Heavily criticized plane is defunded

[LeighAnn]

Source: San Diego Union Tribune (SignOnSanDiego.com)

Congress has cut off funding for a heavily criticized military plane being developed by a La Jolla-based aerospace company with $63 million in taxpayer money, most of it put into funding legislation over the past two decades by Rep. Duncan Hunter.

The cutoff comes two months after the plane, the DP-2, was excoriated at a congressional hearing as a boondoggle pushed on the Pentagon by Hunter, R-Alpine, even though it has never passed a major technical review in 20 years of testing.

At the June hearing, Hunter defended the plane, saying “the idea around here that if the Pentagon doesn't come up with something, that if the services don't like it, you're not going to build it, is ridiculous.”

Hunter has received $36,000 in campaign contributions from Anthony duPont, president of duPont Aerospace, the company developing the plane at a facility in El Cajon.


Read more: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20070823-9999-1n23dupont.html

[aquart]

1. Duncan Hunter, practicing criminal.

Is he in jail yet?

[MaineDem]

2. Congress isn't even in session. n/t

[soothsayer]

3. "I want us to buy it with YOUR money even if it doesn't work and no one wants it!"

[tridim]

4. Maybe Bush can fly it.

Since he has a history of flying obsolete aircraft to guarantee avoiding service.

[asjr]

5. Maybe we can sue him for

Grand Theft Airplane.

[frylock]

6. that's my representation in congress..

pity me.

[Joanie Baloney]

8. Poor Fry

I do pity you. Move out to North Park where it's semi-sane. :)

JB

[frylock]

9. hey you!!

:hi:

[underpants]

7. Boy it must be a real treat to be on Hunter's Christmas list

You open the present "What the..."

Duncan Hunter smiling "It's a overpriced piece of CRAP!" :-)

[POAS]

10. Here's an image of the DP-2

Courtesy of landings.com

[Hissyspit]

11. Congress: For Plane That Won't Fly, $63 Mil Is Enough

Source: ABC News

Congress: For Plane That Won't Fly, $63 Mil Is Enough

Millions of dollars later, Congress has effectively killed a military plane program the Pentagon repeatedly rejected, and which never had a successful flight.

The $63 million Congress poured into the DP2 program over 20 years was not requested by the Department of Defense. Instead, it was mandated through obscure provisions in bills known as "earmarks." Most of those earmarks for the DP2 were inserted by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., in whose district the plane was designed and built, in prototype.

The 2008 defense spending bill does not include an earmark for the DP2. Hunter had wanted to direct $6 million toward the plane's development. Hunter said he still supported the project.

- snip -

Designed as a plane that can take off straight up and then fly at 700 miles per hour, the DP2 has never attained a height of more than a few feet in prototype tests before crashing to the ground. The experimental plane was panned by most of the government engineers who were assigned to review and manage the project.

Read more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/08/congress-for-pl.html

[northzax]

12. this is peanuts

they really tried to develop a plane with $6million a year? that's not a serious project, it's pure pork.

[hobbit709]

13. Maybe that's why it kept crashing, too cheap.

[TroglodyteScholar]

16. Exactly...whoever ran this shit never expected there to be a usable plane...

At that small price tag, this was ol' Dunc lining some buddies' pockets, plain and simple.

I challenge anyone here to identify a US military aircraft that only cost $60 to develop.

[northzax]

19. I bet the F4 didn't cost much more than that

In 1950.

and the B-29? Way under $60m.

[aggiesal]

17. No not really, ...

I live in Duncan Hunter's district and believe me I'm no fan,
and I believe congress made the right decision on this plane.

But I worked on the Globalhawk for 2 years before first flight,
and quit about 6 months after first flight, and the only
requirement the military gave, at that time Teledyne-Ryan, was
to build a UAV for $10M.

When we finished, the plane, due to cost of living increases,
would cost the gov't approximately $12M per unit.

Go look up GlobalHawk, and you can see what was built.

[northzax]

18. 10m per unit? Or total?

Development costs usually far exceed the per unit cost, which includes the amortization of the r+d. If, as you say, the cost increased 20% due only to COLA, that's at least 6 years before delivery, no way teledyne-rand was keeping an r+\ project, even for an UAV, going for less than ten million per, and when human passengers are involved, costs at least triple.

question: how many hawks, at 10m per, crashed during development? Because if r+d costs were really 10m per year, then teledyne either built a prototype, or had staff, but not both.

[aggiesal]

20. $10M per unit ...

It took about 5 years to first flight.
1 plane crashed during an early flight test.
They had 1 prototype that they used for marketing purposes.
The initial order I think was for 6. By the time I left they
had built 3, with 1 crash, leaving the remaining 2 for flight test.

I don't know any details on the UAV after I left. I'd imagine
that they're now charging something in the $20M+ per unit by now.

[gratuitous]

14. Like everything you've ever done has worked

Jeez, a mere $63 million, hardly what we spend in 5½ hours in Iraq, and you all expect miracles and perfection? Won't someone please think about the poor contractor who's been kept in silk underwear for 20 years working on this hare-brained project? Now what is the guy supposed to do? Of course, if the plane ever had worked out, no commander would ever fly it into combat because it would be just too valuable and expensive a piece of equipment to risk losing it. And if you did put into service, what if a more emergent emergency cropped up? What would you do then without the fancy-schmancy DP2?

[LostInAnomie]

15. I wonder whose son, relative, and/or mistress was in charge of that project.

$6 million a year is nothing in terms of military research. In our high-tech military $6 million isn't even enough to pay for the paint job of some planes. What military value could a 20 year old project with hardly any funding actually have? Other than providing some well connected crony a very comfortable living, that is.

[jamesinca]

21. A vertical take off

The British did that already, I think it is called the Harrier. So these guys unsuccessfully tried to re-invent the wheel for 20 years. I would almost prefer a bridge to nowhere.

[Supersedeas]

22. the utter hypocrisy of Repigs who oppose earmarks