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The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

responsiblestatecraft.org

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Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#151

Post by sailfast »

If we continue to give the Defense department trillions of dollars without audits, they have no incentive to be smart with the money they spend. There is a huge amount of policy around contracting and expenditures but once you’re in the door via the approved contracting route there are not very many controls.

Further: if they have the budget allocated, they will spend it. It’s that simple. Doesn’t matter what it is on, and going over budget in this political climate is a plus because they can justify more money for next year’s program request.

In this article’s case, expensive items are often novel and have some weird context or specific change attached (Stinger missiles, for example could have a lot of reasons to be expensive now) and the trash can is probably a metal galley can that is not cheap to produce and deliver to site, but it makes a good argument about price gouging generally due to lack of controls across a number of products.

Like most things the answer is not that this is completely unreasonable but rather that it could be better if we did something about it.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#152

Post by [deleted] »

mcdonje wrote: post #110
cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

>Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS. That's the 2nd paragraph of…

[deleted]

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#153

Post by booleandilemma »

aardvarkr wrote: post #52
InTheArena wrote: post #30

Part of the problem here is that the mechanism designed to protect tax-payers (the incredibly complex framework around government procurement) shield players from competition (Aka, the same effect as healthcare market in the USA. This is why modern USA subs use Xbox controllers for joysticks. You can walk out and expense them. The same, if subject to the program, would be a $1k unit cost based on the twin reasoning o…

Subs use Xbox controllers to control the periscope because they found that the controllers were far more intuitive to learn and operate.

And that's not surprising, considering the operators had been using them since they were children.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#154

Post by MontyCarloHall »

cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

If this were true, then other countries’ militaries would also be paying $50k for a trash can, since none of what you wrote is unique to the US. Given other countries’ military budgets are a fraction of the US’s, I highly doubt that they’re spending anywhere near that.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#155

Post by hef19898 »

smallerfish wrote: post #113
giaour wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$300 probably represents the amortized proportional cost of the original design, certification, and manufacturing run. $50K for a crash can is absurd, but $200K to spin up a production facility and get the output certified to whatever aviation safety standards apply to trash cans sounds about right.

They don't need to spin up a production facility for a run of four trash cans. I guarantee there are ad hoc metal shops aplenty. Cut some sheet metal on the CNC, run it through a folder-thingy, rivet/weld it up, add some hinge hardware. You're talking one guy and 2-4 days, including the CAD work.

Sure. And all of this needs to be peoperly certified, to whatever standard the E-3 was certified against, in order to be mounted on the plane. Your comment tells me you were never involved in any of this.

Alternative: Those trash cans set in stock somewhere, the 300 buck price guarantee ran out, and the alternative was to not fly or develop new cans. Well, that wpupd also justify 50k per can if said E-3s are actually needed right now.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#157

Post by jabradoodle »

cushychicken wrote: post #143
mcdonje wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS. That's the 2nd paragraph of…

Also means that there are way fewer airframes to spread development costs across. Looks like we both read it, but not all of us understood the implications of it.

They had already developed it. How much do you think it costs to design a bin..

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#158

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

cushychicken wrote: post #24

This is a reducto ad absurdum example of how the US government is paying out the nose to keep a bunch of manufacturing and development work on-shore in the USA. Yeah, sure, it's a trash can, there's no reason it should cost $50k. We're all agreed that's an absurd amount to pay for a trash container. The government isn't just paying for the trash can. They're paying for people to design, tool, and maintain that design…

There are benefits to the procurement rules. Little Giant ladders are used extensively in the military. That's the only reason why they haven't moved all production to Mexico.

Re: The Pentagon’s $52k trash can

#160

Post by mcdonje »

cushychicken wrote: post #143
mcdonje wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS. That's the 2nd paragraph of…

Also means that there are way fewer airframes to spread development costs across. Looks like we both read it, but not all of us understood the implications of it.

I see you're moving on to a different argument now. Before it was about R&D, but now that it's been established that we're talking about trash cans for a plane that's been built since the 1950s, the argument is now about economies of scale. For trash cans that each cost roughly the median income of a US full-time worker.
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