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It's annoying that they don't compare the costs: B-2 has a unit cost of 2.13B$ (1997 $) = 4.08B$ B-21 has a unit cost of 0.55B$ (2010 $) = 0.78B$ Looks nice

• miketery 3y ago
  Much of the cost in per unit is due to initial capex (e.g. R&D and tooling). I would hope they're reusing many of the things from the first version. This would make the new version much cheaper per unit. But agreed that cost is likely to balloon, both government and defense contractors are incentivized for it to balloon (it's a lucrative jobs program for many across many states).
  • coredog64 3y ago
    The rule of thumb from my senior aircraft design course was that 90% of the cost is designed in before you bend the first piece of sheet metal. Commercial programs have their own guidelines about how many planes you have to make to break even, and even there where they aren’t radically pushing the envelope it’s on the order of hundreds.
• Racing0461 3y ago
  Isn't cost misleading? the "cost per plane" is usually the input (total money dedicated by congress including 50 year maintainence window) divided by the output (number of planes). so it looks unusally expensive (f35 prOGrAm coSTs 1.5 TRilLiON DollARS) but the actual materials of the plane is a minute fraction of that nummber which is what people think of when they hear cost.
  • slt2021 3y ago
    basically military budget will always eat 1/4 to 1/3 of the US budget no matter the output, so if it produces few dozen F35 then yes - it will look like costs per unit are outrageous. a lot of military spending is fixed costs that pentagon is unable to dial down, has to spend due to contracts and maintenance, and basically jobs + pork barrel program. so they just play "hollywood accounting" tricks by allocating their spend from line item A to line item B, depending on what voters will bear. one decade it will be Afghanistan war, another decade it will be airforce development, this upcoming decade it will be Navy spending on new boats etc.
    • dragonwriter 3y ago
      > basically military budget will always eat 1/4 to 1/3 of the US budget Its closer to 1/6.
  • yread 3y ago
    Wiki also says that B-21 is projected to cost 213B$ for 100 planes over 30 years. So you get 2.13B$ again. Projected costs are also likely to increase (of course! I can't estimate how much time one screen is gonna take me, can't imagine estimating 30 years worth of stuff)
    • ianburrell 3y ago
      The $203B is the total program cost. It includes the 30 years of operating costs which are more than development and acquisition. The unit cost is currently estimated to be $700 million. The B-2 $2B is 1992 unit cost. Inflation means more like $4B. Plus, the B-2 are pretty expensive to operate which is why the B-21 will replace the B-2 first.
      • giantrobot 3y ago
        The Air Force planned to order more than 100 B-2s when the program was started but Congress cut the order down to fewer than two dozen. So the cost per plane ballooned because the development costs had to be amortized of a smaller number of airframes.
• justahuman74 3y ago
  Cost per plane comes down when they do a bigger production run, as the initial R&D is amortized over a bigger fleet. B-2 orders were reduced which raised per-plane costs
  • Teever 3y ago
    It's almost important to note that this new B-21 has half the bomb capacity of the B-2. So that means that you need twice as many planes to accomplish the same mission.
    • jandrewrogers 3y ago
      Not really, it will be used almost exclusively to deliver very smart, very precise weapons that are smaller and lighter than what they replace. See, for example, the Small Diameter Bomb[0] program. In this capacity raw tonnage matters less. When the B-2 was designed, the ordnance options were a lot more limited, bulkier, and heavier. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-39_Small_Diameter_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-39_Small_Diameter_Bomb
      • Teever 3y ago
        Yes really. If the mission calls for x kg of bombs then a plane that carries x/2 kgs is insufficient and you'll need to send two planes.
        • giantrobot 3y ago
          Bombing missions are about destroying targets, not meeting some quota of explosives dropped. Precision bombs require far fewer units and a lower mass of explosives to destroy a target than dumb bombs.
          • Teever 3y ago
            This is all true, but if your target still requires twice as many bombs of whatever technology than your aircraft can hold you will need to send two planes. I think we're talking past each other.
• Havoc 3y ago
  > who knows how it ends up Sounds like thus far they're tracking well though Minor miracle in itself lol