I'm with you, here, Tank. It's an amazing aircraft, but we're still building swiss watches when what we really need now is a bunch of G Shocks in a variety of configurations. There is certainly a point to be made about technology progressing and the industrial base and all that, but 5th gen fighters are a huge gamble by the Air Force on a "SAC-Centric" war happening sometime in the future, when the reality is that we are in a "TAC-Centric" world these days (sorry for bringing up long-dead commands
).
And those systems will be built to counter the ones you are building and so on and so forth until the end of time. It's a question of setting requirements and then building the tools to meet them. In this case, the requirements are a bit out of date, IMO.
I think the focus on UAVs has really changed the actual requirement that the marine corps once had for the Harrier.
Quite frankly, the whole STOVL concept is sort of silly, especially considering the capabilities of the F-35. It's like trying to make an F1 car off-road capable but maintain all the same performance. The MC would be better served, IMO, building a gunship V-22 paired with UCAVs.
Instead you're sticking a dude in what amounts to a strategic asset in order to drop cheap bombs.
It's the aerospace equivalent of buying a mansion when you're looking for an apartment.
I believe the F-16 line is still running. The Block 60 is a very capable aircraft. The F-15 line is still running too, I believe (export jets). And they are building F-18 E/F/Gs as we speak which is a VERY capable aircraft, in both A/A and A/G (which are roles that the F-35 is supposed to fill). In fact, there is a push by the ANG to look at the possiblity of buying more "4.5 gen" fighters. Slap an AESA radar on any reasonably modern platform and you have something reasonably capable against anything you'll run up against in the A/A arena anytime soon.
The F-35 and F-22 are simply amazing platforms, but the Air Force simply isn't buying enough of them to replace the physical numbers and deployed locations of existing fighters, which are essential to defending the country, and executing the current military strategy. And believe it or not, homeland defense is not the Air Force's #1 priority. There are things about the F-22 and F-35 that make them less than ideal for that mission anyway.
The F-35 is also a "Jack of all trades and master of none" in some respects. The A-10 is not going to be usurped by the F-35 anytime soon in the CAS role. All those fancy sensors and gadgets on board don't fundamentally change the way CAS works. It's the single biggest role for the Air Force (aside from logistics) in our current and anticipated conflicts.
Hey I'm not in favor of cancelling it either (at this point). We've already gotten the fat chick into bed, and our friends think we've screwed her, so we might as well do the deed. Military programs should NOT be welfare jobs, though. I'm an Eisenhower Republican in that regard. I look at thee military-industrial complex as an evil necessity, not a necessary evil.
I guess there's also the export market to look at as well. The US needs an aircraft they can sell overseas, and the alternatives are looking pretty good if we can't deliver on the F-35. The US gains a TON of cachet by having it's aircraft in the hands of allies. We control, to some extent, the keys to the castle, not to mention the direct economic benefit.
The whole F-35 program is a gigantic square peg trying to fit into a bunch of smaller round holes for the US, though. To get funding for gigantic things, you have to promise the world, and you end up with a LOT of capability that isn't really required if you stop and look at it.
My own, personal, preferred course of action would be to cannibalize the F-35 and F-22 programs for technology that can be cheaply inserted into 4th gen fighters. Buy enough of those (which can be had at a fraction of the cost of the F-35) to meet the existing requirements for what the US military is currently engaged in and drastically reduce the scope and scale of the F-35 program. The whole A-10 line could probably be restarted for the cost of a single F-35
In short, do what the Navy has been doing with the super hornet/growler, combined with a bit of what the Air Force set out to do with the F-16 back in the olden days.
That's not going to happen at this point, but it's what a reasonable person would do given a constrained set of resources, IMO.
Now that the cherry is popped in the UCAV world, there will be an ever decreasing role for the F-35 and F-22 as tactical aircraft, and a much larger role in the C2 world anyway.
I would also argue that multi-role fighters produce a poorer group of pilots overall. If you want the best A-A pilots in the world, you look at F-15C (or now, F-22) guys. If you want the best guys at CAS, you look at A-10 guys (or USMC guys in whatever they fly, since that's pretty much what they exist to do). The F-16 guys, for instance, are good at both, but generally not the best at either.
At any rate, it's an awesome plane. Watching an F-1 car go off-road certainly would be a lot of fun too....
