$44,000 per flight hour. For every 3 hour sortie, you could buy 3 Teslas (or about 100 acres of land in the Great White North). huh.

I remember not that long ago (1992), when the flight hour cost of a ('horribly expensive') F-14 was 4500.00, and the cost to fly an A-4 skyhawk was 1500.00 per hour.

Somehow, we're supposed to believe that these new planes are going to save money and save the world from comm'nists, who can probably build a plane for the price we pay for a single sortie.

Yeah. Empires, eh?

Not to mention that the fuel used per sortie is enough to run a small farm for a couple of years.

Give them time and they'll bring the price of drone strikes up to that level, too.

Who's building this crap? MIT's hot fusion department?