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278 points Michelangelo11 | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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MaxPock ◴[] No.45038469[source]
Who eats the loss under such circumstances?

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

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1. meindnoch ◴[] No.45038657[source]
Where did they get this 200million figure from? Sounds bogus.
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2. dgacmu ◴[] No.45039490[source]
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.

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3. ux266478 ◴[] No.45039501[source]
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.
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4. josefresco ◴[] No.45039647[source]
> 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

5. cjbgkagh ◴[] No.45040617[source]
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.