The cost vs the Hornet was a slight misnomer....

But it’s 20% of the total budget

That you cant find the source is totally understandable. That you actually believed you can build a 5th generation military fighter jet for less than a Bugatti Veyron...thats unbelievable.

Not even the T-X trainer has that low of a price tag even adjusted for inflation! !... heck even a used T-38 isn’t that cheap!!

German and Japanese F-4s

3.5% of your economy in fact.

procurement is still in the thousands...

Found it! Not a crew chief, but a mechanic/maintainer, and still a very interesting and engaging interview. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/absolute-young…

A used Cessna Caravan turboprop goes for about $2 million. Not sure how a 5th gen fighter aircraft can be had for half that price.

I’m never going to understand the “embarrassing mess” thing. This is program packing-in a lot of true firsts. Some of which are already being parlayed into other programs.

You need more stars. Programs like this tend to measure things in Lifecycle costs, which when you add everything together gets fiendishly expensive quickly.

Replying to myself...

What on earth are you talking about? Earliest I remember APUC for the F35 was in the 1997 CBO report and that estimated ~80M in 1997 dollars. I don’t recall one, but I would buy a hard ceiling of 100M for URF or maybe APUC, but it was no-way-no-how ever near 1M for either of those targets.

Journalists love touting the “trillion dollar program”, but most people, apparently including journalists, don’t get that over $1 trillion of the total cost of the F-35 “program” is the cost to operate and maintain thousands of jets for the next 50 years.

You should probably read this about the F-35s dogfighting, from an actual pilot that will most likely belay your fears.

Can you back any of that up?

The Cold War was won without any fighting?

Actually Llama, the Gripen is probably more expensive than the F35 aswell.

This is horrendous. Hey Gawker, churning out anti-F-35 and pro-A-10 articles by the boatload won’t save this blog. Other than ripping this article apart piece by piece, (which most of you have seen me do with regards to F-35 content) I don’t even know where to start. Just gonna leave it there.