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Comment by izacus | Hacker News Reader

Was Grippen actually cheaper to operate? Because I've been following Swiss and Finnish purchase orders and they claimed that F-35A came out both cheaper to procure and was not more expensive to operate (mostly due to much higher production numbers since every other NATO country seems to be procuring them, making spare parts and per unit costs lower).

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The savings are due to the production scale and expected operation time. F-35 is so cheap (amortized) because it is a) bought by everyone and their mother, b) expected to operate for many, many decades.

I think that's one of the reasons the newer Gripen uses the same engine as the F/A-18.

I miss the old Gripen howl =)

> F-35 is so cheap

Things I never thought I would hear...

Since we're on HN I should also add that the most delay producing part of the plane was, by far, the software.

Also, both of my points are important. The very long expected lifespan may be even more important.

It's surprising isn't it? After all the costs and overruns... but the economies of scale kicked in becaues EU NATO countries are buying them in large numbers (and they're noticably more advanced than competitors now that software is actually working).

Aren't a large portion of the F-35s that have been made to date practically complete write-offs because they're not going to update the software on them to support features from the most recent version?

But to the accounts department, it is cheaper and rightly so?

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