Oh, how about the F22? It's not 100x more the cost, but it was ridiculously expensive to develop (~$66bn), only ~200 were made, and it will almost certainly not be in service for 30 years.
The F22 will be in service for 25-30 years very likely, from the first build to the last flight. Look at how long we've been flying various F16s. Even if we move them to a domestic defensive role with the air national guard toward the later years.
The F22 is an extraordinary plane. Their primary mistake was not building several hundred more while the production lines were up and squeezing the production costs down if possible. The F35 is a dog by comparison to that plane.
With the F35, its cost projections are mostly a joke anyway. There's no scenario where even half the 3,500 estimate will ever be built. A thousand would be a surprising build number for the US. They're up to maybe 300 now. They'll pre-emptively shut the program production down and move on to the next thing.
I'm not so sure regarding the F-22: production costs are only one side of the equation. Its maintenance is very expensive, and there may simply have been no solution in sight to reduce these costs. I think the stealth coating in particular is very expensive to maintain. It's hard to find reliable figures, but it seems to be roughly $45,000/hour, compared to about $20,000/hour for an F-15.
Adding more F-22 would absolutely have reduced the per-unit cost of production. But unless you can lower the cost of flying them, it will just make the operational, ongoing cost of your fleet go way up.
> Their primary mistake was not building several hundred more while the production lines were up and squeezing the production costs down if possible
Well, yea, this discussion is about high-cost government programs, and the fact that they didn't do things like this to reduce production costs is kind of the point.. Nevermind that such an aircraft may not even be necessary.
A question for those close to the program or who work in tangential fields:
Did the F-22 program generate benefits to industrial manufacturing practices or increase knowledge within the material sciences domain with value beyond the tangible, per-unit costs?
> it will almost certainly not be in service for 30 years.
What makes you think that? Its predecessors (F-15/F-16) are both 40+ year old designs with most of the current airframes being 25-30 years old. They're all still slated to fly until at least 2030, IIRC. Then there's the B-52, which is a 70 year old design with all of the airframes being 50+ years old and no end in sight.
