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Originally Posted by Skybird
The last number of Raptors I heared of and remembered when writing the above was in the range of 180-190. since this is an extremely expensive aircraft, further cuts cannot be ruled out, no matter what kind of government is next.
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I bet we end up with close to 300. It is how the US Government works. An example is, Seawolf - They were supposed to cancel the entire project, yet the Navy still built 3 of them.
There will be no more cuts on F-22. The money has been appropriated already, and we already have over 100 of them. It is easy to cut things when the money is not there yet. After it is there, to get lawmakers to bend to a cut is a rarity.
-S
PS. The aircraft is not expensive. It is similar to 1970's dollars to build the F-15. As time went on, the F-15 got less expensive to produce, and so will Raptor. An example - if in 1977, an F-15 costs $20 Million, if you were to buy that same aircraft 30 years later in 2007 (assuming production costs never came down), it would cost you $160 Million today. This is actually more than a Raptor costs.