Used King Airs repurposed as MC-12's

[Uncle Fester]

I rushed a FL ANG unit that flies RC-26s for ISR, both sandbox and Homeland Security stuff. Very interesting gig; I think it would have been a good way to go, even with becoming Major Fester and ascots and all.

 

[pourts]

The real savings that gets people's attention are the order of magnitude reduction in costs per flight hour (direct costs of fuel and indirect cost to maintain aircraft) and the vastly reduced mx required (both in time and personnel required).

Ok, that makes sense. For a platform that has ABSOLUTELY no flexibility, I was hoping the savings to be more than just 60% less than a Rhino. On the other hand, a Reaper costs $30 million so its cheaper than that particular UAV.

And the ability to instantly re-sell at a pretty decent price is also good.

 

[HeyJoe]

Ok, that makes sense. For a platform that has ABSOLUTELY no flexibility, I was hoping the savings to be more than just 60% less than a Rhino. On the other hand, a Reaper costs $30 million so its cheaper than that particular UAV.

And the ability to instantly re-sell at a pretty decent price is also good.

These nontraditional ISR platforms have actually been around for quite some time and some are more specialized than others, but it was the seemingly insatiable demand signal from CENTCOM in particular for FMV ISR and SOCOM related demand for orbits that USAF couldn't get there from here with Preds or Reapers that gave rise to "Liberty" initiative to push so many MC-12 variants to theatre. Flexibility has its place and own virtue, but it isn't what the COCOMs were demanding and costs of a "flexible" platform are unbearable in long run. That said, IMHO, the days of "big" money thrown at ISR and even IEDs are over as we face epic slashes in DoD budget in near future. Another cycle of politics and public opinion wanting a "Peace Dividend"and withdrawl from engagement overseas.

 

[pourts]

No UAV or MC-12 numbers here, but some interesting graphs of cost per flight hour for the airforce.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/08/exclusive-us-air-force-combat.html

 

[Flash]

No UAV or MC-12 numbers here, but some interesting graphs of cost per flight hour for the airforce.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/08/exclusive-us-air-force-combat.html

Some of those numbers are quite skewed due to 'one-off' costs for some of the platforms, in particular some of the ISR & C2 ones and others that have very small fleets like the B-2, of which there are only 20. A better representation of the numbers would be a bar graph vs a line one in this case.

 

[pourts]

Some of those numbers are quite skewed due to 'one-off' costs for some of the platforms, in particular some of the ISR & C2 ones and others that have very small fleets like the B-2, of which there are only 20. A better representation of the numbers would be a bar graph vs a line one in this case.

Yeah, some of the huge random spikes were interesting, and if I cared, worth some investigation.

 

[Stearmann4]

And their pilots make $200k a year without any military bullshit to deal with, right?

It's actually a little closer to 300K...