Speaking of JSF operating cost vs legacy fighters. I found an old but very interesting Air Force Magazine article. Here´s an interesting quote:
The Dart Throw
“In 1994, they threw a dart in the wall and decided that there would be a [winner chosen] in April 2001. We will do it in October. Over a seven-year program, we’re five months off.”
Hough said the JSF will in every way match or exceed the performance of the aircraft it is designed to replace. However, “cost of ownership is the legacy of this airplane. Not performance. Relative to cost of ownership, performance is easy.”
He said when the services got serious about setting their true top priorities for the JSF, they found that they were willing to trade away some aspects of performance to get an aircraft that was cheap to own and operate.
“It’s cost of ownership of legacy airplanes that’s … eating us alive,” Hough noted. He also said that when the contractors “saw we were serious” about an almost religious zeal for savings, they too sharpened their pencils and went to work, discarding long-standing traditional ideas about how fighter airplanes are made. For its part, the government did not specify what it wanted. It set the performance and cost requirements and let the contractors offer their own solutions, using their own techniques, technology, and business practices.
Also, another interesting quote from the article:
The JSF does not have supercruise ability, he pointed out, nor is it designed to be an air superiority airplane. “It’s a bomb truck … and a very efficient one,” Hough said.
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2001/July%202001/0701fighters.aspx
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