Why America's new stealth fighters might cost $300 MILLION each 

F22 couldn’t be shipped overseas and therefore was not going to result in the huge payday for the military industrial complex and so it was canned in favor of a new jet fighter With potentially unlimited profits. At least that’s the way it always seemed to me.

While that is true, it was most certainly a 1990s style production line. Not large scale enough to be automated, yet complicated enough to be uber expensive. With a more modern approach to design and manufacturing you should be able to operate both faster and at a lower cost.

@@DumbAmerican67 nah if the program would have continued they would have just made an F22-E that cut out all the best tech and exported that. It is a very common practice and the US has done it with tons of different platforms they otherwise would not export in their original configuration. For example the Abrams tanks that are being sent to Ukraine are not being sent with their normal armor plating which is an advanced alloy material and instead that armor is being swapped out for the more typical hardened steel.

​@@ThatGuyKazz I think that an export F-22 would make for the greatest 4.5 gen fighter of all time. Or just go with the 23 being the export.

@@DumbAmerican67: The F-22 production run was supposed to be 750 aircraft. If they'd done that, they would have had economy of scale, reducing the cost to produce those hundreds of planes for a lot less than the first few batches. On top of that, they would have been able to amortize the development costs over four times as many units. And they could have retired hundreds of high-flight hour F-15s that ended up getting more and more expensive to operate and upgrade.

🤣🤣🤣 Would love to see him in a white pinstripe suit doing a sales pitch to a panel of generals 🫡

I don't think that we should go there. 🤔

One of the two prime contractors on the F35 program doesn’t consider “spare parts” to be accountable as far as serial numbers and property inventory. “F35 spare parts” includes a globally-managed supply chain among tens of countries, hundreds of sites and warehouses, and thousands of personnel from US service branches, foreign service branches, DOD agencies like DLA, and contractors. Spare parts includes everything from screws and fasteners to entire engine assemblies. Yikes.

Easy to manage if you don't keep track. Makes more sense if you don't think about it.

Depends if they get shot down or not lol.

It’s frustrating how many forget / never knew operational costs are the most VIP cost factor + whether or not it can assume and eliminate the roles of and need for other platforms.

Money now is worth more than money 30 years from now. A plane that costs a billion now will never make up for its up front costs regardless of how cheap it is to maintain. It would be obsolete long before it could recoup its costs even if those costs are zero. Assuming a rate of inflation at 3% (higher rates make it even worse for you) and a 30 year life span. 1 billion now equates to 2.4 billion in 30 years. You could easily buy and maintain 10-15 f35s for that price or probably 6-8 f22s.

What does that mean. 'is just drooling blue stuff?'. Use your words.

@@billycarr7446 I found it pretty easy to understand.

Like the leopard tank' capabilities? 🤔

@@GegeDxD Lepoards are old tanks from 1980s

@@hphp31416 Leopard 2's I assume. Same with the M1 Abrams, but both chassis have been upgraded to high hell throughout the years

Neither of you guys are wrong about Boeing, and they do seem to be trying to bungle themselves into irrelevance, if not non-existence, but damn I hope Boeing pulls their head out of their fourth point of contact and turns things around.

"The question is how much does it cost to not own the sky?" ask the Ukrainians. They can tell you.

Ukraine and Russia appears to be the best example of not owning the skies.

​@@defective6811I remember going to Boeing recruiting event and the first thing that they asked me was "what makes you qualify?"

​@@trplankowner3323 at least Ukraine has a good reason for not owning the sky, Russia on the other hand...

Digital design and agile, vertical integration may very well be the thing that saves us from the old joke that we can only afford a single fighter jet by 2050. 300 million might actually be cheap, compared to what the F22 or F35 would've been with todays dollar value.

F-22 deliverd performance. NGAD is supposed to deliver long term sustainability.

Yeah, we've been having record breaking inflation for several years now. Officially it's just below record breaking because they changed how they calculate it, but effectively it's the highest in US history. If we just go by the price of gold, as a no-BS inflation comparison: $300m for a fighter in 2023 is not unlike $70m for a fighter in 2005. Making this DRASTICALLY cheaper than the F-22 was. Similar for the expected $600m price of the B-21. Of course at the current rate of inflation, by the time production is up & running, these numbers will be even higher. But it's not because of the planes themselves.

@@piotrd.4850 raw dogfighting power that'll burn off your ram coating, yes. But the NGAD is supposed to be more stealthy, possibly faster, definitely longer range, and affordable upgradability to always stay up to date. And it may have a lot more firepower with more longer ranged missiles as well.

@@piotrd.4850 So was the F-35. It currently costs more than a 30 year old F-15E to to keep an F-35A in the air, and that's with the F-15E flying more hours than the F-35A.

Really? Did World War 3 happen? Did we fight the Soviets in Europe? I think deterrence makes a lot more sense vis-a-Vee China then fighting the People's Republic of China. If you want peace, prepare for war. If you want war, look weak.

Well it's most likely deterring China to attack Taiwan and Russia to use nukes right now, that sounds like a good deterrent to me. Also money funding R&D is just money circulating inside your own economy, it's not really lost and it improves your overall tech.

The cost and grift is real, but there is also the benefit of all the R&D bleeding into other programs and eventually (depending on classification) into the civilian world. The arms race (including stealth and networking) is just as responsible for modern civilian technology as the space race. And technology has consistently been one of America's strongest assets. At this point, we could possibly make a convincing argument that military R&D spending serves as a tech-incubator for the rest of society.

@@yyyy-uv3po seriously doubt that anything other than retaliation with our nukes is stopping them.

@MeerKat Report I would counter by saying that "spinoff" tech is a good excuse for not doing the r&d simply for the peaceful advancement of humanity.

Ukraine is holding back the Russians, we should only worry if they take all of Ukraine and have Russian forces on the border with Poland. China has a lot to lose with invading Taiwan, I personally don’t see it as inevitable as others seem to. Did you know they import a majority of their food and energy? A naval blockade by the two most powerful navy’s (USN and JMSDF) could cripple the PRC economy and even cause famine.

If war comes to China, it will be alongside North Korea. This couldn't be a worse situation. Not even mentioning Iran. Get your canned goods now.

If a 5th generation ++ F/A-22 version for export were produced for allies like Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada and the USAF it might be worth it. .

It’s not a matter of how hard it is to make, it’s a matter of how much the defense contractor wants to make on each unit

I’ll be surprised if the US orders 150.🧐

I'm Australian, and I'm with @arbelico here. Some of the divisions in the modern world are hardening, but the USA still has some very solid Allies. Australia has quietly had the F-18 Growler for a couple of decades now, and you're helping us with Submarines. Poland has a comparatively small economy compared to many of your partners, but if you look at their current Defence spending - They've chosen a side, and they're proving it. Yes, there are Security concerns, but the divide between the US and many of her Allies is smaller than the divisions within your own Country Politically.

@@arbelico2 I mean they are only planing on making 200, I’m pretty sure those 200 are for US only. Unless something changes. But who knows, I assume since this will be next coming of the F-22 they won’t export it, just like they didn’t export the Raptor. That’s why all other nations are buying F-35. But who knows, only time will tell. I’d be shocked if they made any type version for export.

F-35 can already do the same task with very high confidence at a fraction of the cost

@@stupidburp The F-35 version 4.0 is a true 5.5 generation fighter, & can do 90% of what the NGAD fighter can.

​@terrywilson4166 and comparing the base of the future to the 4.0 of an existing platform is always going to be silly. NGAD will be built upon in similar fashion to how the F-35 has, years from now when we compare versions 4 of each the differences will, in my opinion, be absolutely massive

If stealth worked - British Type 45 destroyers can "see" and track any stealth aircraft at the maximum range dictated by the curvature of the earth. And they aren't even the latest systems. Drop the stealth fighter programme - the future is drones. Cheap and lots of them - not trying to create a pilotless F-35!

@@patricklloyd1797 I think the NGAD will leverage existing technologies sourced mainly from the version 4.0 of the F-35, & use the F136 engines which are being developed. The airframe I'm pretty sure will be a updated tailless version of the F-22B.

yeah, like a new fighter program has NEVER gone over budget...this numbers are total BS

You have to consider the DOD budget historically compared to our current budget. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has added social programs that did not exist before. You also have to figure in the added cost Social Security and Medicaid require from an aging population compared to a younger population back then. As a percentage the DOD budget has shrunk but the Nat'l budget has grown considerably as a whole too.

We hear a lot about the astronomical debt, but it needs to be compared to our GDP to make any sense at all. When you just give the raw number it seems scary but our GDP is huge so we can support a large debt no problem. Debt to GDP ratio is what matters. Same goes for DOD spending as percent of total budget rather than a standalone figure.

​@@hifinswordtrue however our acquisition budget should grow by about 75 billion if we want to rearm seriously. We need a Reagan era build up.

@@smithnwesson990 The last 8 U.S. F/A-18 Hornets authorized in the FY23 defense budget are scheduled to roll off Boeing's line in 2025. The U.S. will have bought 698 Hornets by then. It's possible India will order some and they would continue the line till 2027. So soon the U.S.N. will be using the F-35 as the Hornets age and are replaced. I hope a new replacement will have 2 engines instead of the F-35 one engine.

Guarantee you that 200 unit fleet number is going to get slashed multiple times before the first airframe is even delivered. ...Because we have decades showing that Congress and the DoD do not want to buy airframes that make up that much of a percentage of their budget. It just isn't going to happen. Unless they're buying 200 over the course of 20-30 years (...which they aren't).

​@matchesburn probably not unless china stopped being a threat, then congress will find a way to get them the money for it.

whatever teh USN is buying, the USAF will buy more.

@@SoloRenegade No.

@@matchesburn yes

We pretty good :)

….who cares, it’s worth it for the entertainment value alone !

Probably less than that if we don’t stupidly cut the order by 3/4s like we did with the F-22, or even more with the B-2. We just can’t get put off by the price tag of the first production models, because that unit cost will go waaaay down the more that are produced. We stuck with the F-35 despite the initial sticker shock, and now it’s cheaper than a new F-16, Typhoon, or Rafale, and way cheaper than a new F-15EX.

They need to make the Drone Wingman like the F15’s to carry more ordinance. The F15’s remain undefeated so give each F22’two F15 Drones with A1 and Tactical Nukes to annihilate the Enemy on the First Strike so no one will provoke or start a War with us.

Computer chips alone are a huge issue, you either need to have a 90s electronics factory or completely update every single chip, program and system to use 2023 electronics. So building a modern design, ready for modern tech plus upgrades, does make sense.

With modern targeting systems and missiles it's unlikely that even stealth aircraft would get into very close range dogfights because even without a radar lock they can detect and target aircraft using optical/IR sensors. They also wouldn't need to line their opponent up for a shot like they were going to a guns kill - the F-35 can target aircraft via the pilot looking at them and using his helmet mounted sight and modern high off-bore sight (HOBS) IR missiles like AIM-9X can be fired at targets well to the sides of the plane or even behind it to an extent so manoeuvrability isn't necessarily as important as who can detect, lock and shoot first.

and the USMC on leap days every 4 years. Don't forget those poor guys, they are low not just on tasty crayons, but also airplanes...

@@texasranger24 What does that reference, Marines and crayons mean?

@@kennethng8346 Marines love to eat crayons. They are tasty. At least to marines. Google it.

That’s a third of the entire budget for the USAF.

⁠@@Rimasta1 🤯 I wish I had a better understanding of how my tax dollars are spent.

Wait, Russians haven't done yet. Once they produce, then after a decade you may expect too.

@@trumptookthevaccine1679 I mean, with that new Ceramic RAM and some combined cycle engines in the future, I could see a stealthy tactical bomber or the like. Kind of like if you fused the duties of a B-21 with hypersonic tech

Hypersonic and stealth are mutually exclusive. The IR signature and radar reflectivity of the exhaust plume would light it up like a christmas tree.

Why need design by Ai,but use human pilot ?lol, they should use human designer with Ai pilot.

@yzyz7779 F22 and F35 both took 20+ years from program start to operational. In that time, the US's main focus went from short range vs USSR in Europe, to COIN operations, and now to maybe needing long range in the Pacific. Plus software and computing advances so quickly, that having a human designed fighter means that it's already 10 years obsolete when it enters service, and it's not designed for current needs.

@@TGoat5 Ok, but good if gorv given job change to living soul, ,some rumors says China also build war ship with general Ai.She can design 1 war ship with entire water paiping and elektrical wirering plan just on 1 week ,need 1 year with few specialist if they use human.Wallahuaklam only Allah know the thruth ,and like another ship of course not unsinkable

No AI that is a horrible idea

I'll bet the CCP is eyeing off the Amur region that China lost to Russia during the Century of Humiliation. You know, as 'protection'.

@@johngrey9780 Not even close. Go read about the MALD-J and MALD-X. If you pick out a small target that seems to be a stealth fighter or a stealth bomber do you fire at it? If you see 20 of them, do you assume it's a bunch of decoys? What if it's 15 decoys and 5 real planes, you better fire or someone on your side is going to have a real bad day. Say the adversary develops the technology to sometimes be able to tell the difference between a decoy and the real thing and they stop wasting missiles on the decoys, you know what happens then? You swap out the ECM/jammer/spoofing payload and put in a warhead and they go hit some air defense sites or other juicy targets because the radar operators think they're so smart by knowing it's not a stealth fighter and it's not a cruise missile, oops! And when good interceptor missiles are $2-12 million a piece, shooting 30 of them at a few decoys spoofing an attack fleet of 15 in bound aircraft quickly runs your ammo supply dry, and even if you're Russia and have thousands stockpiled, it still puts a huge strain on your logistics chain having to resupply giant heavy missiles instead of other things they could be transporting like troops, meals, ammo, etc. Sorry, US dominates the skies and will continue to do so for the next 2 decades at least. Edit: Oh, and the F-35 has a deployable cable towed decoy stored by its tail that it can deploy behind it, so even if you detect it, get a target quality track on it, get your missile to home on it, and the F-35 doesn't defeat it through normal means available to every other fighter, your missile is still going to be wasted as it harmlessly explodes a safe distance behind the F-35. So your normal fire 2 missiles at every target to account for not having 100% probability of kill now sees you having to launch, what, 4, 6, perhaps even more at a single target.

The US spends gobsmackingly large sums on its nuclear deterrent, which arguably is pretty useless when it comes to preventing low level misbehavior and hybrid warfare operations by those that which to upturn the rules based order, so spending a comparatively smaller sum to have the benefit of a conventional deterrent of the same magnitude far exceeds the financial cost. The fact that even if it failed as a deterrent that it would still reduce the expensive loss of billions of dollars of ships, vehicles, and personnel means that regardless of whether it gets used as a deterrent or as a guardian of the skies it is an insurance policy that pays for itself, a no brainer.

@@johngrey9780 I generally agree with you. I have no doubt that Hypersonic aircraft were in the works, it's the only inexpensive way to deliver hypersonic munitions . Hypersonic bomber would not be able to deliver standard ordinance, the simple fact that it's moving at Mach 5 or greater create mini issues in itself. First off( the weapons being launched will need high temperature resistant coatings on the nose and leading edges of all extruding control surfaces) 2nd ( weapons would most likely be carried internally in a weapons Bay, like they are presently in the B1, B2 & B-52) That in turn creates major dilemma. The B1 is the only supersonic capable bomber in the US Arsenal and its max speed is only Mach 1.2. The Dilemma is, although the ordinance is moving at the same speed as the bomber carrying them, they're not being affected by atmospheric resistance & conditions( drag,friction,temperatures,etc) so how do you deploy them into a hypersonic airstream and maintain safety, reliability, stability & accuracy? No country to date has deployed a truly hypersonic missile.(that's a missile using an initial rocket, turbojet or aircraft to boost it to around Mach 3 which is needed for a ramjet or scramjet to operate) China and Russia's hypersonic missiles are all boosted to hypersonic speeds using ballistic missiles. Once at hypersonic speeds the warhead separates. The Russian Kinzhal is only capable of making minor adjustments to it's course. The other type is a glide vehicle. It's capable of more substantial course adjustments. They're not true hypersonics because they don't continue under their own power after leaving the Boost vehicle. (directed energy weapons and new terminal tracking systems will most likely make Hypersonic weapons obsolete long before stealth is) True Hyper Sonic weapons are estimated to cost a minimum 100 million dollars each. That's more than an F-35. Not Even the United States and China AR wealthy enough to maintain anything more than a small stockpile. That stockpile would most likely be used for extremely high value targets. Stealth and radar Technologies are another subject. Every technological advantage throughout the history of mankind has been bested by another technology. Developing a technology to overcome an opponent advantage is the primary driving Factor of mankinds rise to the apex species on the planet. It's unfortunate that mankinds default settings is power and dominance which in turn perpetuates War and so on and so forth.

@@johngrey9780 In my opinion, air dominance is and will always be the most important factor in any major conflict. Radar systems are inherently complex and expensive. There's no such thing as an impenetrable air-defense system. Finding the inherent weaknesses and exploiting them is exactly what stealth was built for. Stealth can be detected at long ranges. But you only have a vague idea that they're in your airspace. Air defense systems use long-wave radar to detect stealth aircraft. Tracking and locking onto a Target is done with shortwave radars. That's why stealth aircraft are specifically designed to deflect or absorb short wavelength.

@@msytdc1577 Great reply Do you find yourself frustrated just trying to explain the basic fundamentals of the extremely complex and ever-changing Dynamic situation that is inherent in the military defense of the country?

I used to feel the same way but Alex kind of educated me. Don't get me wrong I still love the F22 and feel it was a mistake to stop production of them, but it's age puts it behind in the tech against the F22. In an isolated BVR or dogfight, sure it's gonna come out on top. Kind of like a heavyweight boxer in a prize fight. But in a street fight against a gang that is networked, that prizefighter might not last as long, even against lesser opponents. Plus I don't see how they could retrofit the tech that is lacking in the F22 into that airframe. IMO, both the F22 & F35 should be bigger for increased internal weapon capacity. The question is could they put the network tech into an new F22 airframe such that the F22 could leverage the unmanned loyal wingman drones to increase it lethality? Hmmmm

That's because you don't appreciate what these jets will be capable of.

@@JohnMGibby I wonder if there could be a massive overhaul on the F22. Like not just a better radar and coatings, something big like a new wing and tail, weapons bay, etc.

Lol what

@JohnFrumFromAmerica no , the problem is I understand that it would likey end up costing way more than predicted, be way behind schedule, half the the stuff they promised probably won't be on the jet till a block 4 or 5 version and then they will cut it short like f22. Don't get me wrong it would be a bad ass jet more capable than the f22 I just don't have faith in our government to deliver these days. By the way we are behind and way over budget on just about everything we do in this country from ships, to jets. The f22 we know how to do already, throw in newer radar, avionics, new coating, and those fancy engines we are working on and we'd be great for a good while.

A couple of those coins from John Wick

That's why we are buying a bunch of 4++ as well like the F15ex and the navy is looking at buying in essence superduper hornets too I've read.

So you want the west to be the only empire. Look how much we've messed everything up.

They absolutely were JUST saying this not to long ago. The department is so big and bloated beyond believe they have zero chance of coordinating any kind of strategy.

they scrapped that idea/cadence a few years back, the early phases of NGAD were done with this idea in mind but they're going back to a more traditional fighter lifespan/cadence since ultimately you can do a lot of this with new blocks on the existing airframes. The F16 proves that you don't need to keep every part of the airframe identical as well, you can add new intakes + engines, or modify things as needed going forward, and just issue a new block

That was the whole theory behind the Joint Strike Fighter program (which became the F35). They wanted to reduce the cost of air platforms by creating a singular platform that the USAF, USN, and USMC could use thus creating savings by reducing the number of R&D projects (1 instead of 3) and order volume. But it ultimately failed because the limitations and compromises that are made to allow aircraft to take off from carriers and VTOL/VTSL are so great that it wasn't really the same airframe.

Especially with F-16 escorts

different mission platforms.

​@Nelson_ Rebel The Rand wargames indicated that American long-range anti-ship missiles were the decisive factor in winning against China or not. B-21s can carry far more and are ideally suited to fire those anti-ship missiles. And if we must have new stealth fighters, then we already have two prototypes sitting in museums that could be updated and put into production: the F-22s competitor YF-23. It was arguably a better stealth fighter than the Raptor was anyway.

But zero CAS capability.

@@Chuck_Hooks Yes but you're always going to have a need for capability for aircraft suited for contested and contesting any airspace. B-2 cant do that despite it's better air to ground target capability. It's still a bomber and has limitations as such. Idk if the NGAD will be neccessary or not since we have the 35 and more 22's than any all other nations 5th gen aircraft combined. But It's still a good idea to develop a better aircraft if neccessary. 22 is limited because of it's design choices and range. It could be completely redisgned to work like the NGAD, but that sounds awfully expensive to update 20-30 year old airframes that have a short service life on them

Ok, if the airfield is in the danger zone, it would likely be equipped with hardened bunkers for the aircraft to sit in. There would also be many layers of defense guarding an airfield holding any significant quantity of these. We're talking fleet units equipped with AEGIS, Patriot/THAAD, Iron Dome (the US is working on an equivalent system domestically), and MANPADS. You'd have to throw literal hundreds and hundreds of munitions at one airfield to have a chance of saturating the defenses.

That or DeSantis. Anything but sleepy Joe.

That's what they are going to do - but put the new systems into large underwing pods as F-22's ancient systems are practically impossible to upgrade in place. They will isolate all legacy systems except flight controls and bolt on F-35's (next - ie post block 4) computing suite linked to a new glass cockpit. This kind of shows stealth is practically pointless. They are going to give up range, stealth and aircraft performance to gain better systems - this is where the advantage is - weapons systems - and it's why gen 4.5 accidentally turned out to be the right platform - easy to modernise and maintain - want the latest thing? Just bolt it on whereas adding a new capability to the hideously complex F-22 or F-35 means 3-5 years work - and then the new capability is obsolete by the time it's rolled out. When the next war starts F-16 and F-15EX will be the front line for the USA not stealth anything.

Do you know what metal fatigue is the F-22 are not going to fly forever and underwing pods on a stealth aircraft...............now that's thinking out of the box.🤣 There's no 2nd in a war, it's kill or be killed so let's give the warfighter a capability to win not lose.

@@LeonAust There's the "official answer" and the "unofficially answer". The "official answer" is that the tooling was locked in a storage area, and is secure there, in case it's needed again, whether for new F-22s or for making parts to fix broken F-22s. The "unofficial answer" is that we don't really know. Supposedly, some of the tooling was removed, to (possibly) be used for the F-35, others are missing and no idea where, and so on.

Incorporating the tech and construction methods from the F-35 into the Raptor would mean that you're not restarting production so much as developing a whole new production line. Properly integrating the potential improvements in the structure of stealth materials, adding greater power generation and cooling capacity for newer systems and ensuring it has the capacity to add things like directed energy weapons at a later date would require a total redesign to the extent that it would be an F-22 in name only. It could be done but it would be anything but quick or cheap.

@@trolleriffic But F-35 is already a dinosaur - particularly system-wise. Starting from scratch today would be cheaper and more effective.