Airliners.net

LyleLanley wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

… "politics stopped me from buying ahead" isn't really a good answer.

Unfortunately, the government is full of “not good” answers. It’s just how the system is set up.

No one is saying what you’re saying isn’t physically doable - it is. But it’s absolutely not economically doable. The system is not conducive to updates without spending an exorbitant of money the DoD didn’t (and still doesn’t) have. The F-22 is the aviation equivalent of buying an iMac that is physically unable to have its RAM, hard drive, and CPU updated and then coming back years later to update it. Doable if you spend big $$$ but otherwise cheaper to buy a new computer.

Rewind to 2009 for a moment: it’s the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; you’re fighting two (!!!) counter insurgencies at the same time - neither of which had any use whatsoever for a stealthy, super maneuverable air-to-air only fighter; you have massive investment bills coming due for an extremely expensive tri-service fighter that is overweight, behind schedule, and over budget. Finally, you have an Air Force seemingly spending more time fighting to buy 375 F-22s for the next big war rather than supporting the other branches fighting current wars (slow rolling the 50 CAP ISR mandate). This is the same branch that also caused repeated international embarrassment by shipping nuclear weapon parts to Taiwan by mistake and flying 6 nuclear warheads halfway across the country without anyone noticing for two days.

Now with all that, the service says they need many billions of dollars more to modernize the F-22 - just to enable it to be truly modernized.

Kind of a hard sell.

bikerthai wrote:

From what I can see, the part is not being used by industry any more. They have another part that has the same fit but with more functionality that's more widely use. And even at $100 a piece, it is not worth keeping making them when we only consume about 10 a month. If push comes to shove, we can use the new part with minimal impact to other systems. But it does cost more upfront money.to make the change over.

bt

kitplane01 wrote:

Im curious, was there thought given to making a large end of production purchase?

kitplane01 wrote:

I didn’t think we were talking about upgrading the existing F22s. That does sound economically horrible. I believe we started by saying that f22 production could have continued by pre buying soon to be discontinued chips.

I think we have agreement??? Crudely summarizing, soon to be discontinued chips could have been pre-purchased, and were pre purchased for Maintenece, but because the government and LM suck they could not do it for production. It’s possible, but not in the face of this much dysfunction.

LyleLanley wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

I didn’t think we were talking about upgrading the existing F22s. That does sound economically horrible. I believe we started by saying that f22 production could have continued by pre buying soon to be discontinued chips.

I think we have agreement??? Crudely summarizing, soon to be discontinued chips could have been pre-purchased, and were pre purchased for Maintenece, but because the government and LM suck they could not do it for production. It’s possible, but not in the face of this much dysfunction.

You’re only catching part of the point: not only would it have been expensive to pre-purchase all those “extra” chips and the much greater quantity of spares you also have to buy and store (for a more than doubled aircraft fleet size), but the cost of updating all those aircraft just a few years down the road would’ve been that much greater as computing software and technology moved beyond its extremely bespoke infrastructure. Would it be worth continuing production or shift production to a more updatable aircraft whose software updates aren’t measured in years?

Imagine you have a company of 800 employees and you decide to purchase 75 modern Nokia flip phones every year for them, to take about 10 years total. Then you have to lay off employees because of downsizing and lack of investors; curtailing the number of phones you buy on a yearly basis as well as the total number of phones you need. Eventually you're down to 381 needed phones and you buy 13 employees a flip phone annually. When only 195 employees now have ancient cell phones and Nokia decides to end production due to business drying up do you quickly order nearly 200 obsolete phones at much greater cost because of demand, materials, dwindling production lines, etc. Or do you cut your losses and switch to iPhone 14s which not only were unimaginable when you first bought your Nokias, but are infinitely more capable and updatable.

Easy choice.

LyleLanley wrote:

(for a more than doubled aircraft fleet size), but the cost of updating all those aircraft just a few years down the road would’ve been that much greater as computing software and technology moved beyond its extremely bespoke infrastructure. Would it be worth continuing production or shift production to a more updatable aircraft whose software updates aren’t measured in years?

angad84 wrote:

bikerthai wrote:

kitplane01 wrote:

And why cannot LM buy chips ahead?

It's not necessarily the chip but the whole circuit card and components that goes in to the LRU. LM can buy the chip, but they do not own the circuit card or the LRU design.

I've actually ran in to this situation recently. We had a notice from one supplier that they will stop production of a push to test button that we use as part of of our smoke detection system. We had the opportunity to do one last buy. The part probably costs no more than $100. It took more than a month to get the power that be to approve an order to cover the rest of our projected production run plus lots of spares.

If we had to redesign the assembly to accept a new/similar to push to test button, it would have cost us 100 X the cost of the lot buy to redesign/installation paperwork.

This is just for a simple push to test button!

bt

If it's not sensitive info, I'd be really interested in understanding *why* this supplier is ceasing production of the part?

kitplane01 wrote:

iPhones are drop in, low cost improvement for ancient Nokias. Upgrading the F22 avionics would cost $billions

Are you arguing for upgrading the F22 avionics and electronics?

RJMAZ wrote:

The F-22 fleet already received basic updates in service. Most of the cost of the update is the development of the update. If the F-22 fleet was more than doubled the development cost of an update can be amortised over a larger number of aircraft. Updates will then be much cheaper per aircraft.

So in terms of updating the aircraft once in service it is an argument for having a larger fleet not for ending production.

LyleLanley wrote:

If your wife comes home after spending $2,000 on 10 pairs of shoes and justifies spending such a huge sum by saying each pair was cheaper by buying in bulk that doesn't make everything copacetic: she still spent $2,000.

RJMAZ wrote:

LyleLanley wrote:

If your wife comes home after spending $2,000 on 10 pairs of shoes and justifies spending such a huge sum by saying each pair was cheaper by buying in bulk that doesn't make everything copacetic: she still spent $2,000.

The correct analogy would be: The husband had already approved for the wife to go buy a set of shoes for $2000. After the first purchase she could get additional pairs of the same quality for only $1. She then comes home with 100 pairs of high value shoes for $2,100.

The development cost for the update was already funded for the current fleet ($2000 first shoe purchase) installing the software update on the jets is the $1 additional pair of shoes.

If 400+ F-22 were originally purchased it would not surprise me if the fleet was kept in service until 2050. Fitting new systems would now be much cheaper per aircraft that it makes sense doing that compared to purchasing an F-35 for that role.