The Global Hawk is an amazing piece of hardware. It's a huge, unmanned spy plane that can be programmed to take off, fly across the Atlantic and back, and land -- missing the centerline of the runway by only six inches.
What's more amazing, is that the plane was built using "off the shelf" parts. Engines and landing gear came from business jets. Other parts from other existing airplanes. That meant no expensive research and development. That in turn kept the price to taxpayers low.
All good things come to an end. The price of the program has shot up $900 million since 2001.
Back then, a single Global Hawk was supposed to cost $85.6 million. The price is up to $123.2 million.
The Air Force planned to spend $5.4 billion for 63 of the planes. Now they're spending $6.3 billion, and getting only 51 of them. (WashPost) (Photo Credit: US Navy)
No comments:
Post a Comment