Biggus... you should know that aircraft get more expensive to maintain as they get older... and even new-build Super Hornets will be maintenance pigs in another 20 years... while the F-35s, having newer systems, should theoretically be cheaper to keep flying.
Compare the F-14D, old design, even the ones new-built in the early 1990s were low-time-between-failure maintenance hogs vs the early F/A-18E/Fs, despite being new they flew far longer between "breaking" and took less time & money to fix.
Last edited by GreenKnight121; 14th Dec 2012 at 18:11.