Question:

Why are fighter jets so cheap!?

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The Thunderbolt apparently costs $11million so about 6 million pounds and the F-16 is about $18million; roughly 9million pounds

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6 ANSWERS


  1. definitely wat the other guy said


  2. because they're buying whole sale, if you tried to buy one you'd be looking at 100mil

  3. The A10 is no longer in production, so I would hazard a guess that's a 1980's price.  The F16 Block 70 runs about $45M in today's dollars-and is still  in production.

    Contracts are often done with overseas buyers in "offsets". Which means price per unit goes down in return for other equipment, "soft" renumeration (this is like allowing jets to stage there, advertising ones friendship on local TV etc).

    It is NOT like buying a commodity, and if that's what the news items is leading you to believe, the media doesn't know what its talking about . (As usual.)

  4. That was the price per unit back in 1998.  The F-16 is still in production but that is surely not the price a new model is going for.  The F-22 costs $137 million a copy.  Military insiders that have watched the price of front line fighter planes go up in price with each generation.  They've estimated that at the rate of these price increases the entire budget for the U.S. Air Force in fifty or sixty years will be enough to buy one plane.  They've tried to reverse that trend with the joint strike fighter project.  

    .

  5. yeah

  6. Cheap, thats not how I would describe it

    Right the economics of it all, its the cost of ownership mate.

    You buy a car, where do you get your spares, well from the maker at megabucks, or Joes Parts R us, where its half the price?

    with the military kit especially, once you buy it its spend all the way. And the makers know that you will have to come to them for each widget and wobbler, cos they have the design rights, and its gravy to them.

    no one buys 1 fighter, they buy them by the squadron at least.

    so there is economy of scale of course, also there is the package of training, publications and spares that you just have to have. which you just have to buy from, you guessed it, the makers.

    also after ten minutes in service they bring out a block programme, like the F16 one, shiny gadgets that last years model didnt have, new improved widgets to dazzle the generals. So you buy upgrades, and so it adds up.

    Typically you would look at the costs of ownership over maybe ten years. And then you would see why BAE has settled on being the Army's old kit supporters for the next twenty years, rather than pushing for new improved tanks. Lets just upgrade your old hulks, lots of shiny new bits, tiny expense on design and research, loads of future spares

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