http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-110211-038.pdf PDF 151 million each, flyaway FY 2012, for the USAF cheap version. Although to be fair, this deal is heavily back end loaded, with no more than 7 billion per year allocated in this budget projection out to 2016. Also, it may be here, but I don't see where the development costs that continue with the F-35 are included. That is, all the money we're still spending on getting a plane to fly before we start buying planes. Also, the alternative engine is supremely stupid and needs to die if it hasn't already. The current engine is surprisingly cheap, at $720,000 a piece. Leafing through the budget, it looks like the MQ-9 Reaper is an absolute steal at 15 million each, or 20 million with all the support equipment. At any rate, before we start de-funding all of these social programs, we could easily save 2 billion per year by swapping F-35 for F/A-18E/F Hornets and that savings would grow quite rapidly as we're scheduled to start building more than 24 per year in 2014.
For the people complain about the decision to cancel the f-22, heres an interesting video on why it was canceled. Some of it is probably exaggeration, but it does bring up a lot interesting points. <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KaoYz90giTk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
"Her" per plane number was wrong because she included the sunk cost that we have already spent in R&D. The per plane cost movie forward is 150-170 which isn't much more than the F35 at 120-130. The sunk cost in the F35 is much less because of how it was developed. When she made fun of the maintenance work put for every hour of flight i had to end the video. She should look into how many hours the Marines spend into keeping their crappy old planes in the air.
The F35 was created in a different way. Not only did two companies compete with each other for the contract but many countries were involved. So the development costs are lower. The main reason is the F35 is not really a groundbreaking design change. It is just a modern plane that has awesome weapons systems integration and radar.
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/e_Q6Vb9xJM0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> We need a plane that can do cool tricks.
Might not want to go to someone who thinks a fighter would only be useful against the Soviet Union for you information on what weapons are worthwhile.
No one is really threatening us right now. On the other hand, pretty much every nation with a modern military has fighter jets, and if we ever got into an armed conflict with say China, Russia, or even Iran or Saudi Arabia for whatever reason, I would prefer that the USAF have a bunch of F-22s than its aging fighter wings of F-15s and F-16s.
We are probably 20-30 years away from pilot-less fighters. The first being some sort of wingman type role where a human still makes the decisions. I could also see someone developing a UCAV for an area denial type role, but if there are friendlies in the vicinity, a human is needed in the seat for the medium term future.
Gonna have to go ahead and disagree. Unless they will just be a predator that carries AMRAAMs, we will not have a UAV fighter in that time.
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