Sun, Mar 06, 2005
If You're DOD, The Answer Is About $21 Million
Ever wonder what the DOD spends on
all those high-tech helicopters like Apaches and Blackhawks? The
Fiscal Year 2005 supplemental budget -- the US Government fiscal
year runs from October 1 to September 30 so we're almost halfway
-- finds the Army requesting money to replace aircraft lost in
the war.
They're not asking for money for Kiowas or Little Birds, they
have whole fleets of them in storage, but they need to completely
replace 13 AH-64 Apaches and five UH-60 Black Hawks that have been
lost in accidents or enemy action, mostly in Iraq and some in
Afghanistan.
That's $371.9 million for 18 helicopters, or an average of
$20,661,111.11.
Now, that number is wrong in a couple of ways... firstly,
because it's the product of a mathematical operation on a rounded
figure, it appears to be more precise than it really is. The
"$371.9 million" figure, which came from a newsletter called
"Inside the Army" published by InsideDefense.com, is certainly a
rounded-off number. Secondly, because we are looking at two
dissimilar types, we don't have the exact cost of either -- Apaches
cost more than Blackhawks.
But we can break this out, if we can accept a little
imprecision. Now, I seem to recall from discussions with Sikorsky
that the latest UH-60 Blackhawk, all-up, is about $15 million. That
would explain why civilian operators don't use many of the powerful
birds -- a rare exception is well-heeled LA County, which got its
versatile Firehawks by lucking into a third-world air force's
"going out of business" sale. That means that about $75 million of
this supplemental is buying the five 'Hawks, and the rest -- $296.9
million or so -- goes to buy Apaches.
That would put the value of each individual Apache at about
$22.8 million.
I guess one won't be joining the Aero-News fleet anytime soon.
Dang!
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