Company officials had argued the cost of some subsystems, such as the electro-optical target system, or information technology systems used to support the aircraft, should not be included in the F-35 lifecycle estimate because they are not calculated in the price of operating legacy aircraft."
such as a satellite system to enable the F-35 to datalink with the ground or other aircraft types?*
*
MADL is a stealthy intra-formation Ku band system using 6 directional conformal aerials. External link is by means of a conformal top surface satellite system - now planned for Block 4+. The satellite system will not be cheap, especially in higher latitudes where a constellation will be required, which is one of the issues giving Canada and Norway kittens.