Augustine's Laws

AnzacJack · Feb 18, 2020

I had heard of this before, but it came up at again at a conference I attended last week. I was just looking back at DJI pricing from the P1 through to current models and this also seemsto fit our little bit of the aviation world.

Agustine's most cited law is number 16, which shows that defense budgets grow linearly but the unit cost of a new military aircraft grows exponentially

"In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day"

I see that the Phantom range of craft have nearly tripled since it took to the air in 2013.

Sure we are paying for more abilities and technology. But if we look at other technolgy advancements, electronics, TVs, Computers etc, the higher tech is becoming cheaper to manufacture and purchase. When i think what i used to spend on computer components back in the day, this certainly pans out.

So I wonder what we will be paying for our RPAS in 2054

DanMan32 · Feb 18, 2020

If you compare with cost of top end phones, you'll find similar if not worse than Phantoms.
Cars too. Standard features included in cars increased and the prices also increased.
But in fairness, the P1 had hardly any features and the P4v2 has tons of features not even dreamed of in P1 days. Even with the lower cost of production, you still have the R&D cost and volume produced. Volume produced has gone up, but not nearly to the scale of TVs.

Kilrah · Feb 19, 2020

100 year period... Does the graph take inflation into account or not?

PHZ · Feb 19, 2020

Sadly, we won’t have to be concerned about it if the FAA implements their new NPRM rule as it stands. We will all be sitting around talking about the “good old days” when even the average citizen could fly drones.

AnzacJack · Feb 19, 2020

firstly, Augustines laws are kind of tongue in cheek

and certainly not a scientific set rules and data sets. Im not going to argue the facts for all those that want to poke holes in it (which seems to becoming the goto replies more and more on the forums these days). Just thought it was an interesting observation.
I will say that the price of the average family sedans and mobile phone (im not talking top of the range) has not incresed significantly over the last 20 years, but the increase in technology has been jaw dropping.