4 ms·

This is an uninformed and inaccurate take. While the fixed costs of any aircraft are significant, flight time is a definite extra cost. Apart from the obvious

This is an uninformed and inaccurate take. While the fixed costs of any aircraft are significant, flight time is a definite extra cost. Apart from the obvious cost of the kerosene the aircraft will accrue flight time and fatigue. Every component has a flight time clock, which dictates when it must be serviced and replaced. F-15C are very expensive to operate, $40k per hour would be quite possible. Let me forestall arguments about incidental training. For training to count towards maintaining readiness it must be carefully designed and supervised. No training benefit would have eventuated. If the money 'would have been spent anyway' then it would have been spent for a correctly determined purpose, such as training. Diversion to other purposes is not free.

imwillofficial 6y ago
His comment was neither uninformed, nor inaccurate. I used to work in fighter jet training community. The costs to fly a plane, while not zero, are marginal compared to the total cost of ownership of the airframe.
- angry_octet 6y ago
  That is a fake argument and you know it, the cost of the entire capability has no bearing on whether additional money was wasted. By your logic I could steal $10k from your bank account and say it was a rounding error compared to your lifetime earnings.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    So you’re comparing theft, to flight time that is required by law to be maintained by pilots. Good to see you’re being reasonable.
    - angry_octet 6y ago
      Flight hours consumed by thought bubble bs don't do anything to achieve readiness. Pilots hate being cannon fodder in exercises, their disdain for this level of rubbish is extreme. People are routinely convicted or given poor discharges because of much smaller thefts, like inaccurately claiming living allowance. Using NG combat aircraft for distinctly political purposes is far worse than theft.
      - imwillofficial 5y ago
        Equating this with theft is disingenuous at best. Any hours in the air are a net gain for a pilot. Period.
        angry_octet 5y ago
        "Worse than theft" != "Theft" Using the military for partisan political purposes, specifically surveillance and intimidation of political demonstrations.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        Although I agree in principle with you, no action against citizens was actually committed. The jet didn’t do any spying. As for your “worse than theft” comment: “By your logic I could steal $10k from your bank account” That’s you, equating this issue, with theft.
robomartin 6y ago
> This is an uninformed and inaccurate take. Quite to the contrary. It is more informed and accurate than you might think. I am not one of those people who posts comments without having any context or knowledge in the matter at hand. If I don't know something with a good degree of certainty I don't participate in the conversation just to add ignorant noise. At the simplest possible level of abstraction, a military base is allocated X dollars per year to function. This money is spent. Period. Fly or don't. That's the cost. They don't pull out credit card every time they need to fly a plane or drive a truck. If someone wants to claim that this flight cost taxpayers ADDITIONAL money they need to prove there was a requisition as a result of that flight and show costs incurred over and above the baseline. They can't, because the entire cost attribution is 100% fake. In some cases they are pulling numbers out of the anus, just making stuff up. How? Politician: "General, how much does it cost to fly that plane per hour?". General: "$10K" Politician: "This incident cost taxpayers $100K!" No, it did not. That money was allocated and spent already. The operational cost the general quoted is the baseline, fly or not. You have air bases with thousands of people, thousands of pieces of equipment, systems, hardware, etc. The baseline cost is massive. One flight here and there is truly a rounding error. Base Operations Support, as a budget line item, is in the tens of billions of dollars per year. Look it up. Here, start with this. Try to find a $100K flight in there. https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_OM_Overview.pdf https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg... Uninformed and inaccurate? Please.
- angry_octet 6y ago
  The fact that the military is expensive and the accounting Byzantine does not alter the fact that additional resource was expended beyond what was authorised by Congress. Good luck justifying your argument to oversight. Flying time and jet fuel is specifically a cost that is monitored across the Air Force to make sure it is not wasted. Diversion to crap like this is part of the USAF pilot retention problem.

imwillofficial 6y ago

His comment was neither uninformed, nor inaccurate. I used to work in fighter jet training community. The costs to fly a plane, while not zero, are marginal compared to the total cost of ownership of the airframe.

angry_octet 6y ago
That is a fake argument and you know it, the cost of the entire capability has no bearing on whether additional money was wasted. By your logic I could steal $10k from your bank account and say it was a rounding error compared to your lifetime earnings.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  So you’re comparing theft, to flight time that is required by law to be maintained by pilots. Good to see you’re being reasonable.
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    Flight hours consumed by thought bubble bs don't do anything to achieve readiness. Pilots hate being cannon fodder in exercises, their disdain for this level of rubbish is extreme. People are routinely convicted or given poor discharges because of much smaller thefts, like inaccurately claiming living allowance. Using NG combat aircraft for distinctly political purposes is far worse than theft.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Equating this with theft is disingenuous at best. Any hours in the air are a net gain for a pilot. Period.
      - angry_octet 5y ago
        "Worse than theft" != "Theft" Using the military for partisan political purposes, specifically surveillance and intimidation of political demonstrations.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        Although I agree in principle with you, no action against citizens was actually committed. The jet didn’t do any spying. As for your “worse than theft” comment: “By your logic I could steal $10k from your bank account” That’s you, equating this issue, with theft.

robomartin 6y ago

> This is an uninformed and inaccurate take. Quite to the contrary. It is more informed and accurate than you might think. I am not one of those people who posts comments without having any context or knowledge in the matter at hand. If I don't know something with a good degree of certainty I don't participate in the conversation just to add ignorant noise. At the simplest possible level of abstraction, a military base is allocated X dollars per year to function. This money is spent. Period. Fly or don't. That's the cost. They don't pull out credit card every time they need to fly a plane or drive a truck. If someone wants to claim that this flight cost taxpayers ADDITIONAL money they need to prove there was a requisition as a result of that flight and show costs incurred over and above the baseline. They can't, because the entire cost attribution is 100% fake. In some cases they are pulling numbers out of the anus, just making stuff up. How? Politician: "General, how much does it cost to fly that plane per hour?". General: "$10K" Politician: "This incident cost taxpayers $100K!" No, it did not. That money was allocated and spent already. The operational cost the general quoted is the baseline, fly or not. You have air bases with thousands of people, thousands of pieces of equipment, systems, hardware, etc. The baseline cost is massive. One flight here and there is truly a rounding error. Base Operations Support, as a budget line item, is in the tens of billions of dollars per year. Look it up. Here, start with this. Try to find a $100K flight in there. https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2021/fy2021_OM_Overview.pdf https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg... Uninformed and inaccurate? Please.

angry_octet 6y ago
The fact that the military is expensive and the accounting Byzantine does not alter the fact that additional resource was expended beyond what was authorised by Congress. Good luck justifying your argument to oversight. Flying time and jet fuel is specifically a cost that is monitored across the Air Force to make sure it is not wasted. Diversion to crap like this is part of the USAF pilot retention problem.