Re:Status of F-35 – Senate Armed Services Committee Statemen...
by vonmoltke on Monday May 02, 2016 @12:21PM
(#11612800)
Quite right. The comment I was replying to seemed to be saying it was a mistake to cut F-22A production way back when in favor of the F-35, and I was answering in that context. Restarting it now would require hundreds of millions in tooling costs just to get the lines going again.
Allow me to point out the very practical reality that the figure you're quoting was the cost to build an F-22. We haven't built one since the last F-22 rolled out of Marietta in 2012, and all the tooling has been put away (and some of it has been lost). It would certainly be possible to resume F-22 production, but the cost of the first few new aircraft would be even higher than what you're quoting because we would have to teach ourselves how to build it again, and set up all the equipment and logistics necessary to do it. That won't come cheaply.