Unknown Instruments

[Cali]

Thought the same thing lol. 90s my ass, this is an A-10.

 

Yeah, the year built should say something like 78-83. I worked on 1978-1981's in Alaska.

[Frostiken]

Well, to be fair Frostiken, it's not quite the same. You can't compare the age aspect of mature technology to a place where the technology in question was literally revolutionary and completely new. Aerospace technology had a much faster turnover rate because people were still learning what is today very basic stuff.

 

To a degree, but the avionics and upgrades going into these aircraft even today is old, slow, and hardly the best we can do. 10-15 years ago the F-22 was cutting edge, but it took so long to reach active service as well as had an axe taken to almost every single aspect of it left it with laughably crippled capabilities compared to what it was supposed to be.

 

While it's as much there was more room to grow in that time, it's also as much a factor of the military doesn't get to spend as much money anymore, and due to the skyrocketing pricetags contractors are putting on their toys we're facing exponentially higher costs for anything, and since we're not getting any more money, our weapons technology is still circa 1970s.

 

Let me give you an example: The F-15E had a recent (relatively speaking) upgrade to its display processor and central computer. The old MPDP and CC were thrown out, and a combined unit called the ADCP was installed. The ADCP has memory and processing power that would've been laughable in the early 90s. It's really little more than a couple of processing units, two display drivers, and some storage. The pricetag Honeywell put on it was half a million dollars. This is 2005. My iPod has more functionality than the ADCP. Want to know the real joke here? The ADCP's memory is already full and the USAF wants to buy an upgraded version of it. With time, cutting-edge technology is supposed to become cheaper. Sure, in the 1980s, datalinks hooking F-16s F-15s and AWACS together were cool and nothing existed even remotely like that. However, 20 years later operating a giant 3G network in the sky should have become so mundane and cheap it shouldn't be an issue. Instead, the F-22 as part of the chainsaw action it got had its datalink capabilities crushed to almost uselessness, such that now we're spending even MORE money trying to restore basic functionality to it.

 

At the rate we're going, by the 2030s Raytheon is going to be charging so much per missile it'll be cheaper to just ram the planes into the targets. Then Raytheon's going to go under and go 'Wow how did that happen? We only wanted $4.6 million for each missile!'

Edited July 7, 2011 by Frostiken

[EtherealN]

Frostiken, I hope you aren't seriously comparing consumer electronics with military electronics? It's like the electronics they put on spacecraft - 200k dollars gets you the processor for a system with a single 200MHz RISC core that can support up to 256MB of RAM...

 

When it comes to this type of gadgetry, something like 95% of the pricetag isn't manufacture, it's the rediculous amount of testing required to ensure you get something that meets specification - and of course the specialized development required, development costs that then has to be spread on relatively few units. If you have to develop a processor that meet X specification, and you then is only going to sell a couple thousand of them... It will get rediculously expensive.

 

If Apple developed the iPod and then decided to only sell 2000 of them, each of those iPods would have cost several hundred thousand dollars too - and they wouldn't even be hardened for anything nor pass the Q/A we're talking about...

[bradleyjs]

True that - in economics terminology - it's called "Economies of Scale" - or something like that... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

 

Defense contractors have to meet stringent criteria; and that will always cause the price per unit to be a much higher cost - that's business

[EtherealN]

Aye Bradleyjs,

 

We actually see a bit of the same type of thing with the processors we buy as well - the manufacturing cost itself of, say, an i7 2600K, is just a couple dollars, yet we pay ~350 dollars for it as customers... Seems weird until you realize the think cost over a billion dollars to develop, plus another billion or so for the machinery used to make it, and they have roughly 2 years total to make all of that money back (and hopefully a little profit)...

 

A more direct example, and I'll butcher it a bit through using numbers from Wikipedia, but it's just for illustration:

 

F-22A program cost is roughly $62 billion. That includes the 183 production aircraft. So ~338 million dollars per plane. If they'd made 10 planes in total, total program cost would have been ~36 billion dollars or 3.6 billion dollars per plane. If they'd made 5000 planes it would have been 785 billion dollars for the program, but only 157 million dollars per plane. (In which case, in this rediculously simplified calculation, each plane only has to lift 7 million dollars of development.)

 

When it comes to highly specialized electronics like this, we are in the middle example: huge development costs to get the thing developed, but very few units to bear that costs. Therefore: extremely expensive computers.

 

The only way around that would be to take off-the-shelf kit and use that, but you'd pretty much never have the faintest chance of being combat effective in that case.

[Frostiken]

If you have to develop a processor that meet X specification, and you then is only going to sell a couple thousand of them... It will get rediculously expensive.

 

You contradicted your own point with this one.

 

In the 70s, military technology was way ahead of the civilian market. The home computer didn't even exist in concept, and computers, crude though they may have been, were making great advances. A lot of this technology carried over to the civilian sector. You can make a fine case for the exorbitant costs they paid then, but they were also paying outrageous sums of money for 1980s technology in the 1970s. It's 2011, and we're paying outrageous amounts of cash for 1990s technology in 2011. Your example of space technology is the same thing. The Apollo program, even the Space Shuttles were all designed using futuristic technology (at the time) so you're right, the cost went into developing the technology. There was, in many cases, nothing for them to build off of. It's easier to justify a $500,000 computer when nobody even knew what a transistor was.

 

 

 

Let me put it this way, Ethereal - how do you explain the $4,000 toilet seats, or to use a more prudent example: the fact that the exact same waveguide clamp that is sold online for $45 can be found for sale to the military for a whopping $1,217? Keep in mind we're talking about two screws, two washers, two nuts, a bracket, latch, and spring-loaded locking tab.

Edited July 7, 2011 by Frostiken

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

Frostiken, I hope you aren't seriously comparing consumer electronics with military electronics? etc etc...

 

Ah, you beat me to the punch!

 

I spent a considerable part of my career working on military projects - radar, comms, ATC, etc. As EtherealN said - you cannot those types of specialist projects and equipment and compare them with consumer electronics like PC's and iPods.

[EtherealN]

In the 70s, military technology was way ahead of the civilian market. The home computer didn't even exist in concept, and computers, crude though they may have been, were making great advances. A lot of this technology carried over to the civilian sector.

 

 

;)

 

You can make a fine case for the exorbitant costs they paid then, but they were also paying outrageous sums of money for 1980s technology in the 1970s. It's 2011, and we're paying outrageous amounts of cash for 1990s technology in 2011.

 

This is what you are not getting. Re-read. They are NOT paying for 90's technology. They are paying a lot for components that have the same raw computation power as we saw in consumer electronics in the 90's yes, but this is NOT the same thing.

 

Stick consumer hardware into one of those planes and see how long it is until you have to rip the whole shebang out of the plane. Or piece it together from a wreck. Your comparison is false because the things you are comparing to literally would not fly.

 

Your example of space technology is the same thing. The Apollo program, even the Space Shuttles were all designed using futuristic technology (at the time) so you're right, the cost went into developing the technology. There was literally nothing for them to build off of.

 

Actually, the example I used (the RAD750) is what's being put into spacecraft right now. Not Apollo.

 

That still doesn't explain why advances made in the civilian sector haven't even showed up in modern military technology.

 

Because military hardware and consumer hardware has completely different needs. That's the entire point. An F-15E doesn't need a rackmount of Sandy Bridge action with a couple Tesla cards thrown in for good measure, it needs a given amount of computation power and it needs that stuff to withstand radiation, extreme shock, very violent temperature gradients and so on and so forth. Replace it with what you are comparing it to and you'd have every single plane gliding back home with shot electronics. Every flight.

 

Let me put it this way, Ethereal - how do you explain the $4,000 toilet seats, or to use a more prudent example: the fact that the exact same waveguide clamp that is sold online for $45 can be found for sale to the military for a whopping $1,217? Keep in mind we're talking about two screws, two washers, two nuts, a bracket, latch, and spring-loaded lock.

 

Unfortunately I don't know much about toilet seats (well, I know how to use them and that's pretty much good enough for me), but I do happen to know a bit about computers, and I know a bit about economy as well. But you aren't interested in actually having a productive discussion anyhow.

 

As for the waveguide, my guess would be a combination of several things, but the obvious one is that prices tend to vary a lot depending on what is implied in the sale. When I buy a laptop in the store for 300 dollars I get one year of warranty. When I buy a considerably weaker microcontroller for the same amount of money I get a much bigger warranty. I do end up paying for that warranty though. There's also legal aspects - if vendor liability is part of the supply contract, you bet they'll charge extra. I most definitely would. They need to pay for those liability insurances somehow. It's the same thing - if I sell a system to a client, and the contract includes a long warranty, I charge it. If I calculate that every 50th system will incur a warranty liability of X, then I have to make sure this liability is spread out over all these systems.

[Frostiken]

But you aren't interested in actually having a productive discussion anyhow.

 

 

 

I was going to point out how the military could have curbed the costs by something called 'standardization', so instead of 100 Type A IFF units for airframe X and 100 Type B for airframe Y, they just buy 200 Type C that works in both... but like you said, I don't want to discuss anything.

Edited July 8, 2011 by 159th_Viper
Rule 1.3

[EtherealN]

My point is that instead of actually meeting the arguments you head out on tangents about toilet seats...

 

I'll be happy to discuss avionics if you go ahead and actually meet the arguments given to counter yours.

 

As an aside, btw:

 

 

...I give you the first PC with a mouse-drive graphical user interface, anno 1973. :)

Computer history is awesome and full of cool stuff, and one routinely finds that stuff was done way earlier than one might have thought.

[EtherealN]

But okey then, lets say they fully standardize the avionics such that every airplane in US inventory use the same stuff. We then get roughly 5500 units for the current fleet + spares.

 

...it'll still cost rediculous amounts of money compared to consumer hardware produced in the millions. There simply isn't enough planes being built and used to make these components individually cheap.

[bradleyjs]

Self-Assigned Moderator: Ok guys -=- we all have our points - this thread is getting away from the actual topic ..

 

But, ;-) , extremely good conversation -- just like 2 lawyers [Prosecution/Defense] (AKA from the Casey Anthony case here in Orlando this week) has been entertaining ...

 

No matter what we discuss, both NASA and Defense contractors (which whom I work for supporting the US Army, will always cost more...

 

BTW: Unrelated to this thread, the LAST Space Shuttle will not launch tomorrow because the weather here will be horrible... assuming that most of us on this forum care about the STS history..

 

Have a Nice Day!

[EtherealN]

BTW: Unrelated to this thread, the LAST Space Shuttle will not launch tomorrow because the weather here will be horrible... assuming that most of us on this forum care about the STS history..

 

I was almost happy about that, but I won't have a chance to get to the launch anyway. Always wanted to see a shuttle launch but... :(

[bradleyjs]

Yeah, I hear ya... I used to work for Rockwell/United Space Alliance (USA) supporting the STS program back from 93' - 97' [as a Software Engineer] after I left the USAF (which we indirectly supported the Space Coast while in the USAF) ...

 

It's really sad to see the system go away .. gonna miss the double sonic-booms on landing everytime they come back .. it actually shakes the house windows; really impressive ... I saw the Challenger explode with the MK-1 way back then.... memories...

 

Ok, back on topic now? ;-)

 

Edit: I remember having A-10A's that used to come to Patrick AFB, FL (@Cocoa Beach, FL) back in 84'+ to practice doing FAC missions to support our OV-10A/O-2A training operations -- and I've been in LOVE with them since then... I've seen the A-10A's fire the GAU-8 from both the air (after firing Marking WP rockets from an O-2A) and the ground at the ranges in Avon Park, FL and near Shaw AFB, SC over the years ... impressive to say the least...

Edited July 8, 2011 by bradleyjs