Since even before World War II aircraft development and procurement has grown more and more expensive. The tendency up until the early 1970’s was to create a heavier and more complex aircraft for a given role, and this came to a climax with planes such as the F-101, F-106, and F-111 which were fairly fast, very heavy, and terribly unmaneuverable.
Beginning with the F-14 we saw the beginning of a new generation of “superfighters”. Both the F-14 and F-15 were developed with the mindset of “Not a pound for ground” and were designed to have great (for the time) thrust to weight ratios. Because of this requirement for good thrust to weight ratios (and subsequent high rate of climb) the weight of these planes was kept in check, but no attempt to keep costs down was made. The result was another generation of aircraft that were more expensive and complex than anything seen before.
The airforce quickly saw a problem with this in the low numbers of F-15’s it was able to procure. They came up with the idea of a low weight, low cost fighter that would complement the F-15. The results of this search for a low cost, low weight fighter were the YF-16 which would go on to be developed into the F-16, and the YF-17 which would be further developed into the F-18.
Curiously enough, these low cost, low weight planes are arguably as effective as their heavier cousin the F-15, and are certainly more effective than the F-14.
20 years later, the USAF and USN seem to have forgotten their lessons. The results are the scrubbed A-12 attack plane for the Navy and the ultra-complex F-22 for the USAF. Instead of attempting to create a highly effective, low cost plane as they did in the F-16 and F-18, they instead decided to create the best plane possible. The F-22 combines some pretty hefty requirements. High thrust to weight, low observability, thrust vectoring, and supersonic cruise.
The Europeans seem to have learned the lesson that the US should have caught onto 20 years ago. They are producing the cheap, highly effective Gripen in Norway, the Eurofighter in Germany, Britain, and Spain, and the Rafael in France. They will be able to buy at least two of their planes for the cost of one of our F-22’s. The F-22 will certainly be more effective than any of these planes, but probably not twice as effective. If any unforseen shortfalls occur in the F-22, we will be in for a very expensive turkey. For instance, according to the journal World Air Power the ultra-expensive, over $1 billion apiece B-2 bomber is not as stealthy as originally thought. Some high power ground based radar systems can pick it up. Since it depends on stealth alone to keep it protected, this is a major problem.
In addition, the high cost of the F-22 keeps it in peril of being cut or decreased in number by congress before even going into production. The B-2 bomber was originally going to have approximately 130 planes produced and was instead cut to 20. The USAF intends to procure around 400 F-22’s. If because of its high cost it is decreased from this number by congress to, say, 100 aircraft, it will hardly fill the US’s need for a replacement air supremecy fighter.