| > The F-35 wasn't intended to do everything. Yes it was... and Congress decided to tell the military what it needed instead of the other way around - hence the "jack of all trades, master of none" that is the F-35. The F-16 is considered an air superiority fighter[1], although it is used in multi-role missions as well. It's fly-away cost in 1998 was around $18.8MM[1], which is about $31.9MM today... or less than half the cost of each F-35. Congress forced the idea of the F-35 onto the military as a low cost modern do-it-all aircraft. Then the Marines drove a huge part of the F-35 development, which ended up requiring VTOL/STOL capabilities etc, things no other branch wanted or needed and where subsequently ripped out of their variants anyway. The final result are three different airframes that look similar, but don't share many parts, and don't outmatch the incumbent plane in each category (A-10 for CAS, AV-8B for VTOL/CAS, F-16/F-15/F-18/F-22 for AS and multirole, and probably a few others I'm leaving out). So... why continue with the F-35? Sunk cost fallacy, mostly. It would be far better to take the lessons learned from this bleeding-edge program and apply them to new, purpose-built aircraft that each branch actually wants and needs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting... |