FA-18 - I stopped trying to compare fighter prices based on package-deal prices years ago, because deals are so different - mostly, it depends what support is included and for how long, or whether it's an initial buy or a top-up (cf $3.7 billion for 12+12 Hornet/Growler for Oz).
After all, the Noggies told their voters in late 2008 that the F-35s would cost them $52 million each. What's Norwegian for "Psych!"
Biggus - You're right, of course. And let's not forget that support in the digital area includes new software releases. Even some A320 operators grumbled about that, but on a fighter with SLOC in the millions it gets really expensive.
Romulus - Anyone who uses "Game Changer" in a headline is full of
.
Laird's "think" tank, SLD, lists LockMart as its Gold Sponsor. You can still be on someone's payroll and make sense, of course, but my issue with SLD's stuff is that they write about JSF capabilities as if they existed today, and ignore the idea that others may counter them asymmetrically, or emulate them on different platforms.
When the jet gets into service it
may do some of these B2FB things and built a self-forming combat network, but it is far more probable that these capabilities will emerge gradually during the first decade of operations. Look at Super Hornet to see the real-world evolution of a multi-role information-intense platform.
Other things I have never seen SLD address:
How does JSF network with other platforms? The entire "Z-axis" theory (which SLD bangs on about on a Proustian scale) rests on this, but even in 2030 at least half the fighters anywhere will be jets in service today. They probably will have high-rate broadcast-type datalinks, but the problem is that a stealth jet neither wants nor needs any datalink that is not LPI, which inherently means pencil beams and consequent limits on number of users.
They talk about JSF as replacing ISR assets and providing a persistent ISR capability, battlespace awareness, Aegis targeting &c. How the
do you do that with a jet that has two (B) or three (A/C) hours' endurance, tops?
What happens when the adversary sees all this magic and decides to flood the world with RF noise?
There's more than that, of course - like advocating hardened aircraft shelters in WestPac, despite the fact that precision-guided ballistic missiles are entirely feasible (I believe that the PLA successfully ripped off the Pershing 2 guidance system). And so on...