On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:11:50 -0800, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
wrote:

Interesting. But I think that article misses an important detail: The idea
that we can't have a 747 without a B-52 misses the fact that technology and
tooling intended for military use is frequently restricted from commercial
use. So we get a forge that can stamp out an F-15 Titanium bulkhead. But
you can't use it for (unrestricted export) commercial parts.

Back when I was at Boeing (during the era of their B-2 subcontract and
fighter bid) they built a beautiful autoclave for curing composite
structures, including the B-2 wing parts. But due to the limited and lost
contracts, most of the time it sits idle. And I don't think its big enough
to do 787 wings. So they are built overseas.

If you want to support such tooling economically, you've got to keep it
working. But if Boeing wanted to use its autoclave's idle time to build
racing yacht hulls, for example, the DoD clearances they'd need would kill
the project.

According to a few friends in the yacht business, the state of the art
composite autoclave, capable of curing much larger parts (hulls around 50
meters long) is in Singapore, IIRC. That's one reason work will continue to
go overseas.

But it's also why they don't build B-2s in Singapore.

Companies that get all those juicy defense contracts sometimes forget
that there's an upside and a downside.

--
Ed Huntress