Hi Wilf,

Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Never even considered this!

I think Cheaper is a lazy word, but I can't think of a better one. I guess I mean "some capability for less money".
I've been thinking a lot about "money" in its different forms and functions recently. One of the key functions is as an "accountancy measure", which is where we usually see "cheap" and "expensive" show up as terms. The problem with that is that all accountancy measures are based on assumed relevance for accounting purposes and, these days, "risk" doesn't enter into many of these schemes as an assumption (outside of the blatant forms such as insurance).

In another thread, Norfolk used the term "Peace Dividend" which really highlights the problems with a lot of social accounting about the military - it's very short term.

Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
The way I would look at this is, if it costs X to have 30 MBTs, procured, crewed and trained, can I get a greater capability, for less or the same money?

...and capability is not an ideal word either!
Agreed, "capability" is not ideal . If we go back to accountancy measures, you could take the cost of unit X and Unit Y, figure the difference to upgrade X to Y in terms of both material cost (purchasing equipment, etc.), training cost, training time (not usually included) and associated risk of not having unit Y during the time to retrain in terms of potential loss. That's only first order accounting . If you want to get into second order effects, look at changes in retention rates based on moral loss, etc.