I know nothing about military matters, but for some reason I think the thousands of unmanned drone aircraft of the future that could be developed and purchased for the cost of one of these might be more effective.
They might have gotten away with out of control budgets and price tags with past military equipment programs but in the future they won’t be able to justify a program with each copy of a fighter $ 200,000 +
It just ain’t going to happen.
The future is not only having dazzling technology but to find ways to produce it at reasonable costs with integrating each plane/fighter with a drone or a part of the plane as a drone sort of like the movie transformers.
The techknowlogies that they are talking about for these future fighters is already here, already mature.
“I know nothing about military matters, but for some reason I think the thousands of unmanned drone aircraft of the future that could be developed and purchased for the cost of one of these might be more effective.”
That’s not the ratio. Consider that both the range and payload of any aircraft (drone or not) vary with the size of the aircraft. Small drones won’t be able to drop 2,000 lb. bombs, nor will they be able to fly all that far.