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>Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner.

>Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS. That's the 2nd paragraph of the article that you apparently didn't read.

cushychicken 3y ago
Also means that there are way fewer airframes to spread development costs across. Looks like we both read it, but not all of us understood the implications of it.
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  They had already developed it. How much do you think it costs to design a bin..
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    How much do you think it costs to restart the production line for a component of an aircraft last made in 1979?
    - mynameisvlad 3y ago
      It’s. A. Trash. Can. This isn’t some specialized part that the plane requires to fly. It’s just a trash can. Hell, just go to Target and buy one that’s similarly sized. It would be cheaper to fly across the country to find one at this point.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        It is a trash can that must contain a waste fire so it doesn't burn through the wall of the plane or suffocate the crew. It is a trash can that must not fly around the E-3's cabin if they're making evasive maneuvers. It is a trash can that must fit in a specific spot in a plane first made in 1957 and ended production in the 1970s. It must have been confirmed via a vigorous process to fulfill all these requirements and approved for aviation use. You can not buy one of these at Target. They are not putting little plastic bins by the workstations in an AWACS plane.
        mynameisvlad 3y ago
        > You can not buy one of these at Target. They are not putting little plastic bins by the workstations in an AWACS plane. You do realize there are multiple trash cans available, right? Some that are metal. Of many different sizes. It would take less time to go store to store across the country and source 4 trash cans than it would to do this ludicrous process.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        > You do realize there are multiple trash cans available, right? Certified for use on 707s? Again, this is not the sort of trash can you have in your office. It'll be rated for fire, it'll be in a special cart that fits into a special locking spot in the plane, it will have been tested to stay in that special locking spot if the plane crashes, etc. It's like trying to buy Commodore 64 parts at Best Buy. Not going to happen.
        quickthrowman 3y ago
        You will not find a trash can in a store that meets the specifications document that defines an acceptable 707 trash can. There aren’t any being made by anyone that fit the precise military specification, so they must be manufactured at very low volumes, which spreads the overhead across far fewer units, resulting in eye-popping unit prices.
        Jochim 3y ago
        > You can not buy one of these at Target. They are not putting little plastic bins by the workstations in an AWACS plane. Apparently you could buy one for $300 though. I own a bin that isn't far off that price, and I'm sure many people on the site have much fancier ones.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        > Apparently you could buy one for $300 though. Yes, when they were being commercially manufactured for many users. Now that 707s are no longer in service outside the military, they're not running production lines for parts except when needed; that $200k includes all the paperwork to win the contract, the lawyers who review it, un-mothballing whatever tooling they use, etc.; the fixed costs far outweigh the costs to make each individual trash can. For similar reasons, I can buy a part for my Corolla much cheaper than I can for a Model T.
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- mcdonje 3y ago
  I see you're moving on to a different argument now. Before it was about R&D, but now that it's been established that we're talking about trash cans for a plane that's been built since the 1950s, the argument is now about economies of scale. For trash cans that each cost roughly the median income of a US full-time worker.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > a plane that's been built since the 1950s, the argument is now about economies of scale There used to be economies of scale. It's a 707; they stopped being made in 1979. If you want 707 parts now, there's a good chance they're gonna be produced on a very small scale custom job for you. (It's also a very special 707, inside and out. Cabin designs can vary significantly from airline to airline, let alone civilian to military.)
    - mcdonje 3y ago
      Yes, that's essentially their argument about economies of scale.
- jtrip 3y ago
  Development costs of what? The trashcan? What could possibly have cost them 50,000xplane frames to develop it in the first place? The reading of the article implies the contract set prices for commercial items and Boeing simply started charging the army whatever as soon as it technically wasn't 'commercial'.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Which is exactly how it works. And one of the main reasons why airplanes get more expensive to operate with age. Because it is not just trash cans, but also engine parts, electronics, structural parts...
  - oefrha 3y ago
    Hey, you must retain the rare talent capable of developing military-grade trash cans at all costs.
- arp242 3y ago
  Some price increase after that would be completely fair and reasonable, because it is harder and more expensive to produce. But 165×? Colour me skeptical on that. At $50k you can hire a craftsman to custom fit something (at a $500k income a year they'd have about a month for it). There's also some foresight involved here. I used to work for a company that delivered computers for industrial applications such as ASML and FEI (lithography machines and electron microscopes). They had very precise requirements: "we want Intel Xeon 5119 Rev 3 CPUs for the next 4 years, not Rev 2, not Rev 4, the revision shall be 3 and 3 shall be the number of the revision. Revision 5 is right out". The same applied with mainboards, memory, etc. There was also an entire testing procedure involved for many of these things and not all components passed. So, we charged them more for this then $random_person buying a component, obviously, but we also talked to them beforehand and knew roughly how many units they expected to sell, overbought components in bulk beforehand before they were EOL, and sold the rest afterwards fairly cheaply (because by then they were pretty old components). The volumes for these kind of machines is low (on the order of dozens or hundreds a year) so this was all practical. We made a fair but far from exuberant profit from this. I see no reason why this couldn't have happened here: "oh, your trash cans are going EOL; we expect to need 40 of them in the next 30 years, please produce them before you EOL them". I don't know which party failed on this part, but someone did. Possibly both. Even ordering two new-price trash cans leaves you with 250 of them at the old price. Storage isn't free either so let's assume 150 of them.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > I see no reason why this couldn't have happened here: "oh, your trash cans are going EOL; we expect to need 40 of them in the next 30 years, please produce them before you EOL them". Congress. The big stink would go from "we bought four $52k trash cans" to "we bought hundreds of trash cans we won't need for a decade, if ever!" Examples: Rand Paul complaining about things like $8M in unused solar panels: https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-highlights-18-billion-wasteful-spending-through-weekly-waste-reports/ https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-highlights-18... Bobby Jindal saying "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.": https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/bobby-jindal-and-volcano-monitoring-2009-02-25/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/bobby-jindal-...
- culi 3y ago
  Ok, well just a few more paragraphs down is: > The investigation also revealed that Raytheon Technologies had raised the price of Stinger missiles from $25,000 to more than $400,000 per unit. “Even accounting for inflation and some improvements, that’s a seven-fold increase,” Shay Assad, a former Pentagon acquisitions official, told 60 Minutes. The US ramped UP how many stinger missiles it bought so how could your explanation lead to an increase in price? Especially one so dramatic?
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cushychicken 3y ago

Also means that there are way fewer airframes to spread development costs across. Looks like we both read it, but not all of us understood the implications of it.

jabradoodle 3y ago
They had already developed it. How much do you think it costs to design a bin..
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  How much do you think it costs to restart the production line for a component of an aircraft last made in 1979?
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    It’s. A. Trash. Can. This isn’t some specialized part that the plane requires to fly. It’s just a trash can. Hell, just go to Target and buy one that’s similarly sized. It would be cheaper to fly across the country to find one at this point.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      It is a trash can that must contain a waste fire so it doesn't burn through the wall of the plane or suffocate the crew. It is a trash can that must not fly around the E-3's cabin if they're making evasive maneuvers. It is a trash can that must fit in a specific spot in a plane first made in 1957 and ended production in the 1970s. It must have been confirmed via a vigorous process to fulfill all these requirements and approved for aviation use. You can not buy one of these at Target. They are not putting little plastic bins by the workstations in an AWACS plane.
      - mynameisvlad 3y ago
        > You can not buy one of these at Target. They are not putting little plastic bins by the workstations in an AWACS plane. You do realize there are multiple trash cans available, right? Some that are metal. Of many different sizes. It would take less time to go store to store across the country and source 4 trash cans than it would to do this ludicrous process.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        > You do realize there are multiple trash cans available, right? Certified for use on 707s? Again, this is not the sort of trash can you have in your office. It'll be rated for fire, it'll be in a special cart that fits into a special locking spot in the plane, it will have been tested to stay in that special locking spot if the plane crashes, etc. It's like trying to buy Commodore 64 parts at Best Buy. Not going to happen.
        quickthrowman 3y ago
        You will not find a trash can in a store that meets the specifications document that defines an acceptable 707 trash can. There aren’t any being made by anyone that fit the precise military specification, so they must be manufactured at very low volumes, which spreads the overhead across far fewer units, resulting in eye-popping unit prices.
      - Jochim 3y ago
        > You can not buy one of these at Target. They are not putting little plastic bins by the workstations in an AWACS plane. Apparently you could buy one for $300 though. I own a bin that isn't far off that price, and I'm sure many people on the site have much fancier ones.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        > Apparently you could buy one for $300 though. Yes, when they were being commercially manufactured for many users. Now that 707s are no longer in service outside the military, they're not running production lines for parts except when needed; that $200k includes all the paperwork to win the contract, the lawyers who review it, un-mothballing whatever tooling they use, etc.; the fixed costs far outweigh the costs to make each individual trash can. For similar reasons, I can buy a part for my Corolla much cheaper than I can for a Model T.
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mcdonje 3y ago
I see you're moving on to a different argument now. Before it was about R&D, but now that it's been established that we're talking about trash cans for a plane that's been built since the 1950s, the argument is now about economies of scale. For trash cans that each cost roughly the median income of a US full-time worker.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > a plane that's been built since the 1950s, the argument is now about economies of scale There used to be economies of scale. It's a 707; they stopped being made in 1979. If you want 707 parts now, there's a good chance they're gonna be produced on a very small scale custom job for you. (It's also a very special 707, inside and out. Cabin designs can vary significantly from airline to airline, let alone civilian to military.)
  - mcdonje 3y ago
    Yes, that's essentially their argument about economies of scale.
jtrip 3y ago
Development costs of what? The trashcan? What could possibly have cost them 50,000xplane frames to develop it in the first place? The reading of the article implies the contract set prices for commercial items and Boeing simply started charging the army whatever as soon as it technically wasn't 'commercial'.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Which is exactly how it works. And one of the main reasons why airplanes get more expensive to operate with age. Because it is not just trash cans, but also engine parts, electronics, structural parts...
- oefrha 3y ago
  Hey, you must retain the rare talent capable of developing military-grade trash cans at all costs.
arp242 3y ago
Some price increase after that would be completely fair and reasonable, because it is harder and more expensive to produce. But 165×? Colour me skeptical on that. At $50k you can hire a craftsman to custom fit something (at a $500k income a year they'd have about a month for it). There's also some foresight involved here. I used to work for a company that delivered computers for industrial applications such as ASML and FEI (lithography machines and electron microscopes). They had very precise requirements: "we want Intel Xeon 5119 Rev 3 CPUs for the next 4 years, not Rev 2, not Rev 4, the revision shall be 3 and 3 shall be the number of the revision. Revision 5 is right out". The same applied with mainboards, memory, etc. There was also an entire testing procedure involved for many of these things and not all components passed. So, we charged them more for this then $random_person buying a component, obviously, but we also talked to them beforehand and knew roughly how many units they expected to sell, overbought components in bulk beforehand before they were EOL, and sold the rest afterwards fairly cheaply (because by then they were pretty old components). The volumes for these kind of machines is low (on the order of dozens or hundreds a year) so this was all practical. We made a fair but far from exuberant profit from this. I see no reason why this couldn't have happened here: "oh, your trash cans are going EOL; we expect to need 40 of them in the next 30 years, please produce them before you EOL them". I don't know which party failed on this part, but someone did. Possibly both. Even ordering two new-price trash cans leaves you with 250 of them at the old price. Storage isn't free either so let's assume 150 of them.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > I see no reason why this couldn't have happened here: "oh, your trash cans are going EOL; we expect to need 40 of them in the next 30 years, please produce them before you EOL them". Congress. The big stink would go from "we bought four $52k trash cans" to "we bought hundreds of trash cans we won't need for a decade, if ever!" Examples: Rand Paul complaining about things like $8M in unused solar panels: https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-highlights-18-billion-wasteful-spending-through-weekly-waste-reports/ https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-highlights-18... Bobby Jindal saying "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.": https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/bobby-jindal-and-volcano-monitoring-2009-02-25/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/bobby-jindal-...
culi 3y ago
Ok, well just a few more paragraphs down is: > The investigation also revealed that Raytheon Technologies had raised the price of Stinger missiles from $25,000 to more than $400,000 per unit. “Even accounting for inflation and some improvements, that’s a seven-fold increase,” Shay Assad, a former Pentagon acquisitions official, told 60 Minutes. The US ramped UP how many stinger missiles it bought so how could your explanation lead to an increase in price? Especially one so dramatic?

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