Military analysts said Mr. Trump’s post also sharply raised the pressure on Lockheed to lower the cost of the F-35 program, which is projected to cost $400 billion for 2,400 planes for the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy.

His suggestion that the F-35s and the F-18s were comparable also indicated that Mr. Trump was not yet fully up to speed on the technical characteristics of the jets, some analysts said.

“The Super Hornet has been the Navy’s most successful carrier-based aircraft, but it doesn’t reflect the latest technological refinements that the F-35 has,” said Loren B. Thompson, who consults for Lockheed and works for a research group that is supported by all the major military contractors.

Lockheed has built 200 F-35s, which have stealth protection to make them less visible to enemy radar than earlier generations of planes. The F-35s can also fuse intelligence from many sensors and transmit it to other planes. The F-18s, however, can carry more weapons. Based on current prices, the F-18 costs roughly 30 percent less than the F-35.

As the cost of the F-35 program soared since its start in 2001, some Navy officials have worried that they could not afford as many F-35s as they would need. Analysts said the Air Force and the Marines still wanted the F-35, but the Navy had been headed toward a mix in which each carrier might have two squadrons of F-35s and two squadrons of F-18s.