: Naive

If all 183 F-22s are actually delivered, ”$34 billion will have been spent on actual procurement, resulting in a total program cost of $62 billion or about $339 million per aircraft.” Parts for the F-22 are provided by companies in 46 different states. Thus, as the toon depicts, most everybody wants it to continue, even if it is overpriced for its usefulness and air-worthiness. makes you wonder how more efficiently and less expensively it could have been produced if it wasn’t parceled out over almost every state in the union !!

stewie – we don’t need “advanced” planes that don’t work!

Dred, now that’s an excellent point; they sell the weapon systems we pay them to build to other countries who are our ‘friends,” then we have to pay them to build newer weapon systems that can defeat the ‘older’ weapon systems when the countries aren’t our friends anymore

The F-22 is not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but since the F-15Cs that the Air Force are now using are upwards of 20 years old (and those are the new ones), with major wing cracks developing, something needs to be done. We also have B-52s in front line service that are approaching 50 years old (Congress drastically cut back the purchases of the B-1 and B-2 bombers that were supposed to replace them), being refueled by C-135 aerial tankers with the same age problem. Every time the Air Force gets a development project almost to the squadrons it gets chopped by politicians, which means that all those development dollars get spread over a very, very few aircraft, raising the cost per unit sky high. Yes, the F-22 at its current numbers is expensive, but if you actually produce them the unit cost goes down sharply. THAT is the problem with Congressional influence peddling - the congressmen evidently failed MATH, and would rather create another development project than let the previous one actually deliver.

Dred- That place in Maine is called Bath Iron Works, and General Dynamics bought it to force our wonderful government to build Arleigh Burke destroyers in two DIFFERENT places, one on the Gulf Coast, the other on the East Coast, I suppose to balance out Boeing’s building aircraft on the West Coast. Those in the middle, well that is were the F-22 comes in (It’s a Lockheed-Martin Marietta product, with General Dynamics and Boeing as sub-contractors. I used to think that having a number of different companies competing for military contracts would lower costs or increase quality, but with all of the companies working together (and hiring out of office congresspersons as lobbyists), I think we are all being, ah, ripped off!

BCS - Undo the Congressional Math - if we actually receive 183 F-22s the project will cost $62 Billion ($28 Billion in development costs are already spent) the aircraft would cost $339 million per, $153 million of that being development costs. IF, however, we actually receive the 430 that the Air Force REQUESTED, instead of the development cost being $153 MILLION per AIRCRAFT, it would only be $65 million per aircraft, therefor reducing the per unit cost from 339 million to $251. If we allowed the Air Force to receive the 680 they originally wanted the development cost would drop to $41 million per plane, for a cost of $227 million per unit. In other words, if the contract is canceled (and there IS a cancellation fee, although that is still classified) we spend more per aircraft (which are still needed, by the way), and put off the real pain until the future.

No, it’s the way job security is handled in the military-industrial complex.