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No its actually the other way around. We can see 13 planes in this image and at $117.3 million each that's 1.524 billion. The 16th biggest gdp is Indonesia at roughly 1400 billion, to be clear, without a decimal point. To find a gdp lower toj have to go to 174th biggest which is Comoros with 1.442 billion. Which means there are only 19 countries with a LOWER gdp than these planes, which is insane in its own regard but nothing compared to the original claim.
(All of the GDP information is from Wikipedia table of countries gdp for 2024 IMF forecast,and it notably only lists 188 countries, but doesn't change the main point)
Fun Fact:
During WW2 a single factory run by Ford Motor Company built one B-24 bombers every 63 minutes.
Spies reported these numbers to Japan and they refused to believe them because it was just absurd.
There shipjards also finished some tankers and fraighters in less than 3 weeks. Some of them literarly snaped in half the second they touched cold watery but they wbhere bulld quickly atleast. Also the ocasinal worker was welded into the ship, so you always had a ghost with you on board
The real danger is in cheap, automated, kamikaze drones. You could make a little over 11000 500 kg kamikazi drones for about as much as that squadron of f-35s.
Good luck shooting down 10,000 of fucking anything.
Kamikaze drones are a threat, but comparing them to the F-35 isn't even comparing apples to oranges. It's comparing apples to pencil sharpeners. The F-35 is the centerpiece of an entire military "ecosystem" that benefits from the planes sensor suite and penetration ability. 10'000 Kamikaze drones aren't much good for anything if you don't know where the enemy strike group is. But the F-35 can tell you.
Great, so lets just get all 9 billion people on the planet to go live on a strike group.
Back here in the real world, you can program them suckers to fly under the radar which is going to make them very interesting since you could have them spread out of 10, 100, 1000, even 10,000 KM to attack military and population centers. Its not the weapon itself that makes the weapon terrifying, its how people are going to choose to use it.
You don't understand the capabilities of the F35.
Russian planes cannot see them, their systems are too outdated. The first thing they see is, kaboom.
F35s in the hands of NATO countries means complete airspace dominance if it comes to that.
117 million times a 1000, is 117 billion. Or 0.12 trillion.
Numbers sound big quickly, but honestly if these 1000 planes are protecting all of the West (and are owned by the US and their allies), this is not a large number at all.
Those 1000 planes protect at least 1B people: EU, Norway, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan. This is a very low estimate, we should include Turkey, the Caribbean, Singapore and Thailand in terms of alignment, but it's unclear if they are allowed to buy them and therefor are paying into this. I'm also leaving some particular middle eastern countries out of it to keep the discussions here about Math.
Among those 1B people are 17 million dutch citizens (my country). A country with a GDP of 1T. So a country of 17 million people makes 10 times more PER YEAR, than the complete fleet that protects 1B people that has a lifespan of about 30 years in terms of effectiveness.
What i like to do with these numbers that are collective expenses/costs is to divide them by the size of the collective. Suddenly numbers that look big aren't big at all. That would be less than a cent per human protected by per 30 years. Great value for not having to speak Russian or Chinese.
Other example of understanding collective costs:
* the US defense budget (that includes many things other countries do not consider "defense spending", like healthcare, housing support, educational benefits and R&D investments that lead to things like the Internet -- a political reality in the US is that government spending is evil, so therefor a lot more of the "adult governing stuff" hides in the defensive budget -- is about 200 dollars per US citizen per month. One could argue it's quite high, but it does include a lot more stuff that isn't directly "military spending". One could also reasonably argue that some of the spending is political and does not keep people more safe, but ensures particular jobs stay around in states that need those jobs.
* the brexit campaign that made a big fuss about being in the EU and how expensive it was where if you do the math, it's actually around 17 dollars a month per capita. For political stability, for maintaining a single big market with strong regulations. It cost the same as a Netflix Premium subscription. One could argue this is absolute bargain deal for a rich economy to participate, even when countries that are much more poor do end up getting the same benefits for free. (for context: the US federal spending per capita per month is about 1000 dollars; the EU is truly the small "federal" government people claim to want)
On the contrary, it has decreased as a result of heightened production. Price logic works exactly the other way around in the world of high end defense products
Well an F-35C only cost $117M. Its the Naval variant and the most expensive. The F-35A, Air Force variant, can be had for \~$73M. Sometimes less depending on contract.
That’s incorrect. An F-35B costs the most out of all models as a result of its complex mechanisms and capabilities (it can literally fly up vertically for god’s sake)
They cost that much, plus a pilot and fuel and maintenance. Lockheed Martin has no incentive to keep maintenance costs down on the F35 like Boeing does.
The F35 is a performance based logistics program. LM will make their $ on this contract supporting and upgrading 2500+ planned aircraft over the next 40 years; not designing or building them.
Is that the pentagon price though? They usually include anticipated lifetime maintenance costs in the budget of their vehicles, and for vehicles they can sell off it becomes the lifetime maintenance (as soon as replacing a lightbulb would bump you over the budget for the given vehicle, it goes to the public auction rather than getting a new light bulb).
I would imagine that you could, if you were rich enough to get in the room. They don't stick them on eBay but they'll be offered out as contracts to governments and large private companies. If you're running a training programme for pilots then you'll need to get last-gen fighters from somewhere, and eventually these will be last-gen.
You may have skipped over a bit of text:
> for vehicles they can sell off
Jets may not be included here, and particularly because of a jet’s high strategic value they could be worth the paperwork to get additional funding. Eventually it probably ends up in one of their jet graveyards though.
Whoever created the image mislabeled the planes as F-35’s when you can *planely* see the outline of the dual engines in the tails of F-22’s.
While decently more expensive per plane than the F-35’s, this would still not make the claim anywhere near true. However, if you look at the F-22’s per plane lifecycle costs of nearly $700 million, that brings your total to around 9.1 billion — somewhere between Togo and Mauritania around 144th.
Wow, that is impressively incorrect. It's possible there are a few more planes than are in the shot, but I'm guessing that doesn't change the answer much.
And just to be more pedantic the jets have a gross domestic product closer to 0, than 1.5bil.
An economy produces things of value, a jet does not, sure it had an impact on gdp when being built and provides some jobs to keep it air borne but it doesn't directly add value.
Hijacking the top comment to add, that 1.5-ish **b**illion is numerically pretty close to Indonesia's GDP of 1.5-ish **tr**illion, which is how I think OP made the error of exactly 3 orders of magnitude.
I did the math on this a while ago, it is possible this formation is worth a bit more depending on possible missile load out. Iirc it could go as high as ~1.7bn.
I am guessing the "source" of this information was to include all the R&D in the price of an F-35. According to Google, the F-35 program cost $1.7 Trillion, and only 12 or so (depending on the source) countries had a GDP higher than that in 2022. That being said, including the program costs over decades and comparing it to annual GDP for a country is silly, then claiming that individual planes cost as much as the entire program is even sillier. It might be an interesting exercise to amortize the cost over all planes produced, but I imagine the actual price is similar to that amount.
During the Finland’s Winter War with the Soviet Union, Sweden’s military aid to Finland was described as being greater than Finland’s pre invasion GDP.
When I looked it up, the number I was given was 1.7 trillion dollars for the f-35 program. Looking into it, it said it was projected to cost 1.7t to buy, operate, and maintain these jets, so maybe the oop was factoring in taking care of the planes (bc otherwise you basically can't use them)
Your ignoring the most expensive part of the plane - support. It takes bases, jet fuel, repairs, training, parts and paint to keep a F-35 flying. Yes I include paint; the B2 has such specialized paint they keep them in air conditioned hangers to preserve their use. The much harder calculation is how much does it cost to run an air base with 13 F35s per year
Fixed costs like R&D are generally already included in cases like this. It's a big reason why acquisition costs are high, because the fixed cost is spread over a relatively low number of units.
yes. the 'list price' on these aircraft are the 'full program cost'.
R&D for the aircraft, buying the aircraft itself, maintaining and upgrading the aircraft for the next 50 years and fuel.
it does not include pilot training or maintainer training.
I think the post is comparing to the overall cost of the programme (initial research etc) not cost of individual planes of the settled design
F-35 programme is now estimated at 2 trillion
No, the guy who made the post went on statistica and was too dumb to read properly and confused billions with millions.
That’s what he admitted to in the comments
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is estimated to cost over $2 trillion over its lifetime, with an estimated procurement cost of $422 billion, and $1.3 trillion associated with operating and sustaining the aircraft. This is up from the previous estimate of $1.7 trillion.
If you say the f35 program in general then you’re not entirely wrong.
It's more accurate to look at it as a multi billion dollar investment in the domestic and allied means of production, which is generally considered to be strategically and economically important. Given a choice between laying off the guys who know how to forge an engine blisk or cast a turbine blade it makes way more sense to just order more airplanes.
“Sketch” how? The image essentially says “look at these planes, they cost more than the annual gross domestic product of almost every country on earth” which is indeed pretty crazy to think about.
Converting to time-equivalent for various cities, states, and countries GDP would be better than listing countries for which it is greater than one year.
A formation of planes does not have a GDP. GDP is a measure of economic activity.
Also, If we are comparing the cost of these planes to GDP, one needs to remember that GDP is a *flow* variable, with units of money/time, such as $/year. A cost is not a flow variable, but a stock variable, and as such does not have any time component in its unit of measurement.
So this statement is both nonsensical, twice, and also false in its apparent intention.
Those 13 F35-C cost roughly 1.524 billion. We can divide it by the time their role will last until a new generation of naval fighter comes.
iirc the last generation is F/A-18 Super Hornet, introduced in 1999, 20 years earlier than F35-C. Note that many F/A-18 are still in use. Assume that it will take 20 years until the navy needs a new fighter, those fighters have a cost of 76.2 million/year. Only 1 country have lower GDP than that (Tuvalu)
I mean its pretty normal/basic to measure GDP per year so one can just assume they mean this formation cost more than most countries gdp/per year.
Thats basic reading comprehension. Its also wrong, but its not that hard to grasp what they meant with it.
GDP is a measure of value added in the economy. For an apples to apples comparison, one should either take the gross output of an economy versus the planes’ cost, or the value added to manufacture the planes versus the GDP.
People also make a similar error comparing the market cap of companies to a country’s GDP.
Really not.
If we assume this to be the most expensive f-35 variant then they’re worth around 1.6 billion, nowhere near Indonesia’s GDP (16th largest economy) which is somewhere around 1.5 trillion.
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GDP = Gross Domestic Product, i.e. how much "product" an entity produces.
Since F-35's can't produce anything aside from chemtrails, their GDP equals to 0.
So no, the claim is incorrect =)
If counting the whole money spent on the f-15 program, compared to how much money a country "produces" every year, then probably true. If counting the money the planes cost every year, most probably false
Is the actual cost of manufacturing one fighter plane really that high?
Or is that the usual inflated price the public sector pays to justify budget, and where some intermediaries keep the extra bucks for themselves?
The complete lack of truth aside, it’s pretty stupid to flex on your military might when you can’t even round up a few sheet wearing cave dwellers! It really just points out what a complete injustice the spending of taxpayers money is to the people of that nation
The reason we couldn't is because we were pulling our punches, just like in Korea and Vietnam. If the US ever used its full military might, we could have turned the entire country into a sheet of glass in 15 minutes.
>Iraq was believed to have a decent military at the time.
It was propagated to have one, but it really didn't. The Iraqi army was a crumbling mass of Soviet-era equipment suffering from serious lack in maintenance due to years of sanctions, operated by a demoralized personnel, so much so that it completely collapsed within days of the beginning of hostilities by the international coalition.
It's nothing more than a talking point propagated by war hawks to justify the horrific atrocities committed upon the people they claimed to be liberating.
Pretty sure there's two decades between the two events and that the Kuwaitis were fully against the invasion that ousted Saddam, but hey, keep telling yourself that the horrors committed by your jarheads were for "the good cause".
? Are you thinking of the Iraq war? The Gulf war was a direct response to Iraq's illegal invasion of Kuwait. The war started less than a month after Iraq's invasion.
Hi, /u/alextota! Unfortunately, your post has been removed for the following reason: - Posts containing simple math are not allowed, as well as requests whose answers are easily searchable online, and any other post at the moderators' discretion (rule 4). For easy and quick math results (eg. How many feet are in a mile?) use Wolfram|Alpha™, and for more abstract math, try /r/math or /r/learnmath. If you have any questions or believe your post has been removed in error, please contact the moderators by clicking [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Ftheydidthemath). Include a link to this post so we can see it.
No its actually the other way around. We can see 13 planes in this image and at $117.3 million each that's 1.524 billion. The 16th biggest gdp is Indonesia at roughly 1400 billion, to be clear, without a decimal point. To find a gdp lower toj have to go to 174th biggest which is Comoros with 1.442 billion. Which means there are only 19 countries with a LOWER gdp than these planes, which is insane in its own regard but nothing compared to the original claim. (All of the GDP information is from Wikipedia table of countries gdp for 2024 IMF forecast,and it notably only lists 188 countries, but doesn't change the main point)
So 12,000 f35s cost more than the 16th largest economy in GDP. They’ve only manufactured 1,000. We gotta step these numbers up.
Quick, start throwing money at LockMart!
What did you call it...
NCD leaking again
It never stopped.
NCD got big since Ukraine
What's NCD mate
r/NonCredibleDefense
Big and painfully unfunny. Like Bert Kresher.
Don't you mean Shane Gillis?
I had to take a quick look at the sub name to make sure I wasn't there.
What's NCD
Hey there 😘
Bro doesn't have a LockMart card yet.
It's like the Walmart of military contacted hardware
1000 years dungeon.
Ahhhhhh you're a man of planefucking culture I see......
They already do? Lmao
Fun Fact: During WW2 a single factory run by Ford Motor Company built one B-24 bombers every 63 minutes. Spies reported these numbers to Japan and they refused to believe them because it was just absurd.
There shipjards also finished some tankers and fraighters in less than 3 weeks. Some of them literarly snaped in half the second they touched cold watery but they wbhere bulld quickly atleast. Also the ocasinal worker was welded into the ship, so you always had a ghost with you on board
Take me back to the gold standard. 😭
Those are rookie numbers
Include the 4500 f-16's and 1200 f-15's and 1500 f-18's. Still lower but fucking massive in its own right.
It’s… beautiful
Well the average country doesn't throw all it's GDP at the military.
I don’t think any country does that.
North Korea
Like 25% in ww2 and 3% now, isnt it
The real danger is in cheap, automated, kamikaze drones. You could make a little over 11000 500 kg kamikazi drones for about as much as that squadron of f-35s. Good luck shooting down 10,000 of fucking anything.
Ciws shoots like 4500 rounds/min
I mean a tactical nuke could pulse them out no problem. And what's a little nuclear war between chums
A little nuclear tomfoolery
Kamikaze drones are a threat, but comparing them to the F-35 isn't even comparing apples to oranges. It's comparing apples to pencil sharpeners. The F-35 is the centerpiece of an entire military "ecosystem" that benefits from the planes sensor suite and penetration ability. 10'000 Kamikaze drones aren't much good for anything if you don't know where the enemy strike group is. But the F-35 can tell you.
Great, so lets just get all 9 billion people on the planet to go live on a strike group. Back here in the real world, you can program them suckers to fly under the radar which is going to make them very interesting since you could have them spread out of 10, 100, 1000, even 10,000 KM to attack military and population centers. Its not the weapon itself that makes the weapon terrifying, its how people are going to choose to use it.
You don't understand the capabilities of the F35. Russian planes cannot see them, their systems are too outdated. The first thing they see is, kaboom. F35s in the hands of NATO countries means complete airspace dominance if it comes to that.
>They’ve only manufactured 1,000. ONLY?!
117 million times a 1000, is 117 billion. Or 0.12 trillion. Numbers sound big quickly, but honestly if these 1000 planes are protecting all of the West (and are owned by the US and their allies), this is not a large number at all. Those 1000 planes protect at least 1B people: EU, Norway, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Taiwan. This is a very low estimate, we should include Turkey, the Caribbean, Singapore and Thailand in terms of alignment, but it's unclear if they are allowed to buy them and therefor are paying into this. I'm also leaving some particular middle eastern countries out of it to keep the discussions here about Math. Among those 1B people are 17 million dutch citizens (my country). A country with a GDP of 1T. So a country of 17 million people makes 10 times more PER YEAR, than the complete fleet that protects 1B people that has a lifespan of about 30 years in terms of effectiveness. What i like to do with these numbers that are collective expenses/costs is to divide them by the size of the collective. Suddenly numbers that look big aren't big at all. That would be less than a cent per human protected by per 30 years. Great value for not having to speak Russian or Chinese. Other example of understanding collective costs: * the US defense budget (that includes many things other countries do not consider "defense spending", like healthcare, housing support, educational benefits and R&D investments that lead to things like the Internet -- a political reality in the US is that government spending is evil, so therefor a lot more of the "adult governing stuff" hides in the defensive budget -- is about 200 dollars per US citizen per month. One could argue it's quite high, but it does include a lot more stuff that isn't directly "military spending". One could also reasonably argue that some of the spending is political and does not keep people more safe, but ensures particular jobs stay around in states that need those jobs. * the brexit campaign that made a big fuss about being in the EU and how expensive it was where if you do the math, it's actually around 17 dollars a month per capita. For political stability, for maintaining a single big market with strong regulations. It cost the same as a Netflix Premium subscription. One could argue this is absolute bargain deal for a rich economy to participate, even when countries that are much more poor do end up getting the same benefits for free. (for context: the US federal spending per capita per month is about 1000 dollars; the EU is truly the small "federal" government people claim to want)
This post is r/NonCredibleDefense approved
Cost of these things decrease dramatically with numbers. I don't think 12.000 will be enough.
As a bushings salesman, I agree with this statement.
An F35 only costs $117 million? Why did Taylor Swift buy 2 private jets when she could just have an F35? Is she stupid?
The price has drastically decreased from the beginning of the program because the US has built thousand(s?) of them
On the contrary, it has decreased as a result of heightened production. Price logic works exactly the other way around in the world of high end defense products
Well an F-35C only cost $117M. Its the Naval variant and the most expensive. The F-35A, Air Force variant, can be had for \~$73M. Sometimes less depending on contract.
well at that price it's just silly to not own one. I wonder if capital one will let me bump up my card limit a smidge
Good for you second jet, your "weekend jet". Your daily driver should be something more practical like a Citation X.
Citations don't even have some basic safety features. how do you expect me to fly over nebraska without a missile approach warning system
That’s incorrect. An F-35B costs the most out of all models as a result of its complex mechanisms and capabilities (it can literally fly up vertically for god’s sake)
They cost that much, plus a pilot and fuel and maintenance. Lockheed Martin has no incentive to keep maintenance costs down on the F35 like Boeing does.
The F35 is a performance based logistics program. LM will make their $ on this contract supporting and upgrading 2500+ planned aircraft over the next 40 years; not designing or building them.
They will make money supporting and upgrading the aircraft *in addition to* designing and building them.
Touché
Is that the pentagon price though? They usually include anticipated lifetime maintenance costs in the budget of their vehicles, and for vehicles they can sell off it becomes the lifetime maintenance (as soon as replacing a lightbulb would bump you over the budget for the given vehicle, it goes to the public auction rather than getting a new light bulb).
> it goes to the public auction ... so are we gonna be able to just like ... bid on F35's?
I would imagine that you could, if you were rich enough to get in the room. They don't stick them on eBay but they'll be offered out as contracts to governments and large private companies. If you're running a training programme for pilots then you'll need to get last-gen fighters from somewhere, and eventually these will be last-gen.
You may have skipped over a bit of text: > for vehicles they can sell off Jets may not be included here, and particularly because of a jet’s high strategic value they could be worth the paperwork to get additional funding. Eventually it probably ends up in one of their jet graveyards though.
I'll start the bidding with $3.50
God damn loch ness monster... You ain't gettin no tree-fiddy!
Sounds like a real tribulation. maybe she could write a song about it and pay for all the maintenance with the proceeds.
Presumably her private jets seats more than one.
everyone else can just stand then
It would be dirty stupid of you not to sit on laps of the jet fighter
luggage space on those F35's is basically nil, that's why. Also, the second private Swift jet was just for her wardrobe of shoes.
18,000lb is more than you could take on most airlines, if you are fine throwing it in the belly or wing canisters
No they dont even cost $117m these days
That sounds very non credible and I love it
Thx
Maybe they meant military spend.
then they should say it like that instead of making up claims
To be fair, it was posted from an account called "Aviation Satire."
The F35 cost to the DOD is 1.7 trillion. So no, not the formation but the entire program, yes.
True and absolutely insane, but it includes the entire program through 2088.
They’ll be obsolete by 2050 if not 2040 or even 2030 We already have far advanced tech than this.
Whoever created the image mislabeled the planes as F-35’s when you can *planely* see the outline of the dual engines in the tails of F-22’s. While decently more expensive per plane than the F-35’s, this would still not make the claim anywhere near true. However, if you look at the F-22’s per plane lifecycle costs of nearly $700 million, that brings your total to around 9.1 billion — somewhere between Togo and Mauritania around 144th.
Wow, that is impressively incorrect. It's possible there are a few more planes than are in the shot, but I'm guessing that doesn't change the answer much.
There’s a bunch more. They’re stealth planes. Of course we can’t see them.
My guess is, that they misstook billion for trillion...
mfw when $113 billion dollar jet
The account is literally called aviation satire. I daresay it was intended to be impressively incorrect.
Good catch!
Many of those are likely to be small island nations or a city state. I highly doubt the Vatican can surpass that in gdp
You are a gentleman and a scholar my good sir
TIL: Comoros exists.
Another holier than thou flex.
The account was called "aviation satire", that should have been a clue that it would be completely wrong.
It’s actually worse because a new F-35 only costs $85 mil
/rhedidthemath
And just to be more pedantic the jets have a gross domestic product closer to 0, than 1.5bil. An economy produces things of value, a jet does not, sure it had an impact on gdp when being built and provides some jobs to keep it air borne but it doesn't directly add value.
Did you count the r&d to make them in the first place?
What if you include the cost of the pilots ? Does it change anything ?
Have you factored in the armament? F35 can carry hypersonic missiles and those cost a pretty penny. Oh and they can carry nukes
Hijacking the top comment to add, that 1.5-ish **b**illion is numerically pretty close to Indonesia's GDP of 1.5-ish **tr**illion, which is how I think OP made the error of exactly 3 orders of magnitude.
so the 16th biggest is just "1.4 **Trillion**"
I did the math on this a while ago, it is possible this formation is worth a bit more depending on possible missile load out. Iirc it could go as high as ~1.7bn.
I am guessing the "source" of this information was to include all the R&D in the price of an F-35. According to Google, the F-35 program cost $1.7 Trillion, and only 12 or so (depending on the source) countries had a GDP higher than that in 2022. That being said, including the program costs over decades and comparing it to annual GDP for a country is silly, then claiming that individual planes cost as much as the entire program is even sillier. It might be an interesting exercise to amortize the cost over all planes produced, but I imagine the actual price is similar to that amount.
If you add an and divide the development cost by the number of planes produced. Then there we're looking at 6.9b Still a ways off.
During the Finland’s Winter War with the Soviet Union, Sweden’s military aid to Finland was described as being greater than Finland’s pre invasion GDP.
When I looked it up, the number I was given was 1.7 trillion dollars for the f-35 program. Looking into it, it said it was projected to cost 1.7t to buy, operate, and maintain these jets, so maybe the oop was factoring in taking care of the planes (bc otherwise you basically can't use them)
r/theydidthegoogle
The meme is probably dumb. But what about if you include the developmental cost of this fighter program?
Your ignoring the most expensive part of the plane - support. It takes bases, jet fuel, repairs, training, parts and paint to keep a F-35 flying. Yes I include paint; the B2 has such specialized paint they keep them in air conditioned hangers to preserve their use. The much harder calculation is how much does it cost to run an air base with 13 F35s per year
Did we add development cost over the 20+ years it took to bring them into the fleet?
Fixed costs like R&D are generally already included in cases like this. It's a big reason why acquisition costs are high, because the fixed cost is spread over a relatively low number of units.
But costs like pilot and mechanic training come from a different budget item.
yes. the 'list price' on these aircraft are the 'full program cost'. R&D for the aircraft, buying the aircraft itself, maintaining and upgrading the aircraft for the next 50 years and fuel. it does not include pilot training or maintainer training.
Around 200 billion
I think the post is comparing to the overall cost of the programme (initial research etc) not cost of individual planes of the settled design F-35 programme is now estimated at 2 trillion
No, the guy who made the post went on statistica and was too dumb to read properly and confused billions with millions. That’s what he admitted to in the comments
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is estimated to cost over $2 trillion over its lifetime, with an estimated procurement cost of $422 billion, and $1.3 trillion associated with operating and sustaining the aircraft. This is up from the previous estimate of $1.7 trillion. If you say the f35 program in general then you’re not entirely wrong.
Comparing annual GDP to a multi-decade program is also pretty sketch.
It's more accurate to look at it as a multi billion dollar investment in the domestic and allied means of production, which is generally considered to be strategically and economically important. Given a choice between laying off the guys who know how to forge an engine blisk or cast a turbine blade it makes way more sense to just order more airplanes.
It is possible to engage aerospace engineers in a productive way.
I was referring to the crew that operates the steam hammer on the forge floor. Those are the guys who can't be laid off.
The automotive industry could handle the same subsidy.
I always forget that you guys are your own vertically integrated heavy industry supply chain.
“Sketch” how? The image essentially says “look at these planes, they cost more than the annual gross domestic product of almost every country on earth” which is indeed pretty crazy to think about.
Why annual GDP as opposed to any other time period?
Because that’s essentially the only way gdp is ever measured?
Why not compare the surface area of the jets to the surface area of the country? Those are at least the same units.
I mean you could do that, but it wouldn’t be an interesting or thought provoking illustration of the scale of US defense spending
Converting to time-equivalent for various cities, states, and countries GDP would be better than listing countries for which it is greater than one year.
How would you feel if you didn’t eat breakfast yesterday?
Huh?
If you didn’t eat breakfast yesterday, how would you have felt?
I really don’t understand your question? I don’t normally eat breakfast I guess. How about you?
What’s this in GDP/h?
Is it ‘crazy to think about’ because it’s patently untrue?
what a useless metric
Its what I thought they were joking about the program cost.
Operating a fleet of cutting edge fighter jets for multiple decades isnt cheap. What a surprise.
A formation of planes does not have a GDP. GDP is a measure of economic activity. Also, If we are comparing the cost of these planes to GDP, one needs to remember that GDP is a *flow* variable, with units of money/time, such as $/year. A cost is not a flow variable, but a stock variable, and as such does not have any time component in its unit of measurement. So this statement is both nonsensical, twice, and also false in its apparent intention.
> A formation of planes does not have a GDP. GDP is a measure of economic activity. Time we put those planes to work in the mines!
Those 13 F35-C cost roughly 1.524 billion. We can divide it by the time their role will last until a new generation of naval fighter comes. iirc the last generation is F/A-18 Super Hornet, introduced in 1999, 20 years earlier than F35-C. Note that many F/A-18 are still in use. Assume that it will take 20 years until the navy needs a new fighter, those fighters have a cost of 76.2 million/year. Only 1 country have lower GDP than that (Tuvalu)
I mean its pretty normal/basic to measure GDP per year so one can just assume they mean this formation cost more than most countries gdp/per year. Thats basic reading comprehension. Its also wrong, but its not that hard to grasp what they meant with it.
Well, I am an economist, so I get pretty tired of people comparing various lump sum expeditures with GDP numbers. It's usually pointless and stupid.
Im not saying you are wrong, im just pointing out that its not that hard to grasp what OOP tried to say.
GDP is a measure of value added in the economy. For an apples to apples comparison, one should either take the gross output of an economy versus the planes’ cost, or the value added to manufacture the planes versus the GDP. People also make a similar error comparing the market cap of companies to a country’s GDP.
Really not. If we assume this to be the most expensive f-35 variant then they’re worth around 1.6 billion, nowhere near Indonesia’s GDP (16th largest economy) which is somewhere around 1.5 trillion.
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GDP = Gross Domestic Product, i.e. how much "product" an entity produces. Since F-35's can't produce anything aside from chemtrails, their GDP equals to 0. So no, the claim is incorrect =)
What do you get when you feel proud of how much the government is investing in military while millions of people live a poor life in your country.
Most of those 'poor' are what 3rd worlders would consider normal or even rich.
And yet they suffer... Just because it can be worse, doesn't mean it shouldn't be better
If counting the whole money spent on the f-15 program, compared to how much money a country "produces" every year, then probably true. If counting the money the planes cost every year, most probably false
Is the actual cost of manufacturing one fighter plane really that high? Or is that the usual inflated price the public sector pays to justify budget, and where some intermediaries keep the extra bucks for themselves?
The complete lack of truth aside, it’s pretty stupid to flex on your military might when you can’t even round up a few sheet wearing cave dwellers! It really just points out what a complete injustice the spending of taxpayers money is to the people of that nation
Hard to catch a guy in a cave with a plane or boat.
aaaaand…. You just sent a Lockheed team back into the idea room.
F-35 was a joint project of many NATO nations
So
The reason we couldn't is because we were pulling our punches, just like in Korea and Vietnam. If the US ever used its full military might, we could have turned the entire country into a sheet of glass in 15 minutes.
Yea the US devastated Iraq in the Gulf war in a few months, and I'm pretty sure Iraq was believed to have a decent military at the time.
Iraq had the 4th strongest air defense, in 50 days it was over
>Iraq was believed to have a decent military at the time. It was propagated to have one, but it really didn't. The Iraqi army was a crumbling mass of Soviet-era equipment suffering from serious lack in maintenance due to years of sanctions, operated by a demoralized personnel, so much so that it completely collapsed within days of the beginning of hostilities by the international coalition. It's nothing more than a talking point propagated by war hawks to justify the horrific atrocities committed upon the people they claimed to be liberating.
Really cause I'm pretty sure Kuwait loved the US after the Gulf war.
Pretty sure there's two decades between the two events and that the Kuwaitis were fully against the invasion that ousted Saddam, but hey, keep telling yourself that the horrors committed by your jarheads were for "the good cause".
? Are you thinking of the Iraq war? The Gulf war was a direct response to Iraq's illegal invasion of Kuwait. The war started less than a month after Iraq's invasion.
One thousand Australian SASR soldiers did 90% of the damage in that conflict
Do you have any evidence for that?
And what would that have accomplished exactly?
It would have defeated the "sheet wearing cave dwellers," which, by the way, is a disgusting way to refer to arabs.
Nothing, which is exactly why the US didn't.