[usrusr]

But there's a reason to funnel that money besides padding pockets: the nominal reason (and not a bad one if you are not a full pacifist) is to retain development capability for the next time you actually do need a military aviation innovation burst. And arguably this wasn't really successful. Chances are that rebuilding capability from a hypothetical starved state would yield better results than restoring efficiency from the comically fattened state they got.

[craftinator]

> the nominal reason (and not a bad one if you are not a full pacifist) is to retain development capability for the next time

Is the F-35 a good example of what we want our next aircraft to be? It seems to me that we now have a whole development infrastructure set up to build expensive, buggy aircraft. That "development capability" that we've retained isn't a good one.

[usrusr]

Exactly what I meant. The money funneling has a valid purpose beyond actual aircraft, but as it stands it doesn't really serve that purpose.