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Cost of flying F-22 for an hour is reported anywhere between $33k and $70k, with most estimates in the $60k range. Let's assume $50k/hour to be safe - 200 hour
by NikolaNovak 8y ago
Cost of flying F-22 for an hour is reported anywhere between $33k and $70k, with most estimates in the $60k range. Let's assume $50k/hour to be safe - 200 hours of flight time gets you to the $10 million figure on its own, with no other costs accounted for.
Pilot still ends up the cheap part of the equation, given ~$200mil+ per airplane cost.
Whee - are we having budgetary fun yet :-)
- driverdan 8y agoI hadn't thought about the cost of flight time. That makes sense. To put what you said in another way, every hour an F-22 flys costs the same as hiring someone at a middle class wage for a year.
- rxhernandez 8y agoMy guess is that a substantial part of those costs are probably to pay a few people a middle class wage.
- jessaustin 8y ago"A few", as in 2500? That's roughly the number of working days in a year multiplied by the number of working hours in a military day. What are all those people doing, and is there a distinct set of people doing those things for every aircraft? There must be some other explanation...
- jl2718 8y agoRemember that our strategy against the soviets was to bankrupt them through military buildup in their massively corrupt and inefficient economic system. Back then, we could build things a lot cheaper than them, so we built a lot of stuff we didn’t need because they would have to try to keep up.
- jessaustin 8y agoThis wasn't so much a strategy as a backward explanation for why we were spending so much. They couldn't say the real reason, corruption. Now spending so much has been just as normalized as a "standing" army. No one still alive remembers what peacetime used to mean. So, they don't have to lie any more about "strategies" for the Soviets.