New systems always cost more when they’re first put into production. Besides, I don’t want to hear complaints about costs for a legitimate government function when we’re spending trillions unconstitutionally. Maintenance time is concerning, but most of that maintenance is consumed by the stealth technology, so if we were pressed in wartime we could send it up with much less maintenance by sacrificing its stealth (making it like an ordinary fighter). Training time shouldn’t be an issue unless we have massive attrition in war, in which case we need more spending, training, and equipment now, not once we’re losing.
I find the kill ratio to be quite believable because the technological gap is so wide. It’s something like pitting a Mustang against a MiG-15 in terms of technological disparity. In many of the tests the F-22 was able to achieve kills before the opposing planes were able to see them on their instruments.
What I’m questioning is the efficiency of buying a 5th Generation manned fighter fleet at an extremely high cost, when viable alternatives exist.
One paradigm(currently being pursued by China, Russia, and Israel, amongst others) is to build/upgrade to cheaper 4.5 Gen fighters. While plowing limited resources into unmanned programs.
If we consider that a 4.5 Gen SU-35 or a J-10 is 1/5th to 1/7th the cost of an F-22, all they need is a better than 7:1 kill ratio to win air dominance.
Add this to the fact that the technology gap between a 4.5 gen fighter and a 5 gen fighter is smaller than the gap between the 2nd Gen Mig-19 and the 3rd Gen F-4. And in that conflict, we saw near even kill ratios.