This composite material was incredibly formidable. Not only could it serve as a structural component, but it could also absorb transmitted electromagnetic waves. It was lightweight and exceptionally strong!
It was practically a perfect material! Its high-temperature resistance was equally impressive, meaning that breaking through the thermal barrier caused by speeds above Mach 3 would not be a problem.
That was probably why Phantom could reach a top speed of Mach 4! It was far lighter than imagined!
But there was a problem now... this composite radar-absorbing material... could not be manufactured!
It was not exactly impossible to make. The manufacturing difficulty of this composite material was incredibly high! Many of the requirements were absurdly demanding! At present, there was only one way to make it: build it in a laboratory!
If it were made in a laboratory, Er Dan estimated that, based on real-world costs, completing one Phantom—excluding research and development costs—would cost roughly twice as much as an F22!
An F22 cost 190 million dollars. Round that up to 200 million, and a Phantom would cost around 400 million dollars. Note that this was just the manufacturing cost!
Fuck, if this were American-made, then judging by the Americans' habits, if they sold it, it would probably cost at least several billion dollars.
Of course, if they really had something like this, the Americans probably would not sell it.
The country simply could not afford that price! How much was the annual military budget? Of course, research and development funding and military spending were two different things.
That was because its research and development costs were practically zero. If calculated by American standards, adding another 5 billion dollars in R&D costs would not be unreasonable, right?
With 5 billion dollars in R&D costs included, a factory price of 500