APUC
PUAC

Meaning?

Flyaway at the time of delivery. What sense would it make to count in 2001 dollars in 2012?

If you had said in 1969, that a B747 will have a Fly-Away price of 250 million USD, everybody would have said you’re nuts. Finally, you did win though. But only after over 25 years of inflation (I think B747-400 was over 250 million list price mid/end of the 90ies). The late 70ies and early 80ies were a pretty inflationary time, though.

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Now, a 4% inflation might sound a lot, but remember that “the inflation” is an averaged value over house prices, oil, toilet paper, DVD-players and many other things. It is rather representative for normal peoples way of living, but might be a bad yardstick for very specialized products (like supersonic fighter aircraft).

At peak of production a single B-52 did sell for less than the F-35’s radar.

Well, considering the price of such types like the Rafale, Typhoon, Super Hornet, and Raptor. The F-35 will clearly be reasonable……..(in comparison):D

Scooter,
have you really looked into procurement processes? Have you ever seen one that started as very expensive delayed and finally below specified performance system? I guess not.
Now go and see, that most projects end as such.

Comparing an aircraft that is
designed, tested, certified, delivered and operational
with one that isn’t anything of that is just white noise.
Each of the 5 characteristics is a major milestone.
The F-35 has optimistically passed the first (“designed”), while the final design is really set after completion of at least the basic test schedule.

The F-35 may well end as a much delayed, extremely over cost and below specified performance program. Actually, if it wouldn’t it would be a major exception (purely from experience of previous projects).

i thought those were fuel tanks that they added in later builds to give it longer range? (C-17ER)

Every aircraft, even those of Antonov, need a center wing box. There you cannot have fuselage spave. There are generally two ways to accomodate the wing box: either the fuselage has the box inside, leading to a step in the fuselage ceiling (like C-17). Advantage: more space behind the box.

Or you make it like An-124 or C-5: make a straight ceiling and have useless space above the main deck. At least no conscript soldier notices a gap in step in the ceiling.

1st of April runs around the world.

Anyways, such a proposal with a more or less commercial aircraft equipped with lots of missiles was looked at before. I guess it is unattractive because the aircraft is severly limited in mission flexibility. Besides, military aircraft are selected by generals, who don’t like to exchange F-15 against C-17.

Hey, why no Airbus order? France and Germany are the few countries that never dropped bombs on Iraq. And the Iraqis had so much success with French aircraft, and also with the French made nuclear reactor for peaceful (hey, what else 😀 ) nuclear technology.

I do note the lack of structural/OEW estimates in the Stanford study. Maybe they did it, and then did not bother to give numbers. What they do seem to say is that wing weight is small enough that even if it does undergo square-cube increase, it still remains a minor factor.

For example, compare B-36 with B-29. The 70 m wingspan of B-36 is bigger than any jets till An-124. Yet B-36 has a huge useful load and long range. At which wingspan would the structural weight start to seriously limit useful load and range?

What about An-225 and Hughes Hercules wing structural weight?

I guess the study did well in not mentioning the OEW. Most predictions are based on past aircraft and work best if one does not exceed that limits. Manufacturers have problem to guess the weight of their aircraft within 5% (see Boeing 787).

When comparing size one should compare capability, too. The A380 for example is much faster than the An-225, giving more design challenges for the wing and structural margin versus flutter.