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Understood. Like I said, in a perfect world we should be able to do some sort of co-production of ground stuff with airlift stuff.

Budgets, production scheduling, dream designs that will be (or not), all that is going to be a hard sell. It would be an awful hard nut to crack, to design an aircraft based upon projected airlift support needs that are undefined.

How much does a C-130 cost? Good question, as the price variers considerably between model and age. In fact, Excess Defense Article (EDA) C-130B cost nothing but the bucks needed to get them out of mothballs in the boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ. (And State Dept approval, DoD approval, in accordance with political-military priorities). When involved in EDA transfer of two C-130B's from the boneyard to Botswana, ran about$3M total to get them running again.

The new C-130J models, now those are high end.

Price break down per aircraft (in round-about dollars): C-130E, $11.9, C-130H, $30.1, C-130J, $48.5 (FY 1998 constant dollars in millions).

Wanna make a deal?
;-)