The contract for Air Force refueling tankers isn’t the only one that needs scrutiny. Congress needs to get to the bottom of why costs have nearly doubled for the new Marine One helicopters. The fleet of 28 new supersophisticated helicopters has increased in price from $6.1 billion when the contract was signed in 2005 to $11.2 billion today, the Washington Post reported. That comes to $400 million per helicopter, which is more than the most recent Air Force One airplane cost, adjusted for inflation. Lockheed Martin, which is heading up the team that is building the helicopters, has blamed some of the cost overruns on the Navy adding more requirements, but the Navy says it hasn’t changed the contract.
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14 Comments
It’ll be interesting to see what we actually pay for the tankers as opposed to what was quoted. Read an article yesterday saying if the Euro goes to 1.60 per Euro, many European parts suppliers will go bankrupt! 1.60 is just around the corner. Not to mention the airbus plane will cost an extra bil. per yr. for fuel.
Should have bought a Peugeot. Parlez-vous Francais?
When made in the USA, you should……..
Buy American and you pay a higher price.
We can’t make anything in America today that is high quality at a reasonable price.
High taxes, Unions, and investor demands for high rates of return have pushed jobs overseas.
You greedy people who want high taxes so you can get more money from Government Social Programs are causing this. Businesses are being taxed out of business or moving overseas, taking jobs with them.
You greedy people who expect $50,000/year wages for unskilled labor are causing this. Again, you chase American manufacturing overseas.
You greedy people who invest in the stock market, have 401k’s, IRA’s, bonds, and expect to get high interest rates and returns on your investment are causing this.
And you consumers at Walmart who refuse to buy American in order to get the lowest prices, are driving businesses out of business in America.
Y’all who want high wages for low skills, big government programs that are “free”, the lowest prices no matter where the products are made, and high investment returns with no risk (guaranteed for “free” by government!) on your savings, are ruining America.
Cut the taxes, encourage investment in American companies, stop trying to get something for nothing so the government can cut spending, and get off your tails and use your public education skills to be productive! THAT will bring America back!
Ok, Max, I’ll live in my tarpaper shack making 35 cents an hour for 80 hour weeks and walking the 10 miles to work everyday just so your kind can earn the multi-million dollar salaries for walking around the water cooler telling each other what a great job each other are doing while complaining about me stealing all your hard-eaned money.
Give it arest Max. not even you are stupid enough to believe that crap and there’s no way you’re going to convince anyone with more than two gray cells to rub together.
You’re the social welfare program, so quit trying to pass the blame.
I was wondering when this would come up. This was the forerunner to the tanker contract and was fought out in the northeast states, as opposed to Alabama vs. Kansas/Washington.
Now people get all bent out of shape because we are “buying a foreign aircraft” for the military. These are the helicopters that fly the president and high ranking members of the administration on the short hops around the capitol and other places. This contract was originally for 23 aircraft, not 28. It had been given to Sikorski, the local boys, for 50 years. Suddenly, this contract in 2005 was given to the “new guys” and was for a larger helicopter that was built in Italy (Aeromeccanica) and modified here in the states to Navy (spelled White House) specifications by the Lockheed Martin group.
After the contract was signed a laundry list of about 1900 items was apparently added, along with (because of delays) accepting 5 aircraft with the original specs and 23 with the new spefications.
So in the years to come our president will be flying around in an Italian helicopter. Bush won’t get to fly in it because it won’t be delivered during his administration. Long delays, weight problems, and funding issues have plagued the development of the program. There has even been talk of scrapping the project and going back to Sikorski.
It will be interesting to see what the tanker program will look like when delivered and what the final cost will be! Maybe when it is completed HBO can make a movie about it. They can name it “The Pentagon Wars, part 3″, after they complete a documentary about the presidential helicopter, “The Pentagon Wars, part 2″.
Max, you might do a little research on this one. Type “presidential helicopter” in Google. It would have been cheaper to buy an American helicopter (Sikorski).
The new “Marine One” will be an AgustaWestland EH101 modified by Lockheed Martin in New York state. AgustaWestland is a company that is partly British, partly Italian. The new helicopter is called US101 by Lockheed Martin and the VH-71 Kestrel by the marine corps responsible for flying and maintaining it. (Provided, of course, that they can get metric wrenches from the motor pool!)
Rusty, you are probably right on this.
What I can’t stand is the hypocracy of the press. If Boeing had the tanker contract, THERE WOULD BE COST OVERRUNS!
And the Press would be crying about the billions spent on Boeing, how it’s the favored contractor, and that we should have gone with the European contract because it would have been cheaper.
When DOD goes with the cheaper European contract, the press cries about American jobs going overseas, how there will be cost overruns, etc….
The Press will not be happy until the DOD is gone, and America has surrendered to the Chinese, Russians, and terrorist groups that want to destroy us.
The rising Euro will not be that big a problem. Airbus is outsourcing to a country with a weakening currency.
Max
Posted March 19, 2008 at 8:54 am | Permalink
Buy American and you pay a higher price.
We can’t make anything in America today that is high quality at a reasonable price.
High taxes, Unions, and investor demands for high rates of return have pushed jobs overseas.
You greedy people who want high taxes so you can get more money from Government Social Programs are causing this. Businesses are being taxed out of business or moving overseas, taking jobs with them.
Max – I don’t understand your comments here. The French have social medicine, higher taxes than we do, and they were still able to get the contract at a lower bid. What point are you trying to prove?
Costs go higher when we have to send off for supplies overseas and the dollar is weak and transportation costs increase. Then again a huge amount of waste goes right to the shareholders and CEOs when they take their huge cut. Taxpayers once paid George Steinbrenner $450 million to not build two naval destroyers.
Airbus can’t do much outsourcing, their govt. won’t let them.
I don’t know what ever became of it but there was actually talk of Airbus starting a plant in Alabama to completely build the plane that the tankers are based on.
I don’t know if it was Airbus’ way of dangling a carrot in front of the local economy there or if they were serious. It would have allowed them a plant in an area that they could have shifted production to take advantage of the dollar/euro exchange rate.
Rusty – that is the outsourcing I referred to at 11:13 AM
http://www.wen2k.com/.tell.php?Id=1065 Herbert West III west.herb@yahoo.com Look at the date of the original article.
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