DerGiLLster
Airman
- 70
- May 1, 2015
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airframe cost around RM87,400, while the Junker 004 engines cost around RM10,000 each
Economy of scale works the same for modern aircraft.
If RAF had elected to mass produce Typhoon rather then a few Typhoons plus a few F-35s the cost per aircraft would be considerably cheaper. If RAF had bought into French Rafael program rather then building Typhoon the cost per aircraft would be cheaper still.
But it's only tax money so production cost doesn't matter.
Mass production isn't just a case of amortising R+D costs and tooling costs. Ideally you do a production run of an initial batch where the design and production is 'fixed'. For some reason for Eurofighters these are called Tranche's and perhaps "Blocks" in the USA as per the F-16.
You can also counter that with the inefficiencies of slave labor, not just quality control issues either, but even that is a rather tiny portion compared to the massive problems of efficient logistical resource management in the war-time German economy. (or pre-war for that matter ... even within the constraints of a planned/demand economy, the Nazi management was particularly bad)Whenever you talk of cost of anything made during the last years of the 3rd Reich you have to consider the use of forced or slave labor made everything produced using them seem artificially low.
If you added in the post war reparations these industries paid for use of these slaves those labor cost may not be so low.
The jury is still out on that one. Politics and world events will determine how many F-35s are going to be built. F-16s are still being built, over 4500 so far. If that's not mass production, I don't know what is.There really is no such thing as 'mass production' of modern jets. For the Typhoon the figure is still somewhere less than 600. The original figure touted for production of all versions of the F-35 was over 5,000, but that has already fallen to about 3,000 and will probably fall lower still.
F-16s are still being built, over 4500 so far.
Over how many years?
The average age of a USAAF aircraft in current service is still over 25 years.
Cheers
Steve
That equates at 180 a year. It isn't a WW2 pace but it's still huge.
Well we'll agree to differ over the definition of huge. It's a yearly production less than the monthly production of the more popular WW2 types. It is true that at even this level of production over so many years certain economies will be made.
Cheers
Steve
Whenever you talk of cost of anything made during the last years of the 3rd Reich you have to consider the use of forced or slave labor made everything produced using them seem artificially low.
If you added in the post war reparations these industries paid for use of these slaves those labor cost may not be so low.