The True Cost of America’s War Machines: From Supercarriers and Stealth Jets to Autonomous Drones

In 2021, the United States military budget crossed the jaw-dropping threshold of $800 billion—a figure bigger than the next nine largest militaries combined. With those resources, the U.S. can afford the most sophisticated and expensive war machines in the world, from billion-dollar supercarriers to stealth jets and cutting-edge drones. But while these marvels of modern technology are awe-inspiring, their real costs—in terms of dollars, delays, and moral consequence—deserve closer scrutiny.

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U.S. Aircraft Carriers: The Ford-Class Gamble

At the heart of U.S. naval power sits the aircraft carrier, the largest and most complex warship ever built. The latest, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is the first of a new generation projected to serve into the 22nd century. Its price tag? A record $13.3 billion. Built with over 40,000 tons of steel and decades of American ingenuity, it features nearly two dozen major technological upgrades, such as electromagnetic aircraft launch systems and advanced weapons elevators.

The Ford was conceived to save billions over its 50-year lifespan, thanks to a smaller crew and more efficient systems. Yet delays and engineering setbacks have doubled its cost compared to its predecessors. New technologies—like its 11 advanced weapons elevators—took years longer to certify than expected. As of 2021, five years after commissioning, the ship was still not fully ready for combat. Even mundane problems have eye-watering costs: unclogging its vacuum-powered toilets can run $400,000 per fix.

Why so many delays? One answer: too much innovation, too fast. Navy leaders acknowledge trying to introduce multiple revolutionary systems at once was a mistake. Delivering the Ford on time sometimes meant accepting incomplete technology to avoid busting the annual budget, pushing real operational readiness ever farther away.

Yet the Navy presses on. Not only is another Ford-class carrier already under construction (with a $315 million redesign to accommodate the F-35 jet), but the U.S. is legally required to operate 11 carriers at all times. The gamble is that these ships will act as a deterrent, their sheer presence perhaps preventing wars rather than waging them.

US aircraft carrier patrols South China Sea | CNN

The F-35 Stealth Fighter: Power at an Astronomical Price

If the Ford-class carrier is the Navy’s crown jewel, the F-35 Lightning II is the centerpiece of American air power. Projected to cost $1.7 trillion over its lifetime, the F-35 program is the most expensive weapons development project in U.S. history.

Stealthy, agile, and bristling with sensors that make piloting easier (including a $400,000 custom-fitted helmet for each pilot), the F-35 has been hailed as a “game-changer.” However, its production has been plagued by spiraling costs, technical glitches, and political compromise. Each flight hour costs $35,000—far more than the $22,000 average for older fighters. Maintenance is costly and complex; over 8 million lines of code run the jet, and even more power its diagnostic systems.

The initial rationale was efficiency: the F-35 program sought to replace several different aircraft types in the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps with one modular platform. The reality proved very different. Designing three models with sometimes conflicting requirements introduced delays, weight problems, and redesigns that rippled across the program.

In 2022, more than 500 F-35s were flying in the U.S. military, with plans for nearly 2,500 more. Yet with operation and sustainment costs ballooning, many question whether the full buy will ever happen. The F-35, for all its technological breakthroughs, has revealed the pitfalls of attempting too much under a single umbrella.

Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II - Wikipedia

Autonomous Drones: The New Face of Warfare

While warships and jets capture headlines, perhaps the most significant—and contentious—shift is in unmanned systems. Drones, from reconnaissance quadcopters to “loitering munitions” like the Switchblade, have transformed battlefields, as seen in Ukraine.

Switchblades, made in California, can seek out targets and crash into them, combining the roles of artillery and drone. Each costs about $6,000—a bargain compared to traditional aircraft—though only for a single use. The U.S. supplied Ukraine with hundreds of these in 2022, and videos of drone strikes now flood social media, symbolizing agility and ingenuity.

But the line between manned and automated killing is blurring. Some modern drones can now identify and attack targets autonomously, guided by AI and machine learning. This raises profound ethical and strategic questions. What if an algorithm mistakes a civilian for a combatant? What happens as the fog of war, already thick, is filtered through digital sensors and software that are as fallible as their programmers?

The U.S. experience in Afghanistan underscores the risks. Mistaken drone strikes have claimed hundreds of civilian lives, often because human operators, themselves thousands of miles away, made wrong calls. Advocates of autonomy argue that machines, properly trained, could one day be more precise. Skeptics point to the limitations of AI, as demonstrated in self-driving car crashes linked to sensor confusion and software errors.

The war in Ukraine has rapidly accelerated drone innovation and use, with both low-tech commercial models and sophisticated loitering munitions playing major roles. Yet as Russia adapts, developing countermeasures and deploying drones of its own, a technological arms race is clearly underway.

Who Decides Life and Death?

As lethal autonomy advances, a fundamental crisis looms: should machines make life-and-death decisions? International consensus has yet to catch up, and the United Nations, along with human rights groups, now calls for an outright ban on fully autonomous lethal weapons.

Without such controls, the pace of technological change threatens to outstrip our ability to regulate it. The possibility that a flawed algorithm could escalate conflict—perhaps even start a war by mistake—haunts military planners.

Conclusion: The Price Beyond Dollars

America’s unmatched investment in war machines has yielded a military of staggering capability. But the hidden costs—delays, technical pitfalls, spiraling budgets, and unresolved ethical dilemmas—run just as high. In the end, the greatest challenge may not be keeping ahead of adversaries, but keeping control over the extraordinary powers we’ve created.

And as warfare moves further from human hands, the question grows ever more urgent: can we afford to let machines decide who lives and who dies? The answer is measured not just in dollars, but in the character of our society—and the kind of world our technologies will build.

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