At $42k cost per flight hour, 17k flight hours cost $714M to operate.. pathetic."
$42K is down from $65K in 2014, and it will likely drop further. $42K is also only a few percent higher than the cost to operate an F-15, which has significantly less capability in most areas, and no stealth.
You should probably read this article:
Four of the most experienced USMC F-35B pilots speak about their aircraft. And they say it’s exceptional.
One illuminating paragraph:
I was leading a four ship of F-35s on a strike against 4th Gen adversaries, F-16s and F/A-18s. We fought our way in, we mapped the target, found the target, dropped JDAMs on the target and turned around and fought our way out. All the targets got hit, nobody got detected, and all the adversaries died. I thought, yes, this works, very, very, very well. Never detected, nobody had any idea we were out there.The Russians and Chinese would fare no better than those F-16s and F-18s... It's also worth noting that the STOVL version was dominating conventional aircraft.
What the test pilots and active duty pilots say to the media and what’s printed in many test articles from the public affairs offices on different test ranges is pure spin.. you don’t say bad things about what’s being tested it’s always meeting requirements, operates flawlessly and is amazing.
What they say to to test engineers and what’s printed by other outsiders in the know so to speak is the opposite.
The aircraft is a S/W nightmare and it’s FMC rate is about 50%.