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Low prices mean high sales volume means high profits. What does this tell us about overpriced warplanes?
Best Fighter Planes
In the 21st century, there are fighters and there are fighters. Which grade you get depends on how much you want to pay.
The 15 Best (current) American Fighter Jets
Have hundreds of millions of dollars to throw around? Then, as the US (Of course, if you shorten the production run before the efficiency of scale kicks in, the planes end up costing $412 million apiece.)
Alternatively, the same money will buy you a handful of Boeing F/A-18 or F-15 fourth-generation fighters ( BA -0.09%) , which retail for around $100 million apiece.
Buying on a budget? You may like a nice Soviet-era Su-34 "Full Defender". (List price: $18 million). Or, if you prefer to buy domestic aircraft, Textron's new Scorpion (TXT -1.67%) costs $17 million per aircraft.
Depending on what the nation needs, different buyers choose different combat aircraft and different price categories. But what combinations are the most popular
The Best Fighter Planes Of All Time
10. Chengdu J-7 Fishbed (discontinued) The Chinese J-7 fighter jet first appeared at number 10 in Flightglobal Insight's "World Air Forces 2015" report for this year. It is actually a Chinese version of an old Soviet MiG-21 that is no longer in production. However, 418 aircraft remain in service, giving the fighter a global market share of 3%.
The export version of the Chinese J-7 is called the F-7, and it is an analogue of the Russian MiG-21. In the last 12 months, the number of F-7s has not decreased. A year ago, 460s were in operation around the world. Today, every single one of them is still flying, which also gives the F-7 a 3% market share.
8. Northrop Grumman F-5 Tiger. List price: $20 million to $25 million (approximately). After two dozen write-offs in the past year, only 468 Northrop F-5 Tigers are still flying. The aircraft is no longer produced, but retains 3% of the market. The website AircraftCompare.com estimates that if the Tiger were produced today, it would probably cost somewhere around $20 million.
The Russian answer to the American A-10 Thunderbolt II Warthog is the Su-25, a tank-busting aircraft. He is also apparently almost as popular as the warthog. In the last year, only one Su-25 was decommissioned.
The Air Force Admits The F 35 Fighter Jet Costs Too Much. So It Wants To Spend Even More
With 506 aircraft still in service, it also has a 3% market share. Now that a new Su-39 variant is in production, Frogfoot could move up the rankings.
Although it was once one of the most popular fighters in the world, it is no longer in active production and the number of MiG-21s in service continues to decline. Their number fell from 793 in 2013 to 698 in 2014, to just 668 today. Since it's no longer in production, it's hard to say how much a new one might cost...but apparently you can buy a used MiG-21 on eBay for around 25 grand.
MIG-21 still occupies 5% of the market. And if you add up all of its "twins" - the Chinese J-7 and F-7, which still fly - then there will be 1546 MiG-21 twins in service, and its market share will double.
5. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum. Old price: $40 million. The market share of the most modern MiG in Moscow is reduced to 5% (793 aircraft). This is enough for the MiGs to fall to fifth place in the ranking. However, a new variant (MiG-35D) is expected to enter service in 2016 and could improve the MiG's prospects, so stay tuned.
Inside America's Dysfunctional Trillion Dollar Fighter Jet Program
4. Boeing F-15 Eagle. List price: $100 million. Losing more and more international fighter competition due to a combination of high costs and stealth, Boeing's F-15 dropped one place in the rankings this year to fourth place. In the Flightglobal list. With 11 fewer aircraft in service (now only 854), the global market share of the F-15 is 6%.
3. Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker. List price: $22 million. Russia's most popular fighter jet, the Su-27 Flanker, has continued to rise in the rankings this year, and one of the reasons for this may be its low cost. Helping with the falling ruble, military aviation experts at deagel.com say, the most advanced Su-27 model, dubbed the Su-35 Flanker-E, costs only $22 million per copy.
Up two spots from last year's fifth place, the baseline Flanker and its Su-30, -33 and -35 siblings now command 6% of the global market with 874 aircraft in service.
Similarly, with its position as number 2 in the market, the Boeing F-18 fighter occupies 7% of the global market in many iterations. In 2015, the fleet of F-18 fighters in the World Air Force increased to 1046 aircraft in service.
Lockheed P 38 Lightning
Last (first?) but not least, Lockheed Martin's modestly priced F-16 Falcon topped this year's Flightglobal report for the second year in a row. With 2,242 aircraft in service, the F-16 is still the most popular fighter on the planet, accounting for 15% of the world's air force.
Why fighter jets matter to investors so why does it matter to defense investors? It works like this: the more aircraft a company builds and sells, the wider the base over which it can allocate R&D costs, and the less it can pay per aircraft.
Are you still with me? Lockheed Martin has now sold over 4,500 F-16s worldwide. This is not surprising. After all, it is one of the most economical combat aircraft in our arsenal. (Note that Russia sold even more of its even cheaper MiG-21s.)
Half of Lockheed's F-16s still fly and provide Lockheed revenue from services, maintenance and upgrades, and its shares receive an 11% return on earnings.
Which Is The Best Fighter Jet In The World?
However, the aircraft that Lockheed hopes will be the successor to the F-16, the F-35 stealth fighter, costs more than three times as much as the F-16. Indeed, some versions of the F-35 can cost up to five times as much as the F-16. With prices up to $150 million per copy, the question is: Can Lockheed Martin maintain its global dominance in the face of much cheaper fighter jet offerings from Russia and China?
Personally, I have doubts. Of course, if everything goes according to plan and Lockheed Martin managed to sell more than 3,000 of its F-35s in the next 60 years, then Lockheed's current high price of the aircraft could make a big profit. But if Lockheed doesn't sell them fast enough and lower the price fast enough to attract buyers, the list of the 10 most popular fighter jets in the world will soon look very different.
Rich Smith does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned above and is not short. You can find him on CAPS where he performs publicly under the alias TMFDitty, where he is currently ranked 359 out of over 75,000 entries. The Motley Fool recommends and owns eBay stock. We may all have different opinions, but we all believe that considering a variety of ideas makes us better investors. Motley has a disclosure policy.
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Invest better with The Motley Fool. Get stock advice, a portfolio guide and more from The Motley Fool's premium services. A new round of questions and answers where we try to answer questions that our visitors and fans often have. So, let's start with the question in the title.
It's complicated. In a loss-to-loss ratio, the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F-15 Eagle wins with an incredible 102/0. But pilot and training play a huge role here, so the statistics are limited in judging which fighter is the best. In any case, here you can find the combat statistics of all aircraft (the most recent conflicts are not taken into account yet). Incidentally, the F-15 can also fly with only one wing. Pretty cool, right?
The F-15 is also no longer the most modern fighter, although the manufacturer Boeing
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