F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

Who eats the loss under such circumstances?

Government or Lockheed Martin or are these 200 million dollar jets insured ?

Self-insured. The government absorbs losses itself instead of purchasing commercial insurance.

Ultimately the US taxpayers will eat the loss in either case. If the government tried to charge it back to Lockheed Martin they'd just raise the price on subsequent programs to compensate.

The government does insure weapons of war. Who would write the policy?

The government issues bonds to pay for this and the federal reserve prints money to buy the bonds.

Its FREE money!!!

is insurance for military equipment a thing? I had no idea.

If you have very deep pockets like a nation has, why not simply replace the lost hardware and never insure/pay premiums(which would be calculated to net a profit to the insurer)?

Usually wars, vis major are exceptions in insurance policies.

Where did they get this 200million figure from? Sounds bogus.

The view that GP seems to subscribe to is that, when you insure something and need to make a claim on that policy, the insurance money is free.

That's not any more true.

Don't worry, the US military will recoup the loss by extorting some more natural resources from Ukraine and building some sea-side condos in Gaza.

... as is farce majeur.

The per plane cost varies a lot depending on what you want to wrap in it: how much of the development costs you amortize, the modernization program, etc. but $200m is in the range.

("Total acquisition costs" vs the marginal cost of the next plane can result in a more than 2x difference in how much you think the plane costs)

The flyaway cost of buying one more plane is probably a bit under $100m though.

F-14D unit cost was ~$74 million in 1988. Adjusting for inflation that's ~$202 million in 2025. It's not that unreasonable for an American fighter jet, honestly.

> The flyaway cost of buying one more plane is probably a bit under $100m though.

$82.5 million https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039618

The F-14 is twin engine, 40% more plane and can fly faster. Also the F-14 was considered expensive.

My main disappointment with the F35 is that it could have been a lot cheaper with modern design technology and manufacturing. That and the software is needlessly buggy. I had a friend working on F35 at a time I was working on software quality research, when I discussed the possibility of applying the research to F35 he let me know that bugs were seen as a cash cow and he would be working on bugs on the F35 until he retires. He was right. And now we have stuff like this happening.

During the BLM riots many participants in justifying their actions of property destruction would claim that the costs of replacing the property would come from insurance. Many people don’t have insurance, or self insure, and those that do could see a rise in premiums that make their business unviable. Additionally for some business it doesn’t make sense to rebuild as the circumstances that lead to their creation has changed, for these it’ll make more sense to take the insurance money and not rebuild resulting in a loss to the community.

Personally I don’t make a big distinction between crimes against property and crimes against people. I live for my life’s work, if someone destroyed that they might as well have killed me. Additionally many people are dying due to lack of resources, so if someone could be saved for $1M then the destruction of $1M of wealth might has well have killed them. As such I would treat theft and other white collar crime on part with mass murder.

ugh I meant "does _not_" that's what I get for posting while eating breakfast.

late edit: "does _not_ insure weapons of war"