Boeing Wins Bid To Build the Navy's Carrier-Launched Tanker Drone (arstechnica.com)

Boeing has been awarded an $805 million contract by the U.S. Navy to build four prototypes of its design for the MQ-25 "Stingray," an unmanned, carrier-based tanker aircraft. The drone "will help extend the range of the Navy's future carrier air wings and keep carriers themselves out of range of coastal defenses," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin and General Atomics for the contract. Northrop Grumman -- which built the Navy's first carrier-based drone prototype, the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System-Demonstration (UCAS-D) -- dropped out of the competition last year. The prototype contract is the first step toward delivering "initial operating capability," a first production run of the drones, by 2024. The MQ-25's design requirements called for an aircraft capable of launching from a carrier deck and delivering 14,000 pounds (6,300kg) of fuel to aircraft 500 nautical miles (926km) away. That capacity and range, along with the low-observable shape of the drone, could essentially double the range of F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-35C Joint Strike Fighter attack missions. Eventually, Boeing could deliver up to 72 Stingrays at a cost of $13 billion.

Comments

Eisenhower's Farewell Address

[MrKaos]

There is nothing more salient that Eisenhower's warning about the Military Industrial Complex. I wonder how much healthcare could be provided with the taxpayers $13 Billion?

Re:Eisenhower's Farewell Address

[MrKaos]

I wonder how much healthcare could be provided with the taxpayers $13 Billion?

Hmm, 330 megapeople, $13B....

That works out to about $40 per person. So, maybe one doctor's visit per person, at best?

That's a lot of doctors visits. I know it's not a great deal of money however consider it also from another perspective, the amount of money the military wastes with The Washington post exposing $125 Billion in wasted Military spending . That's roughly 10 doctors visits per person, just from the waste spending alone.

The F/A-18 was a mistake

[jfdavis668]

The Navy wanted a dual purpose fighter-attack aircraft. To get it, the sacrificed range. The aircraft it replaced had far longer range, being designed for their task. Ever since, the Navy has been reliant on mid-air refueling to get anywhere. Planes launch with large bomb loads and nearly empty tanks, and have to mid-air refuel before they event start the mission.

True but we also waste ridiculous amounts

[rsilvergun]

of money by not doing single payer. If you take the most anti-single payer stance possible (the Koch Bros) you come up with $2 trillion in savings in 10 years. That's absolute worst case scenario by a right wing think tank trying to torpedo single payer. Other estimates have put it north of $17 trillion. And that's before you start factoring productivity and wage gains from people being healthier and being able to change jobs w/o fear of losing access to their meds and dying.

But heck, lets say we take that $13 billion and just focus on the 45,000 that die every year of preventable illnesses due to lack of healthcare. I think that'd go a long way. It would also help stabilize our country's political situation.

Wages are declining, high paying work's being replaced with McJobs and healthcare and housing are becoming inaccessible. We're in a second gilded age. That's can't continue. Sooner or later it's going to blow up in our faces like it did for Germany in the late 30s/early 40s when the world put those damn reparations on them.