IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/defpea/v33y2022i4p496-500.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Note on Estimating the Relative Costs of Unmanned Aerial Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Edward G. Keating
  • John Kerman
  • David Arthur

Abstract

It is widely believed that Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) are less costly than comparable manned aircraft. However, the costs per flying hour frequently used to compare unmanned and manned aircraft only cover variable costs of aircraft operation. Variable costs per flying hour may overstate UASs’ cost advantage because they do not account for UASs having shorter life spans and being destroyed at higher rates than manned aircraft. In this note, we develop a lifecycle cost per flying hour that considers both acquisition and recurring costs while also accounting for UASs having shorter life spans and greater accidental destruction rates than manned aircraft. We compare unmanned United States Air Force RQ-4 to manned United States Navy P-8 costs using our methodology. While the RQ-4 has a variable cost per flying hour about 38% less than the P-8’s, we find that the RQ-4’s lifecycle cost per flying hour is about 17% less than the P-8’s.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward G. Keating & John Kerman & David Arthur, 2022. "A Note on Estimating the Relative Costs of Unmanned Aerial Systems," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(4), pages 496-500, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:33:y:2022:i:4:p:496-500
    DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2021.1969187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2021.1969187
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10242694.2021.1969187?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:defpea:v:33:y:2022:i:4:p:496-500. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GDPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.