Competition is about alternatives - the Air Force could have just trusted the Lockheed-Boeing venture to do it. F-35 comes to mind and not in a good way.
I'm not seeing the connection to the F-35. I guess you know there was a competition for the right to build the JSF. Both aircraft met all the requirements for the competition. So can you please clarify?
It has a history of overrunning budgets, yes, but the per-aircraft cost is declining and should continue to decline. I thought parent might have been referring to budget issues but I'm not really grasping how that's relevant.
http://www.bga-aeroweb.com/Defense/F-18-Super-Hornet.html
F-18E/F: $65.3 million (flyaway cost) or $80.7 million incl. support costs.
You'll see a number of places quoting slightly different per unit costs for an F-18E/F, but they cluster around that figure. The cost of an F-35 in the latest LRIP lot (8) was as follows:
That does not include an F-135 engine for each jet, which is anywhere from $10 to $15 million depending on the variant.
So while the F-35 is more expensive than the F-18, I do not believe the figures bear your "3x or more" assertion.
Also it's difficult to compare the operating costs of a fully mature aircraft like the F-18 with the F-35, which is still being tested and developed. I don't think that is an apples/apples comparison.
Disclaimer: all opinions my own, not those of my employer, etc.
Sorry, I was going off F/A-18D unit costs from Wikipedia rather than the Super Hornet. Still, ~2x the unit cost plus a 79% increase in support costs is nothing to sneeze at.
While I think the JSF is quite the boondoggle, this is not necessariy a fair comparison. We should expect the F-35 to cost quite a bit more in both upfront and operating costs; it is, after all, much more capable.