Arclite wrote:Scytale wrote:^I actually rather suspect the F-35 won't be as much of a joke as people say. It's been doing very well in its tests
The F-35 has not been doing well in its tests. It gets outmaneuvered by the 40 year old F-16, its massive VR helmet doesn't fit in the cockpit with the top closed, a couple have caught fire, it can't carry the ordinance designed for it, it's 10s of billions over budget. It's so bad, the USAF has forbidden pilots from speaking about.
Yes, the approach at that time was to develop one model for all purposes and just adjust it for the various branches (Navy, Air Force, Army), hoping for reduced dev time and cost. However, this approach failed badly, see the Wiki entry. In short: Over budget, too little ordonance capacity, too short flight range and too poor maneuverability. The F-22 Raptor doesn't have most of those issues, and it will be interesting to see if the Chinese (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-31) and Russian (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_PAK_FA) 5th generation fighters will come close or exceed their American counterparts.
That being said, I sure hope I'll never see those fighters engage each other in real action.