The Air Force has worked up some numbers on what it will cost to add F-22s to the fleet beyond the three-year multiyear buy of 60 aircraft. Adding one more lot of 20 aircraft would cost $3.81 billion, for a flyaway cost of $153 million each. Boosting the one-year buy to 24 aircraft would cost $4.25 billion, for a flyaway cost of $144.2 million, or a per-airplane savings of about $9 million. The numbers come from an unclassified briefing given to staffers on Capitol Hill last week. The service is still working up the cost of a four-year multiyear at 24 per year—which would bring the fleet up to 283 aircraft—but service officials said they think doing so would trim unit costs by as much as $25 million per airplane.
The use of a military counter-drone laser on the southwest border this week—which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to abruptly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas—will be a “case study” on the complex web of authorities needed to employ such weapons near civilian areas and the consequences of agencies…
