Pentagon’s $55B mystery plane is secret, but debate on cost is appearing

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/02/27/pentagons-55-billion-mystery-plane-is-secret-but-debate-over-cost-is-appearing/

by adventured • 11 years ago

47 48 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

desdiv• 11 years ago

Northrop Grumman seriously paid for a Super Bowl ad?

Oh sure, next time I'm out shopping for a long range stealth bomber maybe I'll subconsciously remember the ad and choose a Northrop Grumman one. I've been a long time Boeing-Lockheed customer but the powerful imagery from that ad left quite the impression on me.

I get that defense officials and congressmen watch the Super Bowl, but there must be more cost effective methods of reaching them than buying the most expensive airtime on the planet.

tree_of_item• 11 years ago

Don't forget the signaling value: Northrop Grumman is not a small shop, and wants to show these officials and congressman that they're the real deal and have plenty of money to spend on flashy and super expensive things like Super Bowl ads.

c-slice• 11 years ago

I think this is completely PR - they want to create buzz and excitement in the public for the "hot new spy plane" such that its politically impossible for congress to cancel the program/cut the budget.

frabcus• 11 years ago

My guess is it's political - they want the public to also be excited about the mysterious new plane, and approve the budget.

gamegoblin2• 11 years ago

It could also be targeted at recruiting rather than customers. Someone might watch that and think "damn, I could work on some cool projects there!"

codeonfire• 11 years ago

A superbowl ad is not going to inspire the people you want to start working on advanced aircraft. The people you want are already working on advanced aircraft or are trying to get into the advanced aircraft business. You need people that know what they're doing, not the "dang that's cool" crowd.

rhino369• 11 years ago

Northrop and a whole bunch of contractors advertize on the DC subway line that runs to the pentagon. It's pretty funny.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

I had to laugh when Lockheed bragged that their expertise with the F35 qualified them for this new contract. Apparently failure of a program does not occur as long as funding is secured.

A lot of money could be saved by folding one or two branches together or removing duplicate functions. As in, if it flies its Air Force, if it floats its Navy, otherwise its Army.

DanielBMarkham2• 11 years ago

Not unusual.

I live near Washington, DC, and have worked in the area several times.

Companies that solicit work from the government regularly run TV and radio ads. I'll be listening to the traffic report on WTOP only to be interrupted by a commercial telling me how great Lockheed-Martin is and how many jobs it provides.

The amount of money flowing through DC has made it into a surreal place. Not unusual to walk by a homeless person warming themselves on a steam grate on the way to work -- and then come across a demonstration against some policy or another. Demonstrators are purchase d a la carte online: we need somebody for six hours today willing to carry a picket sign outside treasury. If you're upset about something you purchase some demonstrators, brief them on what to say, then arrange media coverage.

DC was its own little bizarre cloistered world 60 years ago when Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex. It's only gone several levels past that in the ensuing decades.

stealthc• 11 years ago

It's not about buying air time. It's about buying influence with the TV network.

CPLX• 11 years ago

Typically ads like this are intended to buttress the companies stock price. You see them for similar companies like ADM or Monsanto that also don't sell to the general public. The intended audience is most likely investors.

pmorici• 11 years ago

The article says the ad wasn't national and it only aired in the Washington and florida markets where their target demographics, politicians and employees of the contracting command reside.

venomsnake4• 11 years ago

Isn't the future in 3d printed automated drones, with absurdly low cost, that can saturate any defense.

ojbyrne• 11 years ago

"Absurdly low cost" won't work with the giant welfare system that is the DoD.

venomsnake4• 11 years ago

There are nations that have the outdated ideas of winning wars and not stimulating the economy ... for them the ideas of mass produced drones built at BOM, with some stolen IP from US are tempting.

sitkack• 11 years ago

The OP is referring to real vs perceived (manufactured) threats, but you know that.

adventured2• 11 years ago

The problem with such drones, is distance. Let's say Iran decides to take that approach. Then the question is: how far can they push those armed drones out from their operating bases. The answer is: not very far.

So no, drones saturating defenses isn't a serious threat to nations or regional strength, only to very specific targets that are nearby (eg an aircraft carrier & crew dumb enough to park off the coast of Iran, after they acquire such drone technology, and assuming the US has developed no defense for such).

venomsnake4• 11 years ago

The problems with such drones is not distance. When you remove the whole wetware, and the systems to keep it alive you can reduce the weight of the aircraft substantially.

Also it is threat for exactly the regional powers. Iran does not care about US, it cares for Iraq, Israel, Saudy Arabia, Egypt and Syria.

ricardobeat• 11 years ago

Did I seriously just read a cry for "disrupting the combat aircraft market"? How about disrupting the tobacco business? Disrupting human traffic? Exaggerations aside, not everything is about making (or saving) money. I sure as hell don't want military weapons to become the latest startup trend.

_yosefk• 11 years ago

I can see how we'd be better off without human trafficking and, to a smaller extent, without the tobacco business. I'm not sure we'd be better off without weapons. In fact, if the club became world's most advanced weapon tomorrow, it would, among other things, likely boost human trafficking.

venomsnake4• 11 years ago

We cannot be without weapons. Ever. A smart person could weaponize everything. That is the whole point of the brain evolving. It is in our DNA.

tormeh• 11 years ago

There are, of course, defense startups. This one is pretty futuristic/terrifying: http://www.proxdynamics.com/home

rprospero• 11 years ago

I have no love for the military. I turned down a guaranteed job offer that pays twice what I'm currently making simply because I don't want to work on things that kill people.

That said, I can also see the other side of this. According to Wikipedia, the US government spent $66 billion dollars on the F22. I'm naive, so I think that we could save $66 billion on that by just not having an F22, but congress disagrees with me and I'm not sure that I'll ever win that fight. However, imagine that start-ups could do the job 10% more efficiently. That's six billion dollars that you just saved.

Now, imagine an entire government agency, like the Peace Corp, but purely dedicated to fighting human trafficking. You could fund that agency for fifteen years on that six billion dollars. If the startup is 20% cheaper, then you could have a second agency of similar size that is dedicated to helping people stop smoking. If the startup managed to be a full 30% cheaper, you can throw in thirty thousand four-year, full-ride college scholarships.

Again, I'd love to have all of that $66 billion spent on other projects, but even funnelling part of that into a different area could markedly improve the world. I'd never work for a start-up that worked on air combat, but I'd be thrilled to free up some of the air combat budget.

jmgao• 11 years ago

The F-22 at least more or less accomplished what the program set out to do. It's hilarious to compare it to its "replacement", the F-35, a plane that attempts to shoehorn three mutually conflicting roles into one airframe to reduce costs, except it's going to cost something like a trillion dollars. The best (worst) one is the jumpjet version, designed to operate from temporary airfields and catapult-less aircraft carriers, except it melts anything it tries to land on [1], the fuel trucks that service it need to be painted white to keep the fuel cool enough so the plane doesn't fall out of the sky [2], and it can't even carry the bombs it was designed to carry [3]. At least, it's not alone in that problem though, the F-35A can't shoot its (pointless) gun [4].

[1] http://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-f-35b-vertical-landi...

[2] http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/5555...

[3] http://www.defenseworld.net/news/12313/F_35B__Incapable__Of_...

[4] http://rt.com/usa/219255-f35-fighter-jet-glitch/

Pxtl2• 11 years ago

There already are companies trying to disrupt the combat aircraft industry: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion

smhinsey• 11 years ago

So what happens if we find ourselves in a war of attrition again? Most/all of the potential opponents in such a war are nuclear powers so it's theoretically not a possibility but history is littered with theoretical impossibilities made real. It seems like we have all of these incredibly dominant and expensive weapons but only a relatively tiny supply, no timely and cost-effective way to replace losses, and not many options if they run out. I didn't attend a service academy so maybe I'm missing something, but what if the initial battle is not decisive and after 6 months of somehow-only-conventional war there are no more LRSBs or F-22s or whatevers?

adventured2• 11 years ago

The other major nuclear powers are no more capable of fighting a war of attrition than the US is.

Further, the US is highly unlikely to be dumb enough to fight a war in China or Russia. That would require ten million soldiers just to get started anyway. It simply isn't going to happen, any more than Russia or China are going to cross the Pacific or Atlantic and invade the US. China has very little capability to project outside its borders, and is in the process of modernizing its military and shrinking its forces. Russia has zero capability of projecting serious conventional might outside of its borders, or those extremely close by.

So what war of attrition is likely to occur? Whatever that is, it'll be fought closer to the enemy's backyard, than the US backyard. The US has military bases all around the planet, nobody else does. So the US can strike, perpetually, at foreign targets via force projection, while limiting damage to its domestic manufacturing capabilities. Said manufacturing capabilities would be, much like WW2, ramped up to meet demand. The US has a massive labor pool, and if desperately needed, could grant citizenship to tens of millions from Latin America in exchange for building armaments in factories. Unlike China, the US is capable of 100% domestic commodity supply, and if pressed can also fulfill all of its own manufacturing and technology needs (which China can as well, but they don't have the domestic commodities the US possesses).

To win a war of attrition, in a conventional war, the US could simply spam the construction of new B-52s and bombs, and then leverage its global bases, pressing an unrelenting bombing campaign taking out all of the enemy's manufacturing capabilities. No present or likely future enemies of the US could strike back at the US domestically for any sustained period of time.

Now, if we're talking China in 30 years, will they be able to project across the Pacific all the way to Hawaii and California? Interesting question, it's going to depend on whether their economy melts down due to the hyper debt accumulation they're undergoing now, and whether they end up in perpetual debt stagnation like Japan (while their demographics melt simultaneously, and the demand for entitlements to take care of the elderly soars, sapping their financial capabilities even further).

jacquesm• 11 years ago

Another way to look at those bases is to think of them as already captive American troops. You can project power all you want but if your runway has been bombed you're not going anywhere. Having your troops stationed the world over is both an advantage and a disadvantage, it allows your enemies to strike you the world over rather than just on your own soil.

See: USS Cole, Ein al-Asad and so on.

As for the US's ability to strike perpetually at foreign targets: that's limited to those targets that the US does not depend on in any economic capacity and only holds true as long as oil flows.

hessenwolf2• 11 years ago

America is unlikely to be dumb enough to fight a war in China and Russia, but a proxy war with China and/or Russia is likely. Russia had some key victories with really simple mass produced blanket bombing kit, simple tanks, ak47s, etc (there to be good at putting old crap together to build your solution: находчиво (nahohdchihvy)).

cturner• 11 years ago

It's a good question to ask, but the US would be far better placed to respond to this kind of attrition than any other nation. There'll be a stack of spare capacity in the training system and well-mothballed in airplane graveyards. The US is also awash with spare capacity in pilots. The carrier groups can be redeployed to weak areas. Plus diversified economy, good situation with food and energy sufficiency, transport redundancy, friendly border neighbours.

Negotiations between Australia and the US have ended with parts for planes being exchanged (trade agreement in late 90s). Extra parts for previous-generation planes are high-value to partners, near-zero marginal cost to the US.

pjc50• 11 years ago

You already are in a war of attrition and have been since October 2001. The attrition is of men and lightweight materiel rather than the fancy weapon systems.

The war in Ukraine in particular will be fought with deniable proxy forces on both sides.

ponyous• 11 years ago

WTF US, why do you need/want to build this? Do people support this?

zo1• 11 years ago

This may be an overall drop in the budget. But could we all agree that this money could have been spent for better causes? You know, the concrete stuff people expect of a government. Things such as homelessness, poverty, health, retirement, crime.

madaxe_again3• 11 years ago

Aw, c'mon, nobody has mentioned Aurora yet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28aircraft%29

johnnyyousef2• 11 years ago

"Aw, c'mon, nobody has mentioned Aurora yet?"

What on earth does that?

"nobody has mentioned Aurora yet?" you've obviously checked nobody mentioned it, so why not just give us the link and say how it's relevant.

"Aw, c'mon" what the hell is that? Who talks like that? What does "aw" mean? You're disappointed nobody has mentioned something is relevant? Why does that upset you? Why shorten "c'mon" from "come on" like that?

Why post this nonsense? Just give us the link and why it's relevant.

madaxe_again3• 11 years ago

What died up your arse? The link is right there. Would you like me to click it for you?

DanielBMarkham2• 11 years ago

I think the key question for space and aviation enthusiasts is whether or not the Pentagon is building a hypersonic suborbital manned bomber.

If they are -- and it's a big "if" -- then that means the technology for civilian use is just a couple/few decades away. I haven't seen the numbers, but in my mind the market for suborbital commercial flights, say, New York to Sydney in an hour or two, is already there. It's a place on the road to reducing cost-to-orbit where the money's already there. Somebody just has to go get it. Plus DoD will end up solving most of the problems by being the first mover.

Pxtl2• 11 years ago

I don't know, I don't think the market for any kind of supersonic passenger vehicle is there. Look at the Concord.

vvpan• 11 years ago

The best defence is probably not bombing the hell out of nations on the other side of the world to start with.

babby• 11 years ago

The title is a bit misleading.

    Pentagon's $55B mystery plane is secret...

Yet the planes only cost half a billion each:

    ... The service estimates it will cost
    $55 billion to build as many as 100 of
    what it calls the Long Range Strike Bomber ...

Here I was thinking they built the most reckless single aircraft ever.

Pentagon’s $55B mystery plane is secret, but debate on cost is appearing

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