Well among other things, these planes don't really cost much more than say a commercial liner. Wikipedia says that 787s have a production cost of around $100 m

Well among other things, these planes don't really cost much more than say a commercial liner. Wikipedia says that 787s have a production cost of around $100 million per unit, and that the unit cost of purchasing one is somewhere between 200 and 300 million, and that Boeing expected breakeven at around 1000 units sold. The unit cost of a F-35 is currently in the 100-150 million dollar range. The 1.5 trillion dollar cost quoted is for the total program life - that's the cost purchasing, operating, maintaining, and upgrading a fleet of over 2000 aircraft over nearly 50 years. Of that, 1 trillion is in operating and sustainment costs. Total R&D and Test/Evaluation costs are estimated to finish up somewhere around 60 billion dollars, which compares favorably to the estimated 32 billion that Boeing spent before the first 787 order was completed.