> Yes, it may cost $1.5 trillion over the next 50 years, but that’s the entire program cost, including R&D, procurement, operations, maintenance and sustainment

> Yes, it may cost $1.5 trillion over the next 50 years, but that’s the entire program cost, including R&D, procurement, operations, maintenance and sustainment. This is a number that is only really relevant before the program has begun, when you’re using it to compare the cost of multiple ways of accomplishing the same goal. Isn’t that double of the original projected cost? Also this statement reads like a textbook example of sunk cost fallacy. The aircraft is just ramping up production, not all bugs have been worked out so it is not know that the rest of its operational life will incur maintenance costs only.