Unit cost of an f-15 is around 30 million per jet but that was 20 years ago. A Quarter the price (Roughly!) to an F-35 without factoring inflation. It was Introduced 1976 over 40 years ago and has been retrofitted since.
Unit cost of an F-16 is approaching 20 million (I’m surprised at how cheap they are, but we export these so maybe that’s because replacement orders are cheap) about 1/5th the price of a F-35. But again, the F-16 is a 40 year old platform with lots of retrofits.
F-22s are about 150 million, as per Wikipedia. That’s a lot of money for a fighter platform.
F-35s are around 90-115 million depending on the service variant. They introduce a new level of options because they are a stealthy platform. So I think its worth the investment if not to augment our current military.
14 of the most advanced F-16’s with targeting pods and ordnance just sold for $2.91 billion.
You can buy them stripped in serial production for about $75 mil per copy.
Interesting, any idea how much it cost per hour of flight time, for each variant?