Economies of scale work both ways. If the infrastructure that you need for 100 widgets will get you to 200 widgets with only a little additional work, then don't be surprised when downsizing from 200 to 100 only saves you a little on infrastructure.
This is reversed causality according to a friend of mine who is involved in this. The helicopters got 13 million € more expensive, thus the order was reduced.
How much does helicopter upkeep cost? What are the intangible benefits to having "buy what you expect to need" instilled as a value throughout a massive organization?
Transport helicopters are a sine qua non of a modern military, and combat ones are really, really handy.
Turn the question around: can you imagine any deployment of the Bundeswehr where they wouldn't need transport helicopters (the NH90 mentioned in the article)?
This most particularly includes humanitarian missions, e.g. the usual suspects ridiculed the US for sending a carrier battle group to help survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, not realizing they have both "nuclear powered" fresh water distillers and lots of helicopters that can transport water, food etc. (ADDED: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_response_to_the_20... says a total of 48 helicopters were involved in our military relief effort, of course from many ships.)
"There is a moderate Deal: The German Army has ordered the number of helicopters significantly reduced. But is saved by little. As internal documents show the price per helicopter increases by reducing significantly - by 13 million euros."
Google translate works well when the text is grammatically correct, when running it across comments where people use slang it doesn't work all that well (obviously).
It's the future where I can translate an article written by someone in another language on another continent into (semi)-readable text in my own language.
Your sentence is perfectly correct, but its translation in french (by google translate) is far from perfect. The translation toward english is generally not so bad, but for me, google translate is still very poor.
I think it depends largely on the source and target languages and how similar they are (in what ways I couldn't say with real certainty). Japanese -> English translations are pretty much always hilariously bad, but then we get at least some very good German -> English instances like this. Without unprecedented advancements I doubt automated translation between two highly disparate language families will be consistently usable any time soon.
Google Translations gets most of it's source data from the regulatory documents of the European Union which are required to be translated into the language of every member.
Perhaps if we were to get a similar source for Japanase -> English translations the accuracy would improve drastically.
That's what I was thinking. I was clicking between German and English and was surprised how readable the translation was. Bonus points for use of "whopping" it captured the meaning of the German original colloquial "sage und schreibe" quite well.
It's also striking how poorly the literal quote was translated - Germans are prone to speaking in overly complex sentence structures and using bigger words than necessary.
It's a common problem in defense, especially in the last 20 years. As budgets continue to shrink, countries are under pressure to cut the number of units purchased, which increases the per-unit price (design and development, being fixed costs, have to be spread amongst a smaller number of units.)
For new designs coming about after '91, it's even harder as the design work is being done at the same time. With systems like the F-35, LCS, AAAV, NH90, and others, the money is shrinking even as development is taking place, and the spiraling costs of systems that "can do everything" in an environment where no one can assume was the nature of the next generation of threats will be has made procurement something of a disaster.
The last element is national. European nations are reluctant, no matter how much money it may save, to completely forgo their national defense industries in favor of larger conglomerates or the U.S. There are many areas of overlap where there is already a better, proven alternative in the market (Airbus A400M could be served by the C-17, NH90 can be handled by the SH60 series, Nimrod MRA4 by the P-8. I note all of the alternatives in favor of U.S. kit, but there are older examples of this happening in the other direction)
Mainly geared towards the US, but the basics works for Germany, too. As far as the procurment of the NH90 and Tiger is concerned, there are more flaws in the specification, design and program that fit in a book. Everybody aims at a silver bullet solution only to end up with a one made of lead for the price of a golden one.
One point that dtruck me most when I was still part of the "system" was the shere amount of spec and design changes that happened AFTER development was finished. the solution is called Retrofit. That and the important difference of a design to be able to perform a certain task and a design being allowed to perform it by the german army.
One example is the NH90 not able to transport troops with combat gear (German army view pint) and the NH90 being suvvessfully used to airlift troop over half of Finland.
Another one would be the Eurofighter being unable to perform ground support operations in the german air force and the very same plane doing just that for the british.
And the A400M would be apretty good plane hadn't politians insisted on a new prop engine built by a paneuropean consortium that did that for the very first time. That other planes would be just as good, agree. Even i would have rather opted for the Antonov An70 :-)
What really sad about the NH90 is the wasted potential. Considering the age of the Blackhawks, the potential market is HUGE. The situation being what it is, this ain't gone happen. But that's a point the NH90 has in common with the F-35, doesn't it?
Thanks for the document. I've only started reading it, but it looks rather good. (I'm astonished and thrilled that in the essays, the authors cite their sources.) Good find. =)
Aren't these rather different sorts of plane, despite the overall similarities?
The C-17 uses jet engines, has a rather big capacity, and is intended for landing on prepared fields, making it more of a "strategic" military transport.
The A400M, on the other hand, uses turboprops, has a smaller capacity, and is supposedly able to use rough landing strips, moving it more towards the "tactical" end of the military transport spectrum.
[Of course there are many other planes that might have served too, but each has various tradeoffs...]
You're correct though; the A400M was intended to fill a position between the C-17 at the high end, and the C-130 at the low end. The issues arose when it later became clear that there may not have been as much of a market for slot as originally envisioned. The C-17 handles vehicles easier than the A400M (where there's lower than expected weight restrictions on what can be carried) while not providing the savings expected for palatalized cargo that the newest models of the C-130(J) can handle. So it's being pressed from both sides.
Of course, the C-17 had teething problems in the beginning. But it benefited from a better environment at the time.
In any case, big item procurement is an utter mess these days. The money is drying up fast after the end of the cold-war, and the inefficient and wasteful structure that thrived during that time can no longer do so. So we get massively overpriced and delayed equipment.
21 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 60.5 ms ] threadNot having a spare machine when you really need it is expensive, too.
And on the gripping hand, how many wars is Germany planning to fight with helicopters in significant roles?
Turn the question around: can you imagine any deployment of the Bundeswehr where they wouldn't need transport helicopters (the NH90 mentioned in the article)?
This most particularly includes humanitarian missions, e.g. the usual suspects ridiculed the US for sending a carrier battle group to help survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, not realizing they have both "nuclear powered" fresh water distillers and lots of helicopters that can transport water, food etc. (ADDED: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_response_to_the_20... says a total of 48 helicopters were involved in our military relief effort, of course from many ships.)
The first paragraph:
"There is a moderate Deal: The German Army has ordered the number of helicopters significantly reduced. But is saved by little. As internal documents show the price per helicopter increases by reducing significantly - by 13 million euros."
It's the future where I can translate an article written by someone in another language on another continent into (semi)-readable text in my own language.
Perhaps if we were to get a similar source for Japanase -> English translations the accuracy would improve drastically.
It's also striking how poorly the literal quote was translated - Germans are prone to speaking in overly complex sentence structures and using bigger words than necessary.
For new designs coming about after '91, it's even harder as the design work is being done at the same time. With systems like the F-35, LCS, AAAV, NH90, and others, the money is shrinking even as development is taking place, and the spiraling costs of systems that "can do everything" in an environment where no one can assume was the nature of the next generation of threats will be has made procurement something of a disaster.
The last element is national. European nations are reluctant, no matter how much money it may save, to completely forgo their national defense industries in favor of larger conglomerates or the U.S. There are many areas of overlap where there is already a better, proven alternative in the market (Airbus A400M could be served by the C-17, NH90 can be handled by the SH60 series, Nimrod MRA4 by the P-8. I note all of the alternatives in favor of U.S. kit, but there are older examples of this happening in the other direction)
Mainly geared towards the US, but the basics works for Germany, too. As far as the procurment of the NH90 and Tiger is concerned, there are more flaws in the specification, design and program that fit in a book. Everybody aims at a silver bullet solution only to end up with a one made of lead for the price of a golden one.
One point that dtruck me most when I was still part of the "system" was the shere amount of spec and design changes that happened AFTER development was finished. the solution is called Retrofit. That and the important difference of a design to be able to perform a certain task and a design being allowed to perform it by the german army.
One example is the NH90 not able to transport troops with combat gear (German army view pint) and the NH90 being suvvessfully used to airlift troop over half of Finland. Another one would be the Eurofighter being unable to perform ground support operations in the german air force and the very same plane doing just that for the british.
And the A400M would be apretty good plane hadn't politians insisted on a new prop engine built by a paneuropean consortium that did that for the very first time. That other planes would be just as good, agree. Even i would have rather opted for the Antonov An70 :-)
What really sad about the NH90 is the wasted potential. Considering the age of the Blackhawks, the potential market is HUGE. The situation being what it is, this ain't gone happen. But that's a point the NH90 has in common with the F-35, doesn't it?
Aren't these rather different sorts of plane, despite the overall similarities?
The C-17 uses jet engines, has a rather big capacity, and is intended for landing on prepared fields, making it more of a "strategic" military transport.
The A400M, on the other hand, uses turboprops, has a smaller capacity, and is supposedly able to use rough landing strips, moving it more towards the "tactical" end of the military transport spectrum.
[Of course there are many other planes that might have served too, but each has various tradeoffs...]
You're correct though; the A400M was intended to fill a position between the C-17 at the high end, and the C-130 at the low end. The issues arose when it later became clear that there may not have been as much of a market for slot as originally envisioned. The C-17 handles vehicles easier than the A400M (where there's lower than expected weight restrictions on what can be carried) while not providing the savings expected for palatalized cargo that the newest models of the C-130(J) can handle. So it's being pressed from both sides.
Of course, the C-17 had teething problems in the beginning. But it benefited from a better environment at the time.
In any case, big item procurement is an utter mess these days. The money is drying up fast after the end of the cold-war, and the inefficient and wasteful structure that thrived during that time can no longer do so. So we get massively overpriced and delayed equipment.