James wrote:

I believe one thing that drives up the prices on all this mil grade equipment
is requirments for measured drawings so these things can be repaired or
replaced
when in service. For example on ship or sub there is machine shops to fix
things
or fabricate replacement parts.

If they put $ 600 toilet seats in b1 bombers, wonder how much the ones
in the White House or AF-1 cost ?

jimbo

Ed wrote:


Why are you picking on Haliburton? You think they are the only ones
doing this? Don't you remember the $600 toilet seats and $75 hammers from
decades ago? ....

grin

Ed



I know someone who used to work at Boeing. That $600 toilet seat came
about because after the airplane was designed the Air Force came back
with a requirement that necessitated (a) a total redesign of the whole
interior of the aircraft or (b) narrowing the lav to the point where a
stock seat from a 747 wouldn't fit anymore. $600 per seat was cheaper
than ripping the whole thing out and redoing it.

The other thing that drives the price up on mil grade equipment is that
there's not much of it made. When you are Ford and can count on making
100,000 cars a year you can spend a _lot_ of money on engineering,
because it'll be divided by 100,000 when you figure the price of the
car. When you're Raytheon and you can only count on selling 100 systems
before you need to make something different it would cost the customer
many more $$ to engineer the production cost down than it does to just
build things stout enough to work without worry.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com