Flayaway costs represents the costs to produce the aircraft and stuff it with avionics and engines, and the F-22 program is about as mature as it can get as far as costs are concerned.
Order 1,000 and the unit flyaway costs won't dip much below $120 million each. Certainly nowhere near your $70 million figure. That is much closer to what the F-35 flyaway cost is projected to be at project maturity.
However, order 1,000 F-22s and the total unit cost will drop significantly from the current $340 million per aircraft because the $30 billion development costs already spent would be spread over more airframes.
About the F22Argue with this guy and the Center. The article you cited is surrounded by AF internal politics and doing the PC thing - as the Hussein Admin. and Sec. Gate wishes, else the whole of the USAAF might find itself on the chopping block as many have argued recently in other specialized publications quoted on FR and elsewhere. Arguing about costs here is silly IMHO. We need the F22 or the USAF is 'tostados'. Russian produces Flankers for $90 million per. The lastest varient makes all the 'teen' USAF planes good target practice. The F35 cannot be expected to survive a fight with the 35s on any regular basis. When the PAC AF is produced and exported, there is no way any USAF plane other than the F22 will be able to achieve air superiority and allow ground troops to do their jobs.
More than $60 billion has been spent on the research, development, and procurement of the F-22, putting the per unit cost of each aircraft at roughly $340 million. But the marginal cost of buying one additional aircraft has come down to (just!) $138 million, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that a larger order of 70 additional aircraft could have brought that number down to $70 million a pop.
About the F35
In May the Government Accountability Office estimated that U.S. investment in the F-35 would total "more than $300 billion to develop and procure 2,456 aircraft over the next 25 years." That works out to about $122 million and change for each aircraft. Allied militaries are expected to buy at least 700 additional F-35s. The jet will come in at least five variants: a conventional fighter for the Air Force, a short takeoff, vertical-landing variant for the Marines, a carrier version for the Navy, and export versions of the Air Force and Marines variants. Not surprisingly, a program this complicated has already entered its own death spiral--the estimated cost of the program has risen 45 percent since 2001, and Congress has already responded by trimming the total procurement by more than 500 planes. This latest two-year delay could cost an additional $7.4 billion according to the Pentagon's report--assuming, of course, that there are no further delays or overruns.
The Untimely Demise of the F-22
A triumph for the military-industrial complex.
by Michael Goldfarb, editor THE WEEKLY STANDARD
08/17/2009, Volume 014, Issue 45