Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

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A lot of talk about the A-10 Vs. Scorpion. I just wanted to throw a little bit of interesting data into the mix...

Cost per hour:

  * Scorpion (3K/hour)    
 * F-35 (18K/hour)    
 * A-10 (17.7K/hour)    
 * AC-130U gunship (45.9K/hour)    
 * B-1B "Lancer" (57.8K/hour)    
 * B-2A "Stealth bomber" (169K/hour)    
 * B-52H Stratofortress (69K/hour)   
 * C-17 Globemaster (23K/hour)   
 * CV-22B Osprey (83K/hour)    
 * F-16C (22.5K/hour)   
 * MQ-1B Predator Drone (3.6K/hour)   
 * RQ-4B Global Hawk Drone (49K/hour)

To me that really puts things into perspective. If the 3K figure is true, they're competing against drones not against the A-10 which cost almost as much as the F-35.

FWIW, those F-35 numbers are flat out wrong.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/usaf-estimates-f-3...

They're from the BBC's article linked in the OP. So take it up with them.

No need to be defensive. I was just clarifying for others reading.

EDIT:

Now that I look at the OP article more closely, it appears you may have conflated the F-16 CPFH quoted in the article as representing the F-35 CPFH. I don't see mention of CPFH for the F-35.

That is the key, even a small country can deploy these things with people as opposed to drones. It will be interesting to see if any of them take a bite.

Where'd you get those numbers?

Two places, the BBC article from the OP (Scorpion + F-35 per hour figures), and this Times article from 2013: http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/

Since I posted the above I have learnt that the Global Hawk Drone's per hour cost has decreased quite substantially. It is now closer to 18.9K/hour, instead of 49K per above.

You can read more about that on this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RQ-4_Global_Hawk#Cost_increase...

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