One possibility is this cable likely isn’t used in any other application. So the manufacturer has to R and D, design the production and possibly invent new manufacturing methods. Plus, meet whatever standards the military requires. The market is also closed meaning the government is the only customer. They can’t sell volume with low margins. So for it to be profitable they have to charge high. However there is a flip side. After so many cables have been sold and costs have been recouped, as long as the cable remains unchanged they should reach a point where they can reduce the price. Would you though?
Great answer, apart from that I assume they have liability if it breaks or doesnt work as expected so that risk mist be somehow fit into the price. WDYT?
That movie was fucking dope, idc what anyone says ab 'oh it scared me...' No. You're just a Lil bitch, shit was top tier content.
The ring fucked me all up tho...
Is that 125 landings total on the deck or 125 landings on the individual cable? Because while they usually try to aim for the 3rd wire, they can/often hit one of the other 4 total wires. And that would make a *big* difference in operational costs I assume.
This video is a misleading. There is part of the cable that is above the deck and part this is below. COMBINED they cost $1.5M, and the part below is the much longer, heftier part. The topside cable gets 125 traps per cable. The part below gets 2000 landings (a lot more invasive maintenance procedure as it works through several landing components).
And question, is that price the actual marginal price per item, or is that the price of total development and manufacturing divided by the total number ordered? I know the military generally uses the later, but that doesn't really work for talking about replacement costs, where only the marginal costs of making an additional one matter.
Yes, absolutely the total cost for full life-cycle. Military budget numbers always look high for civilians as it doesn’t equate to commercial development. You buy a companies widget, and you’re paying for the cost of components, assembly and delivery of that singular item with a set mark-up price. The company pays for R&D, staffing, advertising, administration, and everything else through that overhead that is recouped through that mark-up. The military pays for everything as there is no profit margin (different types of contracts define the pay structure, but just talking about the defined price of the item). This includes the requirement, design, contracting, development, testing, training, logistics, maintenance, storage, destruction, and everything in-between for this entire items life cycle. For example, the Navy may have paid $150M for 100 of the cables for the whole life cycle and keeps these cables in storage. When more are needed, a new contract is awarded for the next set of production, which will be cheaper since the Navy owns the rights to all the R&D, has already tested the cable (some limited testing to ensure the same quality), runs the same supply chain and storage facilities, etc.
So I hate when people get made about something like a $1000 widget, hearing “just got buy it from the hardware store for $10”. First, the military already uses commercial equipment everywhere when able. If they made it, they couldn’t use the commercial variant. Also, that $10 commercial version cost $5 in materials with $5 in profits from tens of thousands of purchases that they are using to pay for all their employees, R&D, and facilities. If they were producing at the same small scale and included their entire companies cost in that price without focusing towards profits, I would expect it exceeds the same $1000 widget.
Yes, there is excess and limitless red tape with a behemoth like the military industrial complex, but most of the comments I see on Reddit have a lack of understanding for a very complex problem.
I was just an electrician so I'm not really sure but I would assume it's per catch, so one of the 3 or 4 wires per landing. The Reagan and H.W. Bush only have 3.
I think they are aiming for the third wire. I don't know how they don't catch more than one though. Maybe the tail hook gets lifted up and over any other cables when it catches one....?
They are aiming for the 3rd wire. The hook is only big enough to hold one and when the front wheels touch down, the hook is too high to grab another anyway.
That actually means there's some amount of volume there, right? 125 landings is yet another day at the office for the US navy. I'm sure they have that many carrier landings per day, what with there being a half dozen or so at sea.
That's why I was surprised too. I'm waiting for someone to jump in and correct me here, but that's what I read. I only remember them doing it a few times in 5 years but it wasn't my job.
Another is simply the overhead costs of doing business with the military. It costs thousands for personnel security checks, the physical security required, and now cyber security certifications too.
Eh not entirely true. Example - DoD contracts LMCO, LMCO subs parts out to smaller machine shops and manufacturers that don't have as strict regulations. Parts get made to the LMCO drawing spec, as long as it passes QA then it gets put into the aircraft.
Source - I've worked in those shops and currently work on a government contract for NASA. It's not as high falutin as people think.
> After so many cables have been sold and costs have been recouped, as long as the cable remains unchanged they should reach a point where they can reduce the price.
This is showing a fundamental misunderstanding of corporate economics.
Yes, after R&D is recouped, they *can* reduce costs. There's no reason for them to do so though. If anything, once the Navy has committed to that specific hardware and installed it on all the carriers, more patents will be filed and the price will go *up*, materially, while the patents prevent competition and the sunk cost fallacy and engineering redesign costs ensure that the orders keep coming. For bonus points, the sole supplier can decrease durability.
Did you read the last sentence in the post you replied to? Just a little bit of critical thinking and you can see they made the same point you just did with fewer words.
aviation stuff generally adds 1 or 2 zeros to everything.
Testing and regulations really up the cost. making a bolt is easy, testing your manufacutring process so that you can guarantee every bolt will do exactly what you say is a hard.
At least properly educate yourself on the problems of military budgets if you're going to complain about them and be upset about them. Plenty of issues but there's actually a lot of red tape in most military spending.
This is the correct answer. I’ve made purchases for aircraft materials while in the military. $800 washer. One. Single. Washer.
Edit: partially correct answer.
I can actually read much faster with this type of subtitles.
However it’s useless on a video because I need to constantly look at the thousand or so words flashing in front of my eyes so I can read them.
If it were just normal subtitles I would read it and be back to the video.
So while I appreciate that with this style you can digest more words, but it always fails on a video because my concentration is not where it should be.
You mean the one word at a time subtitle? Probably more engaging and some say it is faster for the average Joe. One bonus for sure is that it hides less of the video.
As for most videos having subtitles it's so that you have a higher chance to get interested in it as it autoplays whilst you probably have it on mute.
That's certainly part of it, but it misses some of the story. You can't just order some kind of wire rope off the shelf. I'm certain that the USN has a technical data package or a similar kind of requirements and stringent specifications to ensure that their arrestor cables are manufactured to standard and actually up to the task. The extra attention to detail and the inspections you have to do add up.
Spending $1.5 million on a reusable cable in order to stop a $102 million dollar F-35C from rolling into the sea isn't a bad investment. Quality costs. And this is an incredibly demanding environment where cutting costs can kill people.
Oh man that movie with the salvage diver starring cuba g jr was so visceral.
I work with rope, and the cost of a failure is endless, so yeah everything you said is accurate 1000%
Edit: the movie is called men of honor! It was really good.
Oh man Men of Honor is such a good movie. Thank you for reminding me of its existence. I have no calls today (hvac) which is so rare this time of year. Going to watch that, I bet as soon as I sit down my phones going to ring xD. I've been basically on stand by because I was sure by now something would break.
To that end, anything to do with a flying machine requires an insane amount of documentation. A regular bolt could cost hundreds even a thousand dollars as at every level and manufacturing process that material goes through, is documented how, and where that metal originated from so when it fails they can investigate why. Flying parts have so much more wear than regular, I inside this cable is no exception either. Fun fact. When there’s an air incident/accident, pretty well everyone’s aviation insurance goes up, doesn’t matter if it was your plane or not, you’re affected In some way.
Source- worked shortly for a company who flew planes as part of the business.
You're exactly right, I forgot just how stringent the parts supply chain is in the aviation industry. Origin of materials, country of manufacture, chain of custody, all of that stuff adds time and expense. Unfortunately, because of bad actors selling counterfeit or reconditioned parts as genuine articles, you can't really avoid the extra expense because safety demands it.
And there are additional layers on top of that because the US Military has to follow Berry compliance laws. They obviously don't want to buy something as critical as arrestor cable from a Chinese supplier.
AS9100 was pretty easy to get for our company. We had to add 1 almost throw away procedure to the existing QA manual. You still have to almost slit your own throat to land a contract. There's stricter industries by far.
Raw materials are most of the cost, easily sourced, just figgen pricey. And if you don't have a good relationship with a mill already, forget it.
1.5mil a cable, to me, means the sauce is the materials. Some crazy kevlar weave for the core and near proprietary sheathing steel that 1 or 2 global foundries can make and you have to take a complete mill run of it or set up your own mill.
For example, materials are tracked from the source where they are mined to ensure top quality metal. Basically requiring a unique supply chain just for this one component.
Yeah, this is the part that's missing from videos like this. It's not really the cable that's that expensive. It's the testing and validation that's expensive.
It's like how a regular bolt costs $0.02. But the same bolt used on an airplane suddenly costs $10 because that bolt went through way more validation, which costs money. There's still some greed and bloat in these prices. But even without any markup they would still be much more expensive.
> Spending $1.5 million on a reusable cable in order to stop a $102 million dollar F-35C from rolling into the sea isn't a bad investment.
To be clear, they wouldn't roll into the sea. Fighters accelerate when landing to prevent this if the cable fails or they some how miss the cable. They would just attempt a landing again. If all else fails, they will get in air refueling and go land at an airbase elsewhere.
Sure, that's what happens under ideal conditions. But engines can fail, tankers can develop problems or become unavailable.
During a trap, the arrestor cable can snap after having slowed down the landing aircraft below its stall speed, meaning that it won't be able to get airborne again and the pilots will have to ditch. There's a good video of a cable failure where an E-2 was nearly lost but was just barely able to stay airborne. Another video from around 2009 had a cable failure that injured a number of personnel and the crew of the F-18 had to eject as they went off the flight deck. Despite being at max afterburner, the F-18 couldn't remain airborne.
Hey, there, sailor. Next time we are in port, can you go to the local Ace Hardware and have them cut 200 feet of whatever cable you think looks good?We have to repair the three wire.
> I'm certain that the USN has a technical data package or a similar kind of requirements and stringent specifications to ensure that their arrestor cables are manufactured to standard and actually up to the task. The extra attention to detail and the inspections you have to do add up.
Isn't that how most government corruption works though? A politician sets a heap of overly-specific requirements that only his brother-in-law's business can fill. The lone bidder sets an exorbitant price. A few years later, the politician is rewarded with a no-show job as a VP of marketing or the like.
Lobbying is supposed to be so groups of people can choose a person to represent their government interest. For some reason, in the USA, corporations are people too.. so people who work for corporations get paid to go lobby. They also pay money to PACs and SUPER PACs, donating to politicians campaigns. Now that congressman is bought and paid for legally.
That is extremely simplified
Not American but one of my university professors (Federal university) did a requirement for a new warehouse to be built in an experiment area in the campus. She then ordered a budget privately by herself using the same plans for the warehouse. The cost the university paid for it was more than 4x the cost that my professor got.
This. The big defense cos get paid on a Cost + basis. Their cost plus a small margin. As a result, the incentive is to make stuff that costs a ton to get more net dollars
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_contract
Exactly. May be not that low though. It might be special alloy that's not available to public and production requires building new machinery etc. The cable has to stop a huge weight moving fast without ripping or thinning but it needs elasticity so the plane doesn't crash
The only reason these cost so much is that it's a specific military part and as such suppliers charge more for it. Even if you can get the exact specs as oem. If the manual states you need part abc from supplier xyz they just charge more because they know you cant use anything else. Saw it a million times with a million pieces of military equipment during my service.
Drove me insane having to pay $280 dollars for a sticker that just said "diesel" when I could have the surface crew make a more robust one for next to nothing. Overspending in defense is disgusting. Maybe not in the case of an arrestor cable though...
You jest, [but there really is military grade wood](https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-manages-its-own-private-forest.html) with a private forest to supply that wood.
I’m not saying you’re wrong– you’re absolutely right. But I’ve also seen this from the other side. Sometimes the specs they hand you are so ridiculous that you have to create all new mfg techniques and do an insane amount of testing and reporting to prove you meet spec, that the supplier ends up with massive debt just to produce that first cable. The high demands are totally justified for such an important cable, so I get it. But at an initial cost of 1.5m it probably took them a number of years to be profitable.
Once they finally became profitable is when they start gouging the government because not many companies can take on that initial investment cost. They could have lowered the cost a long time ago, but just kept raking it in.
A little of column A, a little of column B.
I saw the gouging first hand, had a company make a portable fuel treatment rig local to us. They named all the parts in the manual, but everything was consumer grade equipment, think off the shelf plumbing fittings. Because they manufactured it, I had to buy through them. The same sealant I could get at an auto supply shop was treble the price and I could do nothing to change it.
But the government does know, shows up every now and again as a talking point.
Part of why military equipment parts are expensive is because if the part is very infrequently produced, the company behind it needs to make up for the said part being infrequently purchased.
It's not just to keep the company afloat while it waits for orders, depending on how vital it is, it's to discourage the said company from retooling and selling other products to customers not necessarily from the military, especially when it involves classified equipment.
If the prices are kept as close to production cost as possible, the company supplying the part will go under the moment the parts they sell are no longer needed. That expertise will be going elsewhere.
If everything was made on an as-needed basis, the prices would actually skyrocket because factories no longer producing a part may deactivate or retool production facilities in order to lower maintenance costs, and if you want that shiny new piece of equipment on a short deadline, it's going to cost the consumer extra for the factories to adjust back to the necessary production capability.
Just look at German Arms Procurement if you want to see how NOT to acquire military equipment. The costs are practically multiplied.
That said, what I mentioned particularly applies to bespoke military equipment catering to a specific niche. A several hundred dollar sticker is just plain old overcharging.
But not everything is bespoke right. The same equipment tug, made by Toyota is used world wide. Toyota lists the specs but I have to buy directly from the company who supplied it to me, like most military equipment, so I'm paying their marked up price, not Toyotas. And that can be the difference between a 30 or a 300 dollar filter, bot certified and purchased from Toyota.
Just too many fingers in the pie for tax payers money to be wasted on. Could have so much more with more sensible regs.
Except the surface crew Is not going to give you a certificate guaranteeing that sticker will work under XYZ conditions.
I can make a sticker too but I can't promise it's going to not peel off at 40 below. The people selling you these $280 stickers can
280$ for a sticker is nuts lmao. I work in a medical lab and the most insane purchase i had to make was a small plastic funnel for our lab which did cost about 200 bucks. Like ffs give me a company credit card and im back from the hardware store in 5 minutes with the same fucking funnel for 2$.
It’s not even the cable that’s the most expensive part of that system. There is a huge pulley system right underneath the deck that’s actually doing all the work to get the jet to stop when it lands
Yep. The arresting gear. My dad was in the navy back in the 70's and was part of the arresting gear crew(one of the ships, the Midway is a museum in San Diego now if you ever want to see the stuff in person). He worked above and below deck and told how one time that cable like in the video snapped and he the others scrambled and hit the deck to avoid it. Thankfully he wasn't hurt.
He did get pretty scrapped the time he got hit by the exhaust of a jet though, sent him flying and got pretty scrapped up.
My back was turned when one snapped in the middle of the night. Everybody started screaming to run and got hit in the face with sparks. Scariest moment of my life. I had no idea what happened until later.
Few years later met somebody who was there the night it happened. Don’t know much about ships, as I was there visiting with my helicopters from an on land unit, but he said he was under the flight deck and the broken “rope” broke his femur.
My great grandfather's brother died in a logging operation back in the day because they used steel cables to pill logs up the hill to the transport site. One broke and cut him in half.
Apparently, it wasn't an infrequent occurrence.
Oh I have no doubt about that. Things like that probably need scheduled maintenance, like lubrication, corrosion control and safety inspections. I’ve seen people half ass or not do inspections at all and sign off paperwork that it was done. Scheduled maintenance/inspections are lessons from the past. We’d have kids ask “why do we have to do this?” And I always explained, these measures are in place to prevent fucking up the equipment of someone’s life because equipment or someone’s life was fucked up in the past.
And this is why jet pilots allways put the thrust levers at full power right after touching the carrier's deck, so if the cable snaps or you miss it the engines are already generating power for you to go around and don't splash in the ocean
That's why they're replaced after every 125 landings and hand inspected periodocally before then. If more than 4 of the 180 wires are broken, it's replaced then.
My granddad said one snapped on his ship during vietnam...It was very bad. He explain full details, but at least one guy got the top of his head cut off.
What´s the source for 1.5 million? I can't give a source myself, but I believe the cost for a single cable is in the range of 60k-100k USD. The whole system could possibly be 1.5M, but the video gives the impression that that's the cost of a single cable.
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And they toss them overboard after 125 uses.
I suspect they cost so much because it’s enormously long cable and is designed to exacting specs and probably only a few fabricators and manufacturers can meet those specs.
I can’t believe people believe what the stupid AI clickbait voice is saying without question…
They do not throw away the entire cable after 125 uses. The throw away a [60-foot section](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arresting_gear#/media/File%3ACross_deck_pendants.jpg) . That’s it. The rest of the system has [hundreds of feet of cable](https://youtu.be/NNIuvCWJkWs?si=2mmSArZYQOikTC1Z) that weave back and forth in a complex pulley system to help dissipate the energy with [massive hydraulic dampers](https://d1ldvf68ux039x.cloudfront.net/thumbs/photos/1305/924593/1000w_q95.jpg)
Literally drop them in the ocean? I guess I get that you can’t do anything else with them since they’re past their usable life, but you’d think you could do something other than litter with them.
engine rob run deranged lavish sophisticated adjoining chunky bedroom nose
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Just cause the bloated government buys it for 1.5M absolutely doesn't mean that thing is really worth that much. They spend like $35 just for one meal for one soldier.
same with designer clothes, medical equip, etc. they know they can make up prises as they want and people will still be forced to buy it one way or another. if worse comes to worst, they will make it 90% reduced in price (sales) and still make 50x the production money as profit. capitalism. others cant list it cheaper because of lobbyism, monopolisation (mother companies owning everything and having all exclusive contracts), patents, etc.
Part of the problem as well is ridiculous tolerances. Almost every item on mil spec drawings is to 3 decimal places. There is a time and a place for precision, 100%, but there are as many times where it is not needed. I have no idea of the specs on this wire rope or the hook on the plane and may not be relevant but things like that make stuff expensive and limit the suppliers who are capable of making it and holding tolerance. Some are 3 decimal places +0/-3 for example.
"This is the most expensive role in the world"
"It can only be made by one supplier"
Used by the US Military...makes sense, the government spends all of 1/8th of a brain cell on cost management when it comes to procuring these things.
"This cable is the difference between an aircraft carrier and a heap of scrap metal."
Lol what? Maybe it couldn't allow planes to land on it anymore, but like.....what?
Okay but what's the length of the rope? I feel like that might be an important information to have.
If it's 1.5 mil for 100m then it's very costly, but if that's for 1,000 kilometres then I'd say it's reasonably priced.
i was on the USS Reagan when we were still getting it flight qualified. we were doing traps and releases and apparently someone unhooked the wrong arresting gear wire, idk, i didn't deal with catching, i launched aircraft. anyways a jet comes in and misses the wire but somehow grabbed it and dragged it out but instead of it coming back slow it came back fast and actually jumped up off the deck hit a dude. he went down and the wire bounced off his head a few more times. we had to helivac him to a real hostipal bc the ship couldn't help out much for this.
The worst part is hearing stories from Navy flight deck crewman who have seen that cable snap and take soldiers out. Like both legs gone, double amputee type shit just like that
Thanks for not telling us why it costs so much. Smh.
One possibility is this cable likely isn’t used in any other application. So the manufacturer has to R and D, design the production and possibly invent new manufacturing methods. Plus, meet whatever standards the military requires. The market is also closed meaning the government is the only customer. They can’t sell volume with low margins. So for it to be profitable they have to charge high. However there is a flip side. After so many cables have been sold and costs have been recouped, as long as the cable remains unchanged they should reach a point where they can reduce the price. Would you though?
Great answer, apart from that I assume they have liability if it breaks or doesnt work as expected so that risk mist be somehow fit into the price. WDYT?
The do break occasionally. They are replaced after every 125 landings to try to keep that from happening.
And when they do break they can remove legs.
Or torsos
I've seen Ghost Ship
That movie was fucking dope, idc what anyone says ab 'oh it scared me...' No. You're just a Lil bitch, shit was top tier content. The ring fucked me all up tho...
What other movies do you like?
Thanks for reminding me….😬
What about the lady in the dress? She made teenage me feel funny.
Right. I'd expect some duty cycle limitation, preventative maintenance, and inspection for these systems.
Is that 125 landings total on the deck or 125 landings on the individual cable? Because while they usually try to aim for the 3rd wire, they can/often hit one of the other 4 total wires. And that would make a *big* difference in operational costs I assume.
This video is a misleading. There is part of the cable that is above the deck and part this is below. COMBINED they cost $1.5M, and the part below is the much longer, heftier part. The topside cable gets 125 traps per cable. The part below gets 2000 landings (a lot more invasive maintenance procedure as it works through several landing components).
And question, is that price the actual marginal price per item, or is that the price of total development and manufacturing divided by the total number ordered? I know the military generally uses the later, but that doesn't really work for talking about replacement costs, where only the marginal costs of making an additional one matter.
Yes, absolutely the total cost for full life-cycle. Military budget numbers always look high for civilians as it doesn’t equate to commercial development. You buy a companies widget, and you’re paying for the cost of components, assembly and delivery of that singular item with a set mark-up price. The company pays for R&D, staffing, advertising, administration, and everything else through that overhead that is recouped through that mark-up. The military pays for everything as there is no profit margin (different types of contracts define the pay structure, but just talking about the defined price of the item). This includes the requirement, design, contracting, development, testing, training, logistics, maintenance, storage, destruction, and everything in-between for this entire items life cycle. For example, the Navy may have paid $150M for 100 of the cables for the whole life cycle and keeps these cables in storage. When more are needed, a new contract is awarded for the next set of production, which will be cheaper since the Navy owns the rights to all the R&D, has already tested the cable (some limited testing to ensure the same quality), runs the same supply chain and storage facilities, etc. So I hate when people get made about something like a $1000 widget, hearing “just got buy it from the hardware store for $10”. First, the military already uses commercial equipment everywhere when able. If they made it, they couldn’t use the commercial variant. Also, that $10 commercial version cost $5 in materials with $5 in profits from tens of thousands of purchases that they are using to pay for all their employees, R&D, and facilities. If they were producing at the same small scale and included their entire companies cost in that price without focusing towards profits, I would expect it exceeds the same $1000 widget. Yes, there is excess and limitless red tape with a behemoth like the military industrial complex, but most of the comments I see on Reddit have a lack of understanding for a very complex problem.
I was just an electrician so I'm not really sure but I would assume it's per catch, so one of the 3 or 4 wires per landing. The Reagan and H.W. Bush only have 3.
I hope it's per catch lol! And huh! TIL!
Also, I've never heard of a plane catching more than one wire on landing. If that has happened I'm sure it was really bad.
I think they are aiming for the third wire. I don't know how they don't catch more than one though. Maybe the tail hook gets lifted up and over any other cables when it catches one....?
They are aiming for the 3rd wire. The hook is only big enough to hold one and when the front wheels touch down, the hook is too high to grab another anyway.
It’s 125 for each individual cable with cable 3 and 4 being the most used
Wow. So about $12K / landing in that case? I didn’t realize they’re replaced so frequently.
That actually means there's some amount of volume there, right? 125 landings is yet another day at the office for the US navy. I'm sure they have that many carrier landings per day, what with there being a half dozen or so at sea.
That's why I was surprised too. I'm waiting for someone to jump in and correct me here, but that's what I read. I only remember them doing it a few times in 5 years but it wasn't my job.
Another is simply the overhead costs of doing business with the military. It costs thousands for personnel security checks, the physical security required, and now cyber security certifications too.
Eh not entirely true. Example - DoD contracts LMCO, LMCO subs parts out to smaller machine shops and manufacturers that don't have as strict regulations. Parts get made to the LMCO drawing spec, as long as it passes QA then it gets put into the aircraft. Source - I've worked in those shops and currently work on a government contract for NASA. It's not as high falutin as people think.
US Military has endlessly deep pockets, they can charge whatever they want.
Why don't they just put those pockets on carriers and land planes in them? Much easier to land inside endless pocket than limited runway
> After so many cables have been sold and costs have been recouped, as long as the cable remains unchanged they should reach a point where they can reduce the price. This is showing a fundamental misunderstanding of corporate economics. Yes, after R&D is recouped, they *can* reduce costs. There's no reason for them to do so though. If anything, once the Navy has committed to that specific hardware and installed it on all the carriers, more patents will be filed and the price will go *up*, materially, while the patents prevent competition and the sunk cost fallacy and engineering redesign costs ensure that the orders keep coming. For bonus points, the sole supplier can decrease durability.
Did you read the last sentence in the post you replied to? Just a little bit of critical thinking and you can see they made the same point you just did with fewer words.
One Word At A Time To Say Nothing
You are describing 99% of the TikTok style videos I've ever seen.
also glad they didn't explain why it's not an ordinary steel rope like it seems.
get this... >!it's literally made of steel lol!<
aviation stuff generally adds 1 or 2 zeros to everything. Testing and regulations really up the cost. making a bolt is easy, testing your manufacutring process so that you can guarantee every bolt will do exactly what you say is a hard.
It’s expensive because the military is buying it and there’s absolutely no oversight on how the military shovels money into their friends pockets.
At least properly educate yourself on the problems of military budgets if you're going to complain about them and be upset about them. Plenty of issues but there's actually a lot of red tape in most military spending.
There’s a lot of oversight. If you’ve actually been involved in defense purchasing you’d know that.
This is the correct answer. I’ve made purchases for aircraft materials while in the military. $800 washer. One. Single. Washer. Edit: partially correct answer.
Yeah the trend of every video being a tiktok length bite size chunk of useless info with shitty music is ruining the internet for me.
What is up with the subtitles? I am seeing that style everywhere now and I can’t handle it. I scroll right past them all.
The effect of AI videos to farm internet points. This video is fun because there is also no substance or information given in the video.
These things are an absolute cancer
So obnoxious
Same
I can actually read much faster with this type of subtitles. However it’s useless on a video because I need to constantly look at the thousand or so words flashing in front of my eyes so I can read them. If it were just normal subtitles I would read it and be back to the video. So while I appreciate that with this style you can digest more words, but it always fails on a video because my concentration is not where it should be.
It's much worse for me. Instead of quickly reading a sentence then watching the video I'm watching a new word appear every second
You mean the one word at a time subtitle? Probably more engaging and some say it is faster for the average Joe. One bonus for sure is that it hides less of the video. As for most videos having subtitles it's so that you have a higher chance to get interested in it as it autoplays whilst you probably have it on mute.
Retail price $1.5k. Cost to government $1.5M 🙄
Absolutely. Insane lobbying prevents more competitive bids.
That's certainly part of it, but it misses some of the story. You can't just order some kind of wire rope off the shelf. I'm certain that the USN has a technical data package or a similar kind of requirements and stringent specifications to ensure that their arrestor cables are manufactured to standard and actually up to the task. The extra attention to detail and the inspections you have to do add up. Spending $1.5 million on a reusable cable in order to stop a $102 million dollar F-35C from rolling into the sea isn't a bad investment. Quality costs. And this is an incredibly demanding environment where cutting costs can kill people.
Oh man that movie with the salvage diver starring cuba g jr was so visceral. I work with rope, and the cost of a failure is endless, so yeah everything you said is accurate 1000% Edit: the movie is called men of honor! It was really good.
Oh man Men of Honor is such a good movie. Thank you for reminding me of its existence. I have no calls today (hvac) which is so rare this time of year. Going to watch that, I bet as soon as I sit down my phones going to ring xD. I've been basically on stand by because I was sure by now something would break.
Thats what it was called!! Thanks back!
No problem. Literally just bought it on prime video for 5 bucks. It's on sale from 15 dollars.
To that end, anything to do with a flying machine requires an insane amount of documentation. A regular bolt could cost hundreds even a thousand dollars as at every level and manufacturing process that material goes through, is documented how, and where that metal originated from so when it fails they can investigate why. Flying parts have so much more wear than regular, I inside this cable is no exception either. Fun fact. When there’s an air incident/accident, pretty well everyone’s aviation insurance goes up, doesn’t matter if it was your plane or not, you’re affected In some way. Source- worked shortly for a company who flew planes as part of the business.
You're exactly right, I forgot just how stringent the parts supply chain is in the aviation industry. Origin of materials, country of manufacture, chain of custody, all of that stuff adds time and expense. Unfortunately, because of bad actors selling counterfeit or reconditioned parts as genuine articles, you can't really avoid the extra expense because safety demands it. And there are additional layers on top of that because the US Military has to follow Berry compliance laws. They obviously don't want to buy something as critical as arrestor cable from a Chinese supplier.
AS9100 was pretty easy to get for our company. We had to add 1 almost throw away procedure to the existing QA manual. You still have to almost slit your own throat to land a contract. There's stricter industries by far. Raw materials are most of the cost, easily sourced, just figgen pricey. And if you don't have a good relationship with a mill already, forget it. 1.5mil a cable, to me, means the sauce is the materials. Some crazy kevlar weave for the core and near proprietary sheathing steel that 1 or 2 global foundries can make and you have to take a complete mill run of it or set up your own mill.
Yeah but when you give context like that its not rage bating anymore.
For example, materials are tracked from the source where they are mined to ensure top quality metal. Basically requiring a unique supply chain just for this one component.
Someone else said they use it 125 times before replacing it, so it stops almost $13 billion dollars of F-35's from rolling into the sea. 8500% ROI.
Yeah, this is the part that's missing from videos like this. It's not really the cable that's that expensive. It's the testing and validation that's expensive. It's like how a regular bolt costs $0.02. But the same bolt used on an airplane suddenly costs $10 because that bolt went through way more validation, which costs money. There's still some greed and bloat in these prices. But even without any markup they would still be much more expensive.
but....."Military bad"...
> Spending $1.5 million on a reusable cable in order to stop a $102 million dollar F-35C from rolling into the sea isn't a bad investment. To be clear, they wouldn't roll into the sea. Fighters accelerate when landing to prevent this if the cable fails or they some how miss the cable. They would just attempt a landing again. If all else fails, they will get in air refueling and go land at an airbase elsewhere.
Sure, that's what happens under ideal conditions. But engines can fail, tankers can develop problems or become unavailable. During a trap, the arrestor cable can snap after having slowed down the landing aircraft below its stall speed, meaning that it won't be able to get airborne again and the pilots will have to ditch. There's a good video of a cable failure where an E-2 was nearly lost but was just barely able to stay airborne. Another video from around 2009 had a cable failure that injured a number of personnel and the crew of the F-18 had to eject as they went off the flight deck. Despite being at max afterburner, the F-18 couldn't remain airborne.
Hey, there, sailor. Next time we are in port, can you go to the local Ace Hardware and have them cut 200 feet of whatever cable you think looks good?We have to repair the three wire.
> I'm certain that the USN has a technical data package or a similar kind of requirements and stringent specifications to ensure that their arrestor cables are manufactured to standard and actually up to the task. The extra attention to detail and the inspections you have to do add up. Isn't that how most government corruption works though? A politician sets a heap of overly-specific requirements that only his brother-in-law's business can fill. The lone bidder sets an exorbitant price. A few years later, the politician is rewarded with a no-show job as a VP of marketing or the like.
Politicians do not create requirements for arrestor cables that's the work of engineers.
I have no idea what this means.
Lobbying is supposed to be so groups of people can choose a person to represent their government interest. For some reason, in the USA, corporations are people too.. so people who work for corporations get paid to go lobby. They also pay money to PACs and SUPER PACs, donating to politicians campaigns. Now that congressman is bought and paid for legally. That is extremely simplified
Companies bribe politicians to make sure they have no competition so they can charge what they want.
Not American but one of my university professors (Federal university) did a requirement for a new warehouse to be built in an experiment area in the campus. She then ordered a budget privately by herself using the same plans for the warehouse. The cost the university paid for it was more than 4x the cost that my professor got.
I was 100% sure you were a fellow Brazilian halfway through this comment.
The government is broken
Imagine if it was a wedding aircraft arresting cable. $4.5m-$6m easy.
Came here to say this....
This. The big defense cos get paid on a Cost + basis. Their cost plus a small margin. As a result, the incentive is to make stuff that costs a ton to get more net dollars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_contract
Exactly. May be not that low though. It might be special alloy that's not available to public and production requires building new machinery etc. The cable has to stop a huge weight moving fast without ripping or thinning but it needs elasticity so the plane doesn't crash
The only reason these cost so much is that it's a specific military part and as such suppliers charge more for it. Even if you can get the exact specs as oem. If the manual states you need part abc from supplier xyz they just charge more because they know you cant use anything else. Saw it a million times with a million pieces of military equipment during my service. Drove me insane having to pay $280 dollars for a sticker that just said "diesel" when I could have the surface crew make a more robust one for next to nothing. Overspending in defense is disgusting. Maybe not in the case of an arrestor cable though...
I have a used toothpick and I’m willing to sell it for $1.5 billion. It’s the only toothpick worth 1.5 billion
Well that’s where you’re mistaken. You have to have a used toothpick designed specifically for military use. THENN you can sell for 1.5 billy
Is it made of military grade wood?
You jest, [but there really is military grade wood](https://www.military.com/history/why-us-navy-manages-its-own-private-forest.html) with a private forest to supply that wood.
You didn't take the right class for contractors. Can't sell it to the gov.
I’m not saying you’re wrong– you’re absolutely right. But I’ve also seen this from the other side. Sometimes the specs they hand you are so ridiculous that you have to create all new mfg techniques and do an insane amount of testing and reporting to prove you meet spec, that the supplier ends up with massive debt just to produce that first cable. The high demands are totally justified for such an important cable, so I get it. But at an initial cost of 1.5m it probably took them a number of years to be profitable. Once they finally became profitable is when they start gouging the government because not many companies can take on that initial investment cost. They could have lowered the cost a long time ago, but just kept raking it in. A little of column A, a little of column B.
I saw the gouging first hand, had a company make a portable fuel treatment rig local to us. They named all the parts in the manual, but everything was consumer grade equipment, think off the shelf plumbing fittings. Because they manufactured it, I had to buy through them. The same sealant I could get at an auto supply shop was treble the price and I could do nothing to change it. But the government does know, shows up every now and again as a talking point.
The US spent more per year on Air Conditioning *tents* in Iraq than all of NASA’s total budget
Part of why military equipment parts are expensive is because if the part is very infrequently produced, the company behind it needs to make up for the said part being infrequently purchased. It's not just to keep the company afloat while it waits for orders, depending on how vital it is, it's to discourage the said company from retooling and selling other products to customers not necessarily from the military, especially when it involves classified equipment. If the prices are kept as close to production cost as possible, the company supplying the part will go under the moment the parts they sell are no longer needed. That expertise will be going elsewhere. If everything was made on an as-needed basis, the prices would actually skyrocket because factories no longer producing a part may deactivate or retool production facilities in order to lower maintenance costs, and if you want that shiny new piece of equipment on a short deadline, it's going to cost the consumer extra for the factories to adjust back to the necessary production capability. Just look at German Arms Procurement if you want to see how NOT to acquire military equipment. The costs are practically multiplied. That said, what I mentioned particularly applies to bespoke military equipment catering to a specific niche. A several hundred dollar sticker is just plain old overcharging.
But not everything is bespoke right. The same equipment tug, made by Toyota is used world wide. Toyota lists the specs but I have to buy directly from the company who supplied it to me, like most military equipment, so I'm paying their marked up price, not Toyotas. And that can be the difference between a 30 or a 300 dollar filter, bot certified and purchased from Toyota. Just too many fingers in the pie for tax payers money to be wasted on. Could have so much more with more sensible regs.
Except the surface crew Is not going to give you a certificate guaranteeing that sticker will work under XYZ conditions. I can make a sticker too but I can't promise it's going to not peel off at 40 below. The people selling you these $280 stickers can
They can and they do, that's their whole job.
Came here to comment exactly that, thanks!
280$ for a sticker is nuts lmao. I work in a medical lab and the most insane purchase i had to make was a small plastic funnel for our lab which did cost about 200 bucks. Like ffs give me a company credit card and im back from the hardware store in 5 minutes with the same fucking funnel for 2$.
Gamer: x2 Pro: x5 Industry: x10 Military: x1000
I. Give. Up. Reading. Such. Subtitles
Downvote AI trash videos. Don't let Reddit become infested with this shit
Too late, they already sold out and went public.
flag shaggy marble violet rainstorm grandiose marvelous start air bake *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fuck your background music!
Pretty much everything the government buys is the most expensive in the world, including toilet seats.
Is every government like this? Eg: spend 100 on something that costs 20 and keep the rest. If so why is this fraud allowed?
It’s legal fraud written via convoluted contracts.
When has the US government bought expensive toilet seats?
It’s not even the cable that’s the most expensive part of that system. There is a huge pulley system right underneath the deck that’s actually doing all the work to get the jet to stop when it lands
Yep. The arresting gear. My dad was in the navy back in the 70's and was part of the arresting gear crew(one of the ships, the Midway is a museum in San Diego now if you ever want to see the stuff in person). He worked above and below deck and told how one time that cable like in the video snapped and he the others scrambled and hit the deck to avoid it. Thankfully he wasn't hurt. He did get pretty scrapped the time he got hit by the exhaust of a jet though, sent him flying and got pretty scrapped up.
Found on temu for $10 but of course, I will have to own a military jet to test it out first.
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My back was turned when one snapped in the middle of the night. Everybody started screaming to run and got hit in the face with sparks. Scariest moment of my life. I had no idea what happened until later. Few years later met somebody who was there the night it happened. Don’t know much about ships, as I was there visiting with my helicopters from an on land unit, but he said he was under the flight deck and the broken “rope” broke his femur.
My great grandfather's brother died in a logging operation back in the day because they used steel cables to pill logs up the hill to the transport site. One broke and cut him in half. Apparently, it wasn't an infrequent occurrence.
Oh I have no doubt about that. Things like that probably need scheduled maintenance, like lubrication, corrosion control and safety inspections. I’ve seen people half ass or not do inspections at all and sign off paperwork that it was done. Scheduled maintenance/inspections are lessons from the past. We’d have kids ask “why do we have to do this?” And I always explained, these measures are in place to prevent fucking up the equipment of someone’s life because equipment or someone’s life was fucked up in the past.
No, [not at all.](https://youtu.be/Iecvnwh8mIY?feature=shared)
That one dude who manages to jump over the cable twice must have a past career in professional jump roping
And this is why jet pilots allways put the thrust levers at full power right after touching the carrier's deck, so if the cable snaps or you miss it the engines are already generating power for you to go around and don't splash in the ocean
That's why they're replaced after every 125 landings and hand inspected periodocally before then. If more than 4 of the 180 wires are broken, it's replaced then.
There’s YouTube videos of it happening. Everyone jumps! You know they have their eyes trained hard on that cable.
My granddad said one snapped on his ship during vietnam...It was very bad. He explain full details, but at least one guy got the top of his head cut off.
What´s the source for 1.5 million? I can't give a source myself, but I believe the cost for a single cable is in the range of 60k-100k USD. The whole system could possibly be 1.5M, but the video gives the impression that that's the cost of a single cable. That Text Was The Most Annoying Text I've Ever Seen
Yeah, I disbelieve any number like that until verified. https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/s/Yn3n4z0DX1
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Most carriers have 4 wires but CVN-78 aka the USS Gerald R. Ford has 3 wires
"one rope"... omfg these shitty videos. 5 meter? 10? 100? useless clickbait.
I hated doing the 8 hour long maintenance on these on my ship. That shit es so fucking draining
what a terrible voice
Terrible text, terrible explanation
What Do You Mean? You Don't Normally Communicate Like This With Others?
 Cable Guy checking this out af frothing!
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And they toss them overboard after 125 uses. I suspect they cost so much because it’s enormously long cable and is designed to exacting specs and probably only a few fabricators and manufacturers can meet those specs.
I can’t believe people believe what the stupid AI clickbait voice is saying without question… They do not throw away the entire cable after 125 uses. The throw away a [60-foot section](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arresting_gear#/media/File%3ACross_deck_pendants.jpg) . That’s it. The rest of the system has [hundreds of feet of cable](https://youtu.be/NNIuvCWJkWs?si=2mmSArZYQOikTC1Z) that weave back and forth in a complex pulley system to help dissipate the energy with [massive hydraulic dampers](https://d1ldvf68ux039x.cloudfront.net/thumbs/photos/1305/924593/1000w_q95.jpg)
Literally drop them in the ocean? I guess I get that you can’t do anything else with them since they’re past their usable life, but you’d think you could do something other than litter with them.
Doesn't China have aircraft carriers? I doubt their cable comes from the US.
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>Claims it is expensive >Refuses to elaborate on the technical details regarding said expense Ah yes, very informational, thank you!
That’s $15,000 per landing. The cables are used 100 times. I doubt even the US Navy would spend quite that much. I’ll google it someday.
It still amazes me that this is the best way to stop an airplane. It seems so primitive.
We’ve tried vertical lift jets but engineering wise they haven’t been super successful.
It’s a simple solution. Better than adding complex systems to the aircraft
I can tell you, taking pictures around them is scary as hell. Never seen one snap but they are for sure a force.
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How is this rope iattached to a fighter jet when it's landing
A arresting hook is deployed from the back of the aircraft
Too short video. I neee to know more. It has to be more than Quality Control
Have there been instances when that hook missed all 4 of those ropes?
These aggressive subtitles need to stop, seriously
no way a rope has more worth than me
Why are so many people just chilling next to a big steel rope under serious tension? Just waiting to be beheaded I guess.
Just cause the bloated government buys it for 1.5M absolutely doesn't mean that thing is really worth that much. They spend like $35 just for one meal for one soldier.
same with designer clothes, medical equip, etc. they know they can make up prises as they want and people will still be forced to buy it one way or another. if worse comes to worst, they will make it 90% reduced in price (sales) and still make 50x the production money as profit. capitalism. others cant list it cheaper because of lobbyism, monopolisation (mother companies owning everything and having all exclusive contracts), patents, etc.
rope my ass
Part of the problem as well is ridiculous tolerances. Almost every item on mil spec drawings is to 3 decimal places. There is a time and a place for precision, 100%, but there are as many times where it is not needed. I have no idea of the specs on this wire rope or the hook on the plane and may not be relevant but things like that make stuff expensive and limit the suppliers who are capable of making it and holding tolerance. Some are 3 decimal places +0/-3 for example.
"This is the most expensive role in the world" "It can only be made by one supplier" Used by the US Military...makes sense, the government spends all of 1/8th of a brain cell on cost management when it comes to procuring these things.
You don’t think if you invent something to sell to the government you’re gunna make it expensive on purpose?
"This cable is the difference between an aircraft carrier and a heap of scrap metal." Lol what? Maybe it couldn't allow planes to land on it anymore, but like.....what?
But how many flips can it make the average crew member do?
One rope please
F these subtitles
Single word subtitles might be the worst design decision of 2024.
Not rope
I wonder how they adjust in the cockpit for the whiplash
So... why is this Rope so expensive? Looks like a steel rope to me
Stop calling it a fucking rope, it’s a steel cable
Okay but what's the length of the rope? I feel like that might be an important information to have. If it's 1.5 mil for 100m then it's very costly, but if that's for 1,000 kilometres then I'd say it's reasonably priced.
When is the trend going if gash flashing sun titles going to die? Like just wrote out a sent ace at a time. I hate this and it’s everywhere.
Biggest ripoffs in the US: Military Equipment Weddings
Show me what, where and how this metal is $1.5 million -TaxPayingCitizen
1 what? 1.5M dollars per 1B meters doesn't sound too bad
I fucking hate those TikTok "single flashing word at a time" subtitles. Actual cancer
how hard is the stop for the pilot?
These Subtitles Are The Most Annoying In The World
i was on the USS Reagan when we were still getting it flight qualified. we were doing traps and releases and apparently someone unhooked the wrong arresting gear wire, idk, i didn't deal with catching, i launched aircraft. anyways a jet comes in and misses the wire but somehow grabbed it and dragged it out but instead of it coming back slow it came back fast and actually jumped up off the deck hit a dude. he went down and the wire bounced off his head a few more times. we had to helivac him to a real hostipal bc the ship couldn't help out much for this.
"without these aircraft carriers would be nothing more than scrap metal". ai narration makes me want to die
If the pilot misses all 4 of these cables do they always have the ability to climb back up and try again?
wow amazing
Djeeze is there anyone in the world who can read subtitles that way? It's just annoying and totally unreadable
Why do we still use aircraft carriers and not jets that can land and take off in the water and then dock
"one rope costs.." without telling me the length, fuck this video
How many of you all had to rewind these on a 100 degree day?!
Something tells me it costs $500 to make and the rest of the $1.5M goes to those in on the play. #pork
Comment.
Not to mention the insane spools, springs, shock absorbers, and gas pistons those cables are connected to.
Is this just an AI rip of Michel Martin's voice, from NPR? Am I crazy?? https://youtu.be/Y00H-RyPj9A
What’s the point of the video? Just to tell us they exist?
American accent with Chinese style. I hate AI voices
Is this the background music from Goat Simulator?
That's a cable, not a rope
I dislike these subs so completely
The worst part is hearing stories from Navy flight deck crewman who have seen that cable snap and take soldiers out. Like both legs gone, double amputee type shit just like that
That's just contractor prices. Gotta feed the machine.