swampyankee
Chief Master Sergeant
- 4,020
- Jun 25, 2013
American "prices" might be considered artificially low as, in some cases, they are not taking into account the cost of the building or the tooling.
In some cases the contract price of the aircraft covered the materials that were not GFE and the labor plus a small (like 3%) profit for management of the operation.
There have been some analyses comparing the net price to the taxpayer of the arsenal system, i.e., government-owned manufacturers of defense equipment vs investor-owned companies doing the same thing. The general consensus is that the net price is a wash: I'm not really in a position to judge the validity of their argument, but when you see the number of times that production contracts for superfluous aircraft, like P-43s, were let to keep privately-owned production lines going, one may see that the government/private cost comparison is not trivial.