U.S. Owns 5000 Atomic Bombs- But Need 311 for Defense

CNN reported Fareed Zacharaia states- So who is responsible for ordering an extra 4,689 bombs at a cost of $5,000,000 each= 22 trillion dollars? which would be enough to eliminate American stupidity?

Can anyone comprehend the waste?
Can anyone figure out the good that money could have done?

It's okay, they'll destroy their debt by the end of 2012...

rosencrentz wrote:So who is responsible for ordering an extra 4,689 bombs at a cost of $5,000,000 each= 22 trillion dollars/

I don't believe that "$5,000,000 each" figure for an instant. Most likely the bulk of that is the development costs of each type. Plus underground testing costs. Plus training and maintenance and security costs.

The 311 bomb figure includes 19 air-launched bombs. But the costs are likely about the same whether you develop, build and maintain just the 19, or 190 of them.

19 bombs lets you arm one B2, with three spare bombs. If you can keep the whole fleet of 20 B2s, at multiple locations in case a location gets destroyed, with more than one aircraft at each location in case one is grounded by maintenance issues or shot down, you've got a lot of extra security for only a little less money.

I think Haliburton developped those bombs, so at $5,000,000 that included the cost of getting the Vice-President Cheney elected and kept alive after 5 heart attacks! lol

Imo, 5 mil is peanuts for them. Remember, the Pentagon pays over a grand for a hammer.

JTF wrote:Imo, 5 mil is peanuts for them. Remember, the Pentagon pays over a grand for a hammer.

And the company that sold it to them probably made no more profit than Home Depot does when they sell you a hammer.

Of course, Home Depot doesn't have to pay an engineer to certify that the hammer meets your specs, then run it past a lawyer and a legal secretary to do further paperwork, preparing their bid for your tender for that hammer. And since a competitor might have the winning bid, the price of that hammer has to cover the costs of bids for tenders they don't win.

There's the case of the $20,000 toilet seat for one aircraft. The supplier had already produced them for the original aircraft - so they didn't need an engineer to certify that the seat could match the aircraft's +4G/-3G with a crew member sitting on it.

But the Air Force only ordered ten of them. When the supplier was hauled before Congress, their response was simple: $20,000 was the cost of retooling the factory for the production run. $20,000 was the cost of the first seat. The other nine were essentially free.

That was a no-bid contract. Had it been tendered (you know, so that competition would keep the costs down), the cost would have doubled.