Aircraft Airframe Cost Estimating Relationships
Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1987
Category: Aerospace Engineering
Rating: 3-Stars
Love it or hate it, cost estimation is an important part of developing and selling a worthwhile product. Back in the 1980s, the Rand Corporation published a series of studies that related the cost of developing and fielding various types of military aircraft, to such key systems metrics as aircraft weight, specific power (thrust-to-weight ratio), maximum speed, and the quantity of aircraft procured. The results were published in a multi-volume set of documents, as follows:
Aircraft Airframe Cost Estimating Relationships: Study Approach and Conclusions, R-3255-AF
Aircraft Airframe Cost Estimating Relationships: All Mission Types, N-2283/1-AF
Aircraft Airframe Cost Estimating Relationships: Fighters, N-2283/2-AF
Aircraft Airframe Cost Estimating Relationships: Bombers and Transports, N-2283/3-AF
Aircraft Airframe Cost Estimating Relationships: Attack Aircraft, N-2283/4-AF
Developed from manufacturing data supplied in confidence by each airframer to the U.S. Air Force, and comprising a data set spanning 34 aircraft developed from the 1960s through 1980s, these Rand studies represent the most comprehensive methodology publicly available from which to estimate military aircraft costs. Although the reports themselves makes for dry reading - forcing the reader to wade through the chapters to decipher the individual relationships that are needed for various computations - the importance of these documents in the absence of a more accessible resource for cost estimation cannot be understated. For both conceptual and preliminary design cost estimation, as well as for understanding cost trends and trades among fielded aircraft today, the information in these studies is indispensable.
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