Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rpDmRPh8I9UIt seems like one of the ways that the US government is trying to keep Spirit in business is for it to transport soldiers. This is interesting. I am honestly a bit curious: is it more cost effective to have Spirit airlines transport troops or specially made military aircraft to transport troops?And just for your information, this is relevant to /k/. We are comparing the effectiveness of government made weapons/aircraft to the effectiveness of civilian aircraft in terms of transportation costs/speed.
We already have a thread on this
>>65105877>able to get cheap planes Why not?They already operate 737 for the sole reason of personal transport. Why is the idea of civ airliners being used by the military weird to people.
They are going to be used as self propelled moab
>>65105877>already use public airlines to transport troops>us military CONSIDERING to buy Spirit to do the exact same function>/pol/ niggers immediately have a seizure
>>65105877The problem is that you're screwing yourself out of the benefit that contracting civilian airlines gets you. Money.Spirit and other airlines operate routes and the prices for those routes are generally known. So are the prices for chartering planes or buying tickets in bulk, see package holidays.The government in a rare stroke of genius takes advantage of this and ends with really competitive rates per seat-mile. It's not entirely apples-to-apples because obviously you don't need the inflight meal or service on board a military transport but this ends up lowering the cost for the DoD. One-way ferries or an unplanned emergency like the surge in iraq obviously cost more but that cost is offset because reserving this capacity as a whole is already effectively a subsidy.By buying the airline and operating it you essentially create a state run airline where you now have to manage maintenance, scheduling and all the other stuff when previously you could just call up anyone in CRAF and tell them to show up pretty much no questions asked. The alternative is taking over the planes and giving the people the boot and having extra aircraft in the military to use at your leisure.In the case of Spirit this is incredibly bad. Strategically the largest aircraft they operate is a A321neo, which doesn't get you across the oceans. Then the entire fleet is Airbus A320s series, which the US government does not operate at all. Now If I was the US government I'd at least eye the A320-200s because those were available with the CFM56 engine that the DoD does have plenty of: KC-135s, E-3,E-6,P-8 or C-40s all have a CFM56 series engine. But Spirit operates the other engine, the IAE V2500 on their older A320s.There is literally nothing for the US military to gain here except spend more money for a limited capability that is widely available for cheaper on the market.
