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The F-35 program has been overrun with delays and cost increases, making it the most expensive military system ever to be developed (One frequently-quoted numbe
by 542458 11y ago
The F-35 program has been overrun with delays and cost increases, making it the most expensive military system ever to be developed (One frequently-quoted number gives a program cost of 1.4 trillion USD). This makes many suspicious that the program has been heavily mismanaged, and this sort of post only furthers that impression.
- adventured 11y agoThe reason it's projected at $1.5 trillion, is they plan to order ~2400 planes, and the time frame is covering 55 years of operation and upkeep. By comparison that's a larger plane order than the total sum of all combat aircraft that Russia has, and six times that of Germany. If the F35 had been split into three planes, with the same order and cost scale, the cost would not be a particularly big deal. You're talking about 5% of the Pentagon's annual budget, for 2/3 of all combat planes in the US military. That is, the cost is not the problem: it's the do-everything nature of the plane that is the problem.