The new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office includes interesting details regarding the cost per flight hour of 47 types of various aircraft used by the American military: from Air Force and Navy jets to Marine Corps and Army.
Here we provide a brief overview of how much it costs to raise an A-10 fighter or a B-2 stealth bomber into the sky.
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Cheap A-10 and "Astronomical" Raptor
As for fighter and attack aircraft, the cheapest on the list is the A-10 Thunderbolt attack jet, which costs $22,531 per flight hour. Next, at approximately the same level, we can find the F-16 Fighting Falcon with a price tag of $26,927 per hour, and the slightly more expensive F/A-18E/F Super Hornet with its $30,404/h.
To pilot the F-15E Strike Eagle would be a little more expensive – $33,177 per hour. Whereas the next aircraft goes up in terms of cost with a more serious margin: the F-35 modern fighter of the fifth generation – $41,986/h.
And here we have more than twice as expensive stealth aircraft, the F-22 Raptor with the astronomical cost per flight hour of $85 325.
Helicopters' "Pricelist"
In this report, no less interesting information concerns how much it costs to operate helicopters. And here we have the following figures: for example, an hour of flight on the UH-60 Blackhawk costs only $3,116; while its anti-submarine upgrade, the MH-60R Seahawk, costs $14,555/h, almost five times as much.
For the AH-64 Apache, this figure is $5,171/h, and for the AH-1Z Viper it’s $20,642/h. At the same time, one of the most expensive helicopters to use is the MV-22B Osprey convertible, which costs $42,767 per flight hour.
Bombers
Despite being rather old, the cheapest bomber in this rating is the B-52H Stratofortress with the $88,354 cost per flight hour.
In the second place, we have the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber ($150,741), followed by B-1B Lancer ($173,014).
Yet, the Bombers Are Not the Leaders
Record-high costs belong to specialized military aircraft. The E-3 Sentry airborne early warning and control aircraft takes $66,126/h and the RC-135S-W large reconnaissance aircraft needs $95,339 per hour of flight.
And the very most expensive one is the E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Post, the so-called Doomsday plane, which has a cost of a flight hour of mindblowing $372,496.
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