I don’t understand the decision to shut down the F-22. What was the marginal costs of production since all the fixed sunk costs were finished?
Depends on who you talk to, and how they calculated it...Democrats kept talking about $300 million a unit, but that included fixed costs, training, etc.
The real total, excluding the fixed costs was somewhere around $110-$130 million a jet. Not cheap, but considering the capabilities you get with the F-22, we could have ensured air dominance for decades to come. And of course, the higher the production run, the lower the per-unit cost.
We should have built a minimum of 300 F-22s for the USAF and sold 20-50 to both Japan and Australia. That sort of output would have pushed the cost per jet to $100 million or even a bit below. Again, that’s a lot more than we’re paying for the Super Hornet, but you get a quantum leap in capabilities. The irony, of course, is that cost overruns and decreasing “buys” are pushing the price of the F-35 to what we would have paid for the F-22, based on the production totals listed above.