Originally Posted by
Asturias56
shall we say - it's taken some time..................... and all those different build versions...........
But still it is currently terrific military value for the money. You can complain a lot about the sometimes somewhat twisted way up to this point. You can complain about details which are not yet working perfectly. But if you now buy an F-35A and especially if you wait for the Block IV you (will) get A LOT of bang for the buck.
With e.g. JASSM-ER and Meteor you have an extremely powerful platform for not much more money than legacy platforms.
But this comes as a result of huge quantities (and there also the big Export quantities) where you can distribute even 2- digit billion development costs easily. This is for me the big question mark with the B-21. This will be an exclusive US strategic Bomber. There will be no (big) Export Sales. Each development cost increase and each reduction in quantities will have a direct and massive impact on Unit cost.