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How much do F-35 Lightning II fighter jets cost in 2026? The answer is very complicated and intertwined with what the air forces want to do with them, the capabilities being sought, what variant is being purchased, whether the customers are part of the development program, and much more. When comparing the F-35’s fly-away costs to other frontline fighter jets, like the F-15EX, Rafale, and Eurofighter, it can be less, but sustainment expenses are higher.
In 2020, when it selected the F-35, the Swiss Government stated, “In addition to the benefits, the F-35A also achieved by far the best result in terms of costs.” But now it is trimming the number of F-35s it planned to order due to increasing costs. Many countries claim the F-35’s costs are rising, while Lockheed Martin says the per-unit cost is falling. So what’s going on with the F-35 program’s costs?
F-35 Fly Away Costs
The F-35’s official website says, “For Production Lots 15 through 17, the average flyaway cost of an F-35A was $82.5 million; $109 million for an F-35B, and $102.1 million per F-35C.” It then adds, “Lockheed Martin has significantly lowered our share of cost per flight hour over the last five years.” These statements may seem strange given that countries like Switzerland and Canada are complaining that the costs of the program are increasing significantly.
In 2022, Canada agreed to purchase 88 F-35A fighter jets; of these, it has committed funding for 16 examples. However, according to The Independent, the program has risen from the original $19 billion to around $27.7 billion. If the cost of the actual aircraft has decreased over that time to around $82.5 million, why has the price increased?
Interestingly, in 2020, Finland announced that the F-35 had won its HX Fighter Program on cost as well as other criteria. It is unclear if rising costs have shifted the calculus since then. While there are some estimates of the Gripen having a flyaway cost of just $60 million, these are understatements. The estimates reported by Defense Express indicate that the actual cost of the Gripen E/F ranges from $138 million to $146 million per aircraft, excluding weapons or extensive support infrastructure. Although it’s unclear how that number was arrived at, some Peruvian reporting suggests the aircraft will cost $110 to $120 million each.
Contributing Costs To The F-35
The flyaway costs of the jet are only the starting point; after this are the costs of munitions, supporting infrastructure, maintenance, and the systems that actually allow the aircraft to fight. The cost of a combat-ready F-35 is complicated, and there is no single published figure. It varies by country and requirements, but is somewhere in the range of an extra $15 to $40 million per aircraft. So acquiring a new fully combat-configured F-35A will cost around $95 million to over $120 million.
According to the Swiss Government, one area where the F-35 does well is in flying hours. High costs per F-35 compared with the low costs of flight hours for 4th-gen fighters often use cherry-picked out-of-date figures and include maintenance costs for one aircraft but limit them to just fuel and similar expenses for the other. But that aside, the F-35 benefits from being flown less.
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Select F-35 Lightning II fighter jet costs (per Lockheed, Canadian Gov, GAO) |
|
|---|---|
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F-35A fly-away costs |
$82.5 million (Lots 15 to 17) |
|
F-35B/F-35C fly away costs |
$109 million/$102 million |
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Combat-ready F-35A cost |
$95 million to over $120 million |
|
Expected Canadian program cost |
$27 billion for purchasing and sustaining 88 F-35s |
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Expected US program costs |
$2 trillion for 1,000s of F-35s sustained until 2088 |
The Swiss Government stated that the F-35 “requires less training and has a better ratio of flight to simulator hours.” It added, “the F-35A requires about 20% fewer flight hours than other candidates, and about 50% fewer take-offs and landings than the Air Force’s current jet aircraft.” Additionally, the F-35A competed with F/A-18 and EA-18G and Gripen and GlobalEye pairings alone. This means the F-35A may not require the added expense of operating EA-18Gs and GlobalEyes.
The World’s Largest Air Forces By F-35 Numbers
How the top F-35 flyers compare.
Discounts For Partner Nations
Countries that invest in and produce fighter jets are typically able to purchase them at lower prices than export customers. This is due to both governments being able to tax the production chain of these aircraft and the fact that export customers are typically charged a higher markup.
The United States was the primary backer for the F-35, although Allies also contributed a significant share of the costs. The UK was the only Level 1 customer, and this allows it to produce around 15% of the non-engine part of the jet. In the second tier are the Netherlands and Italy, which also contributed significant sums to the aircraft’s development. This allows them to build more of the jets today, with Italy even assembling some F-35s.
Program partners can pay lower negotiated flyaway rates because of their industrial contributions. Canada is a lower-tier (Level 3) customer and is likely to pay close to that of Foreign Military Sales customers. It is impossible to put a number on how much difference this makes, but it’s worth pointing out that it’s there. The UK gets the best export deal, and its BAE Systems is one of the three major contractors of the program.
One F-35 Doesn’t Equal One 4th Gen Fighter
Much ink is spilled about fighter jets like the Saab Gripen being cheaper than the F-35. This is a silly comparison as it compares apples with oranges. The Gripen E is a light-weight 4.5th generation fighter jet with far lower capabilities than the F-35. The same is true of other 4th-generation fighter jets. Comparing the cost of an F-35 to that of a Gripen is something like comparing a Toyota Corolla to a Porsche Taycan and saying luxury sports cars cost money. Well, of course.
The F-35 is a stealth strike fighter capable of penetrating contested airspace. It has a “god’s eye view” of the battlespace that it can feed to 4th-generation fighter jets operating alongside it. It has a longer combat range than small fighter jets like the Gripen, and can operate on unprepared runways. Finland is going to use its F-35As in more or less the same hostile environment as Sweden uses its Gripens.
Much of the root of the current debate in Canada about the Gripen isn’t really about the price difference; it’s geopolitics, and the Canadians don’t want their high-end jet to be an American one. This is a geopolitical debate, not so much a military debate about capabilities or an economic debate about cost. A Canadian report leaked by Radio-Canada showed that in the Canadian evaluation, the F-35 achieved a near-perfect score of 95% (57.1 points out of 60), while the Gripen-E achieved just 33% (19.8 points out of 60).
How the Eurofighter Typhoon Stacks Up Against the US F-35
Dogfight agility meets stealth supremacy. The Eurofighter and F-35 redefine air combat in a clash of speed, power, and cutting-edge tech.
Almost All Fighter Jets Run Over Budget
The F-35 is the fighter jet of fighter jets of today, and so it is privileged in media reporting for everything that goes wrong. The F-35 is over budget, just like almost every other fighter jet program out there. For example, in 2025, Defense Express reported Gripen deliveries to Brazil were delayed by eight years, with costs increasing by 13% (other sources claim a higher increase in costs).
The Eurofighter Typhoon had been planned to enter service in the mid-1990s, but it didn’t until 2003. When it was developed, the program was 75% above the original budget projections. The F-15EX’s flyaway cost is now greater than the F-35A, although its development was mostly on budget thanks to leveraging a mature platform.
At one stage, India estimated it could purchase 126 Rafale fighter jets for $10 billion, only to be shocked when the number doubled to almost $20 billion. The number was then reduced to 36 Rafales. Russian and Chinese fighter jet programs are not transparent, but they, too, go over budget and are delayed. The Russian Su-57 Felon is a textbook example of an overbudget, delayed aircraft that has failed to achieve anything more than anemic production numbers.
You Get What You Paid For
The marginal cost of producing F-35 fighter jets may be decreasing; however, the support facilities, weapons, training, sustainment, inflation, and life-cycle additions required for the total program lifecycle are increasing. The actual cost of purchasing an F-35 is roughly comparable to that of modern 4.5th-generation fighter jets, but it costs much more to integrate as a functioning weapons system.
Another reason for the headline-dominating figures, like total program $2 trillion lifecycle costs, is also because the life of the aircraft has been extended. $2 trillion is a number coming from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) and is partly driven by the US now planning to keep the aircraft in service until around 2088, or 11 years longer than earlier projections had assumed. Naturally, the cost of operating an aircraft for longer is more expensive than operating it for 11 fewer years.
The F-35 is an extremely expensive platform, but it is also an extremely capable platform and can carry out missions that no other aircraft is capable of. In the RAF, the F-35B is known as the “assassin” and the Eurofighter Typhoon as the “thug.” The two aircraft complement each other, with the F-35B increasing battlefield awareness and destroying enemy air defenses, plowing the way for the Typhoon to come in with its heavy ordinance.
