The strange world of aircraft costs
This from Aviation Week & Space Technology, August 7, p. 17 (text not online):
...the Royal Australian Air Force has ordered four C-17 transports and support services from Boeing. The airplanes cost [US] $780 million and support costs about $81 million.As for the Canadian Air Force:
The deal will furnish the forces with four C-17s for [CAN] $3.4 billion...Sure must be a lot more life-cycle costs being included by our government, as our cost for the same number of planes is about three times the Australian. Why do we always high-ball equipment acquisition costs here?
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 4:05 p.m.
3 Comments:
Fred: I suspect the Liberals high-balled costs to show how terribly expensive things are--and thus why they could not buy much--and the Conservatives do it to show how much money they are spending on defence.
Our media almost never bother to take the trouble to explain the difference between the ex-factory (comparatively low) and life-cycle costs--see the CBC story in the post. Our media are, for their own reasons (and because of their ignorance of things military), quite happy to report very high equipment costs.
Mark
Ottawa
Fred, I'd be interested in learning more about ILS, and it sounds like you know something about it. Why don't you drop me a line - my e-mail's in the sidebar.
Babbling: See also this post by Laurie Hawn before he became an MP (did in Landslide Annie):
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/ProfileMP.aspx?Key=78712&Language=E
"Airplanes and elections"
http://strongandfree.blogspot.com/2005/11/airplanes-and-elections_23.html
Mark
Ottawa
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