Trillion-Dollar Stealth Fighter Cleared for Flight Training ~ Why did it cost that much?

[JEMC]

superchunk said:

JEMC said:

 

@bolded. I don't know if the US Navy have changed their minds, but I doubt the F-35 will replace their F/A-18s. They always go with planes with 2 engines for safety purposes, landing in an aircraft carrier is a lot harder than landing on the ground so they go with planes with 2 engines to minimize incedents with malfuntioning/damaged engines. That's how the F/A-18 were "born", the YF-17 was the looser of the contract that gave birth to the F-16 but the Navy refused to adopt it and choosed and further developed the looser YF-17 (with 2 jet engines) until it became the F/A-18.

About the costs, when the F-15 was introduced its cost was around 50 millions. Now it's +100 due to many factors but specially electronics and up-to-date upgrades . They have upgraded/replaced the radar many, many times and that made it more and more expensive. And the same will happen with the F-35, those 122 million for the F-35A will go up to 150 before 2020 with the F-35D.

F-35 has a Navy variant. It is intended to replace EVERY fighter craft in all US services with the exception of the F-22. Navy will use the F-35C variant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II#Variants

Thanks for the link. It seem that they have changed their minds.