Friday, September 14, 2012
Romney wants more F-22s, but at what cost?
Or at least he said that in VA Beach.
On the cost question, the article quotes Loren Thompson, who cites a $900 million figure to "ramp up production" based upon a quote provided by LM when Japan was inquiring about F-22s.
There is also, however, a RAND report (Retaining F-22 Tooling: Options and Costs [pdf]) that offers far more detail than an out of context number. It provides a point estimate of $307 million (FY10 dollars) to restart production in FY13 after a complete shutdown, with a low cost estimate of $116 million and high cost estimate of $507 million (p. 17).
Once the line was restarted, the RAND report estimates that it would cost ~$17 billion (FY10) to procure 75 F-22s over five years (at an average procurement unit cost of $233 million) (p. 22).
Even these costs could increase if the period of shutdown goes longer. Critical suppliers for the F-22 program have already begun to re-purpose their equipment or even shut down (chapter 5). So the RAND estimates represent the low end of the cost spectrum because its "future" restart scenario involved production starting in FY13. Were Romney's rhetoric to turn into policy, it would be at least FY15 before it actually began to be implemented. Even so, the non-recurring restart costs are dwarfed by the recurring cost of procuring additional aircraft ($0.1 billion to $0.5 billion vs. $17.1 billion).
Thus endeth today's procurement wonkery.
On the cost question, the article quotes Loren Thompson, who cites a $900 million figure to "ramp up production" based upon a quote provided by LM when Japan was inquiring about F-22s.
There is also, however, a RAND report (Retaining F-22 Tooling: Options and Costs [pdf]) that offers far more detail than an out of context number. It provides a point estimate of $307 million (FY10 dollars) to restart production in FY13 after a complete shutdown, with a low cost estimate of $116 million and high cost estimate of $507 million (p. 17).
Once the line was restarted, the RAND report estimates that it would cost ~$17 billion (FY10) to procure 75 F-22s over five years (at an average procurement unit cost of $233 million) (p. 22).
Even these costs could increase if the period of shutdown goes longer. Critical suppliers for the F-22 program have already begun to re-purpose their equipment or even shut down (chapter 5). So the RAND estimates represent the low end of the cost spectrum because its "future" restart scenario involved production starting in FY13. Were Romney's rhetoric to turn into policy, it would be at least FY15 before it actually began to be implemented. Even so, the non-recurring restart costs are dwarfed by the recurring cost of procuring additional aircraft ($0.1 billion to $0.5 billion vs. $17.1 billion).
Thus endeth today's procurement wonkery.
# posted by Wiggins @ 10:13 AM 
