What do you think the unit cost of an F-16 Block 80 is?
$75-80 million.
the F-35 program has met its program unit cost targets when inflation over the past 15 years is taken into consideration from the original cost goals.
It’s comparable to the cost of a Super Hornet.
You are 100% correct on costing.
With inflation escalation factors, the F35 is not much more expensive than the latest block F-16 and it is a far more capable aircraft than the F-16. For comparison, the Rafale and EuroFighter are in the 130-160 million euro range. Modern aircraft are expensive. If we want to drive the cost of F35 down, best thing to do is buy them in the most economic acquisition rate and volume
People fail to take into account that the production volume of the F35 is less than half originally planned
The JSF is not an A10 and never will be because it was never intended to be one. The A10 and the F35 have very different missions and while the F35 can cover a majority of A10 missions, the A10 can not cover any of the F35 primary missions. The A10 has very little air to air ( being charitable there-we do have warthog pilots here) capability and absolutely zero low observables or countermeasures capability. The A10 is mainly anti tank and CAS and cannot perform the deep interdiction missions in highly contested air space that is the forte of the F35
The A10 will be a great plane to have after the F35 has prepared the way enough to allow the A10 to operate with a reasonable chance completing their mission and returning safely. Especially after all the smart weapons have been burned through, which will be faster than anyone expects.
Claims that the F35 is a dog in air combat will come as news to the pilots that fly them because they seem to be doing just fine
Ironically, heard exactly the same arguments being against the F16, F15 and A10 back when they were new. The F16 and F15 were to complex, they didn’t work, the electronics failed so we needed to buy more F4 Phantoms and just can the overly complex, underdeveloped, unreliable and costly new F16 and F15.
The A10 was too expensive, not survivable and a waste of money. Opponents branded the A10 white elephant that need to be cancelled in favor of a turbine engined version of the P51 Mustang called the Piper Enforcer
All that is old is new again
These days if the flyaway cost is under $100M you got a bargain. I don’t know where they pulled that figure cited in the article.