Yeah, buying one fewer F-35 barely moves the needle on total cost, it just bumps up the per-unit costs of the project because its almost all fixed, not variable, costs.
I’m sure this is true, but “buying one less f35” to me sounds like shorthand for “don’t spend such a stupid amount on the next boondoggle military project”. I assumed it was a given that money had already been spent.
That's exactly what they've done. When you read about how the costs have come down or been kept stable, that's an accounting fiction where they increase the number they're "buying" so that the unit cost comes down.
An F35 is estimated to cost around $30,000 to fly, per hour. Then there's maintenance cost which over the lifetime of the jet packs on millions, and ordinance cost for both practice and deployment, which is insanely high: none of that money has been spent yet, and easily gets us to "we could have funded NASA with this" for just a single jet.
I'm sure some people only look at "omg look at how much it costs to buy one!" and then forget that there's a life after the purchase that costs mind boggling amounts of money that, by simply not buying even a single jet, can actually fund a stupid amount of societal progress, from paying teachers to funding an entire NASA project.
But of course the comment itself wasn't about F35s. It was about "maybe spend less on death toys and more on the parts that make society a good thing like space exploration, the arts, education, health care, etc."
And most people who counter with that argument seem to forget that a jet has a life after delivery, where maintenance, replacement parts, and the cost of practice ordinance are substantial. You don't just save the cost of "the thing" by not buying it. You save "the entire lifetime cost of that thing".