I won’t say that the F-18 is a great aircraft, but it works. If the kid makes a career of Naval Aviation, though, he is likely to end up in an F-35 at some point. They better have the bugs worked out before they inflict this thing on an innocent unsuspecting Fleet.
Keep in mind that the primary purpose of articles like this is to create such a negative public perception/reaction that the program can be killed in its relative infancy before an effective number of them can be built.
See also B1(not the B)
B2
F22 (at least they made a few of them.)
That said, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know. I don’t work there. I know some folks who do.
Some of the things I’ve heard frighten me in terms of what they’re trying to get software to do. I’m very suspicious of the involvement of entities such as BAE.
My personal suspicion is that 10 years down the road, we’ll be complaining about how few of them we built and how the next defense project is such a worthless boondoggle. Same s*** different decade.