That's half the cost of a single F-35 fighter plane. Just US alone will pay for around 2500 of them (2010 estimate), and plans to pay around 4 times more than that to maintain them. So just F-35 total costs for US are equivalent to 25000 scientific projects like this one. To compare, it would be one new project like this every day for 70 years!
This specific project is more European or even a world project than just US, if I understood correctly.
It makes sense to compare the costs to a single plane but to the whole fleet is just stupid. You can't defend a country with scientific projects.
The thing is every time someone proposes the idea to slash the military budget to fund something else there are at least a hundred other people with a different idea on what to use the funds on. If the funds were spread over so many different projects you end up with an insignificant sum in each of them. Spending the money on military might be actually be advantageous because of large investments in new military technology end up benefiting the civilian sector. (Isn't that the point of the F-35?)
coldpie|6 years ago
acqq|6 years ago
This specific project is more European or even a world project than just US, if I understood correctly.
imtringued|6 years ago
The thing is every time someone proposes the idea to slash the military budget to fund something else there are at least a hundred other people with a different idea on what to use the funds on. If the funds were spread over so many different projects you end up with an insignificant sum in each of them. Spending the money on military might be actually be advantageous because of large investments in new military technology end up benefiting the civilian sector. (Isn't that the point of the F-35?)