It’s rather deceptive to include FUEL COSTS in your estimate for the total costs of a plane.
It’s actually rather deceptive to simply report MAINTENANCE costs as well.
After all, these planes are replacing other planes, and those planes WON’T be maintained, or using fuel. And no matter what plane you fly, fuel costs are going up.
I agree this is a poor way of representing expenditures, you have to compare this with current operating costs incurred by our maintaining older technology for the next 30-40 years.
Not to mention the cost in lives to service men if on some later date we are outmatched in warfare technology, that is completely inestimable.