It is not a universal 10 month delay for every airline. Each aircraft that was to be produced got a new schedule with 10 months being the shortest delay while some airlines got their planes delayed for over a year.
Schedule is:
1 plane for Singapore in october 2007,
9 planes for various airlines during 2008,
25 planes during 2009,
and 45 planes from 2010 onward.

As for break even point, if 250 planes was for $12 billion and final cost does end up being $19 billion that amounts to 396 planes. Trouble is, at that moment, when plane is in the clear, first profits go towards repaying the EU launch aid, which is/could be somewhere in the $3-5 billion range. That effectively means that Airbus will make first true profit with its 480th plane. Oh well, they’re one third of the way there. 😀 Of course, if next gen competition comes, profit margin may have to be lowered, pushing the profit point even further. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole launch aid debt is somehow written off.

Actually I do believe a380 will make money in the long run and sell in hundreds, it just wont be as profitable as Airbus thought it’d be. And its their own fault, mostly.

According to globalsecurity’s page concering the deployment cycles, a nuclear carrier spends 23 out of 76 months in dry dock. With additional prep and training time for a new cycle it could be rounded out to 1 month out of service for every two months in service. That means that for the majority of the time 7 (actually 7.3) carriers are either ready for service or in advanced training or have just been done with their deployment and could be deployed again in an emergency. With 12 carriers, that could be increased to 8 carriers.

Out of those 4-5 carriers that are on deployment or are surge ready could steam off right away. Right away for surge ready ones being 1-4 days. I am guessing the remaining ones could get on the way within 5-14 days. Not too bad, eh?

I was always curious though, how come range of sm-2 block IV and sm-3 is to different, given the same dimensions of both the missile and the booster? Sure, sm-3 benefits from roughtly 10 years newer technology but can that truly account for the difference? And also, why not just modify the sm-3 booster to be used on the sm2 blk IV as well? Or are we talking about sm-3 being a replacement for blk IV?

Sferrin, do you happen to know what is the proportion of sm2 blk IIIb and sm2 blk IV on USN destroyers? How many are carried usually?
Also, how many of future sm-3 will be carried? Lastly, any idea on when it may enter service?

But i would guess usaf prefers loiter time over supercruise for their recon planes. I mean, if you have stealth, why do you need supercruise to boot? Not many countries will be able to see you and chase you anyway.

2018 is actually awfully close. There is no way some super advanced techs can be included on that plane by that time. And reading all these articles so far signals that USAF is keen on three things: range, speed and stealth. So i imagine it will end up being somethign rather big, dimensions wise like tu-160, but with more of a f22/b2 visuals to it. And it’d be something of a Concorde, in the sense that it can cross an ocean supercruising, reach and attack the target, egress still on supercruise, then when getting out of reach of enemy crusing subsonically for least fuel consumption back over the ocean. Of course, that would require a huge mother of a plane with mammoth fuel tanks. Making it unmanned wouldn’t make a sizable dent in performance fuel/payload wise but it doesn’t mean it won’t be unammed if AI tech is up to snuff by then. When i say it’d cross an ocean i don’t really mean like from california to south china… more like from diego garcia and guam to china going 1.6 mach at all time.

It doesn’t matter if the theoretical range is 50 km or 150 km, that torpedo, just like any other, would NEVER be used at max ranges. First of all, 33 seconds after that torpedo gets fired at the enemy 50 km away, enemy would know torpedo is in the water. There is no way to hide those frequencies from any sonar.

Secondly, max range is achieved only at lowered speed. Travelling at 40 knots, 74km/h, it will take some 41 minutes to reach its target. By the time it gets anywhere, target will be long gone. Basically, torpedo will never be used at that speed and that range unless it’s shot at a more or less stationary target or one that has no way of knowing it is in danger.

Using the higher speed, 55 knots, knowing your average warship is going to try to steam out of danger at at least 25 knots, counting in slower acceleration for the ship, 25 km is biggest distance you have any hope of achieving a hit. In reality, submarine captains will prefer staying under that. Not to mention that when trying to hit something like nimitz carrier, steaming off at over 35 knots one’d need to get to no further than 17km from the target. So much about huge theoretical ranges for torpedoes.

Medium/long range IR (or better yet IIR) missiles like aforementioned mica do seem to be a much better bet against stealthy planes when using lock on after launch ability in connection with midcourse updates feeding the general location of of the stealthy enemy as provided by the integrated sensor network. I am not talking about sensors on the plane or even a lone awacs datalinking the data, but of whole array of sensors over a certain area, including (but not necesarrily limited to) long wave radars.

Very same principle could be used for SAM batteries, equipping longer range SAMs with IIR seekers and LOAL capability.