The Air Force has worked up some numbers on what it will cost to add F-22s to the fleet beyond the three-year multiyear buy of 60 aircraft. Adding one more lot of 20 aircraft would cost $3.81 billion, for a flyaway cost of $153 million each. Boosting the one-year buy to 24 aircraft would cost $4.25 billion, for a flyaway cost of $144.2 million, or a per-airplane savings of about $9 million. The numbers come from an unclassified briefing given to staffers on Capitol Hill last week. The service is still working up the cost of a four-year multiyear at 24 per year—which would bring the fleet up to 283 aircraft—but service officials said they think doing so would trim unit costs by as much as $25 million per airplane.
The Space Force should take bold, decisive steps—and soon—to develop the capabilities and architecture needed to support more flexible, dynamic operations in orbit and counter Chinese aggression and technological progress, according to a new report from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
