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Subject: Unpossible
Nichevo    4/17/2006 8:49:23 AM
I sent SP a feedback on the artillery journal today. It seems to represent some sort of slip-up, like a decimal point or something. How can the SDB cost 30 percent more than the Excalibur? It defies logic, someone needs to be shot, if true. $200 for a TomTom GPS. Multiply by 10x for milspec and add some model aircraft wings made out of freaking Nerf plastic or balsa wood or fiberglass. Are you f&*king kidding me? I mean if an error, then ha ha, it would make sense for the SDB to cost around $10-15K a crack IM uninformed O. But if this is the extent of the ripoff Boeing allegedly subjected us to, or whether it was LockMart, or some carbon fiber cartel or whether these are really worth 4x a JDAM... Just doesn't seem right. It throws the hell out of your accounting if you are going to pile on a bunch of meaningless developkment costs. Well, ta. I would have to understand the "fact basis" as ol' Braddock might say before I could say more. Just consider this a red flag. I'm probably overreacting but either it is true, which menacing, or false, which annoying. Thanks for the 99% delicious free ice cream! ;>
 
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Nichevo    RE:Unpossible ?   4/19/2006 4:47:58 PM
To paraphrase the pungent Ozzy Osbourne (IIRC), Who do I have to blow to get some feedback around here? Was this question THAT dumb? I feel very differently about SDB and perhaps follow-ons with the zero tacked on. I guess we will have to wait for the Chinese to produce the first $1000 PGM.
 
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flamingknives    RE:Unpossible   4/19/2006 5:49:52 PM
Possibly someone is taking the program cost amortised over the production run rather than the unit production cost. All the validation and testing, design and proofing are expensive. It is misleading to compare milspec materials with stuff you can buy in the shops. The Customer often insists on aerospace-grade qualified materials, which get rather pricey. Looking at the Boeing site, they quote $38.3m for 567 weapons and 140 carriages and $18.5m for 201 weapons and 35 carriages. Solving simultaneously (and I'm amazed I remembered how to do that) and you get 150k per weapon. I guess that there's some funky stuff in there.
 
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AussieEngineer    RE:Unpossible   4/20/2006 6:37:40 AM
Well they do have pretty slick IGS. They can hit within 60cm of the aim point IIRC, more accurate than a JDAM. Most of that accuracy is probably a result of inertial guidance. It's position is only updated with GPS periodically.
 
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Nichevo    RE:Unpossible   5/6/2006 2:11:02 AM
But most of that should have been based on existing tech. Instead they probably did a lot of reinventing the wheel. They should have just had a Seeker X spec, a plug-in architecture. And how much could a new steel body design cost? $1 million? I just think if the Chinese had our blueprints they could crank 'em out for a lot less.
 
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