Joint Strike Fighter (F-35) to Cost $1.45 trillion over 50 years, page 1

Originally posted by Biigs
Just read this article with this astounding price tag.

The article here: www.dodbuzz.com...

..Says that around a third is chalked up as predicted inflation, so thats still a TRILLION dollars for these new planes.

Think thats a good use of USA money?

Whether I think it's a 'good' use or not isn't the same as whether I think it's an 'efficient' use of my tax dollars. I'll go into detail below, but I thought it necessary to point out that you're already asking the wrong question.

And if this is a publicly known figure on a publicly know technology, can you even imagine how much it would cost to build something with more advanced technology, and then keep it completly secret *cough Aurora*.

No, I really can't imagine...and that has nothing to do with the cost of the JSF program. It might help if you compared apples to apples, as the old saying goes. Again, I'll put the details below, so 'bare' with me.

Never mind the unemployed on food stamps or workers minimum, luckily theres lots of very expensive scientists and workers already building, so no spare jobs, sorry, but thanks for the taxes.

You do realize that money spent on defense projects isn't just taken out to the Pentagon's dumpster and burned, don't you? The money spent building, operating and maintaining the F-35 fleet goes to vendors and contractors, who pay their employees, who then spend their wages on everything from food, to rent, to taxes...if anything, that $1.45 trillion will keep people from becoming unemployed, and keep them off food stamps.

EDIT: oh and the parts come from around the world and this effects the costs, where would you find a work force to do all this at home? i wonder.

What do you make of this insane amount? (bare in mind the debt of the USA is $15.6 Trillion debt clock)

Here's the 'meat and potatoes' of my reply. First off, per the linked article, the F-35 program will cost $1.45 trillion to build and maintain over the next 50 years. Note the underlined text? That's the reason I mentioned comparing apples to apples up there where you were asking unrelated questions about the cost of building Aurora. Most of that money is in what the military calls 'life cycle costs'....the cost of fuel, parts, crew pay, and ammo (training and live rounds). Think about that for a moment, and remember that we're talking about something over 2,000 airframes...I don't remember the exact count, but it's between 2,000 and 2,5000. Taking the 2,000 figure, that works out to $725,000,000 per airframe for 50 years. Take out $135,000,000 (the cost of R&D and fabrication for an F-35, per the article you linked), and that leaves $590,000,000 as operating and maintenance cost for 50 years, or $11,800,000 per airframe, per year as operating and maintenance cost. Given the price of fuel, and given what the F-35's engines cost ($20,000,000 per, as a ballpark), that seems like a very reasonable amount. It's certainly not the economy-busting budgetary nuke that the author of the article seems to think it is. The whole key here (and it's very easy to overlook in the avalanche of zeros) is that you're looking at a projected operating cost for a fairly large fleet of aircraft, over a long period of time. If the resulting number *wasn't* of a magnitude normally only seen in the Federal budget or an astronomy textbook, I'd call shenanigans in a heartbeat.