Program of record costs for some U.S. DOD aircraft

The following are program unit costs from various 2012 U.S. DOD Select Acquisition Reports (SAR) on military aircraft.

These unit costs are the predicted average over the life of the program. These numbers are sometimes off compared to what you see DOD spend each year on air frames. Authorized budgets are the real money; SARs are predictions. The numbers below also assume that no air frames are cut and that costs do not rise for other reasons such as problems in development. Still an interesting snapshot:

CH-53K............$142M
E-2D...............$272M
P-8A...............$286M
V-22...............$119M
C-130J............$92M
KC-46A............$288M
F-18E/F...........$90M
F-35...............$135M; F-35 motor on separate SAR category; $26M