“Amid all these challenges, To justify his decision, Air Force Chief Brown compared the F-35 to a Ferrari.
“You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our ‘high end’ fighter, we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight,” he said in a press conference on February 17.”
I’ve read it’s Gen-5 stealth will last only 5-8 years as detection technology catches up.We have expensive multi-tasker that doesn’t do any single task at an excellent level, but “pretty good” level for now.
This is why I support taking the A-10 back to the drawing board and updating it. Not reinventing it, but just bringing it into the 21st century of technology. Keep it strictly the ground support beast that it is and the boots on the ground love. Transfer it over to the Army/Marines if the Air Force hates it’s mission so much.
A-10 Warthog...................UGLY AND DEADLY................. A GREAT COMBO!.....................
I heartily agree!
The A-10 is as effective as it is ugly.
Unless you’re ground troops - then it’s a beautiful angel on your shoulder.
To my way of thinking, this new aircraft is the military industrial complex looking for a new money pit project. Take the existing airframe of the F-16 and gut it. New engine, add an electronics package to handle new and future weapon systems. Back up the fly by wire system with manual controls and a few critical analog gauges to augment digital screen.
I had the fun of watching a Navy F-16 (Top Gun) and a Adversary A-4 go at it near NAS Fallon. I nearly crapped my pants when I saw that F-16 turn inside the A-4. Nothing, so I thought could beat an A-4 in a turn. From the ground the aircraft looked to be turn on their wingtips like tops. Ironically both aircraft use a modified delta wing configuration. In fairness to my Skyhawks, the F-16 is purposefully built for 9gs and was fly by wire. The Skyhawk used cables and hydraulics, and we had to replace a lot of rivets that day😀. We have the right airframe, so use it. Short term supposedly that is more expensive than designing a new aircraft, long term it is cheaper, you already have the manufacturing capability to build new airframes. The Air Force has pilots, technicians and ground support equipment ready to go.
