1. Once we adjust for inflation, the flyaway cost of a single F-22 is ~$232 million. That might seem "low" to some folks relative to certain speculative figures that may have been thrown around on how much the NGAD PCA will cost, but that's still a lot of $ to work with per airframe.
Keep in mind that is almost the flyaway cost of three F-35A fighters, which were for lots 15, 16 and 17.
2. Lockheed delivered 187 operational F-22 fighters to the USAF, even though the USAF had originally intended to acquire a total of 750 airframes or so. As you can imagine, certain fixed costs for designing, engineering and manufacturing the F-22 effectively stayed constant even though total procurement was slashed by ~75%.
This inevitably made the F-22 significantly less economical on a per unit basis than what the USAF had projected.
Current claims that the F-47 will be cheaper than the F-22 are likely based on anticipated total production figures that will allow Boeing and by extension the US government to achieve significant cost savings through economies of sale. However, whether that will actually be achievable or not is obviously TBD.
