Friday, December 16, 2022

The F-35 boondoggle

 

 

An F-35 fighter jet costs anywhere between $100 million to $400 million to purchase.

The exact cost of buying an F-35 depends on the country purchasing the jet, their relationship with the United States, and the number of planes they’re buying.

Fighter jets don’t have fixed prices. Instead, fighter planes are sold in individually negotiated deals, with the number of planes and the presence of supporting equipment and spare parts all influencing the unit price.

There are currently four F-35 variants that all have a relatively similar cost.

With an estimated lifetime cost of $1.6 trillion (particularly because of expected maintenance costs), the F-35 Lightning II, conceived as a versatile, super stealthy next-generation fighter plane, is the most expensive weapon system ever built. When the program began way back in 1992, the F-35 was supposed to be an affordable one-size-fits-all solution for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy. It took until 2021 for the Air Force to publicly admit that the F-16 replacement failed the affordability test.

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