it looks like the image is cost of operations/support/maintenance per aircraft
you are right to point out the bloated budget of the F-35 program, but that is including all research and development. the numbers here aren’t taking that into consideration.
I guess the best thing would be if somebody really did all the work and laid out the total per aircraft and per program cost stuff for
- planes
- ships
- etc
-–
Ninja edit
The problem of course is if you shared it with libs - they’d balk anyway and refuse to actually debate. They’d say stuff like “These numbers are wild approximations and they are deceptive.” As if it matters much if the graphic says planes cost an insane $300b a year but number is “probably the much lower” but still insane $250b. And if you set out the numbers over 10 years - then they complain about stuff like inflation and many details about projects are unknowns.
It makes me think of how libs always think of military budgets as yearly. But they love to slime stuff like m4a by quoting the total huge cost over, say, 20 years.
I still have questions, like how tf is the per plane maintenance for an f-35 equal to an f-15
