Fun with numbers, or fake it until they break it

The Air Force has released some rather interesting numbers recently. The 2015 Cost Per Flying Hour/Mission Capable rate report was received and it had some fun numbers, including an almost obviously altered number to make a program look better.

The biggest change was the F-35A, which decreased by 37.6%, down to $42,200/hour to operate. That puts it $17,000 below the F-22 per flight hour. The F-35As operating out of Hill AFB had the highest mission capable rate, at 80%. The Eglin F-35C is next, at 79%. The fleet wide average is 51%.

The F-16C came in at the cheapest of the fighters to operate, with a 73% MC rate. At the other end was the F-22, which had a 67% MC rate. The only aircraft to have a 100% mission capable rate was the C-21, based on the Lear 35.

Now here's the fun one. In 2015 the RQ-4 Global Hawk decreased the CPFH by 5.7%, with 31 aircraft. Amazingly, in that same time frame, the 32 U-2S platforms increased their CPFH by, wait for it, 5.9%.

www.flightglobal.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

That high cost per hour of the Raptor, Is it intended to kill any speculation of "re-opening their production"
rumors that were floating around last week?

a reply to: nwtrucker

No, that was the high cost of adding more that was announced earlier. Something like $17B for 75 aircraft. Came out to over $200M per aircraft.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I really liked the combat readiness percentages (and likelihood of getting fixes done in 24 hours) for each of the aircraft, especially the bombers.

a reply to: anzha

I was surprised to see the break rate as low as it was for a couple.

a reply to: Zaphod58


Hmm, maybe paper-work in case of a change in policy that might come with a new president? Say cutting a couple hundred 35s? ...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Perhaps initial cost projections came down on the sixth gen fighter and a whole bunch of people puked....


That could revive an upgraded F-22 program if the jump in cost to sixth gen is anything like the jump to fifth gen...

a reply to: nwtrucker

To restart it means they have to take the tooling out of storage, retrain people on it by watching videos they made, because no one is left that worked it, start the long lead items again, which means other companies will have to do something similar...

Restarting a production line, especially for stealth is incredibly expensive. Better just to start the sixth generation then to pay that much for an improved fifth.