October 5, 2010: The U.S. Navy has placed a multi-year order for 124 F-18 jet fighters, 58 of them the EA-18G electronic warfare version, and the rest the F-18E fighter-bomber. This will cost $5.3 billion and all aircraft will be delivered by 2015. American politicians resisted multi-year contracts like this for a long time, because they preferred to have tighter control of the money by appropriating it annually. For large and expensive systems, this increased costs by 5-10 percent or more. Over the last two decades, Congress has been persuaded to use more and more multi-year contracts.