Well, if Typhoon is anything to go by...
It was touted as being designed to be operated at lower cost than predecessor aircraft, with longer maintenance intervals, newer technology, better MTBFs, etc. It may well be that it is achieving all of these, and it is a very impresive and capable aircraft, but apparently it costs around £85k per airraft per flying hour to operate
Can anyone see JSF being less expensive to operate than Typhoon?
I once read a short story by Arthur C Clarke about 2 rival races that were locked into a inter-galactic war. One race expended vast efforts on resources on gaining the technological edge and thus won quite a few battles, and enjoyed numerically fewer losses than their enemy. However, their enemy poured all their efforts and resources into mass-producing lots of less technically complex spaceships and just put up with the numerical losses. In the end they won the war through strength of numbers and the logistical simplicity of supporting a vast fleet of identical and fairly simple craft. The race that went for the technical cutting option eventually could not support the advanced technology in sufficient numbers, thus they lost the war.
Maybe there is a lesson to be learnt from this example? Does anyone recall the name of the story? If so, perhaps you could send it to a few top people in the Pentagon and UK MOD to read!
Regards,
WF