Our genius future tellers have goofed on large scales in the past for sure. But I agree with you. I’m still disappointed that the F-22 program was scrapped (sort of).
In our world today, I think we have advantageous technology that don’t fully know how to best utilize. This would include tactics in battle. The Thatch Weave used by WWII fighter pilots was a defense manuever developed because of combat and experience. The F-4 Phantom was a plane designed for one type of combat and deployed for something different. Then we adapted.
I am disappointed as well. As far as a pure air superiority fighter, it has no peer (still) but one has to wonder how many times that tight turning radius is going to come into play.
Does anyone really want a $130 million dollar plane involved in turns and burns with a $50 million dollar plane? Of course not...a pilot who is skilled may gain the upper hand with inferior equipment in any given engagement if the pilot in the advanced platform has a bad day...thinking of his wife, depressed about his advancement prospects, etc.
And if they are in a F-35 in a turning dogfight with a less advanced plane, well...it shows you aren’t having a good day off the bat.
I read where the initial performances of the F-35 in combat scenarios were not distinguished, but it was due to the reluctance (or lack of new tactical knowledge) on how to use the new platform.
I have heard they have been honing and developing new tactics to take advantage of the new technology, and the relative performance in exercises has gone up to what we would expect a 5th generation fighter to obtain against 4th gen or less.
I knew a pilot who had started in the USMC, ended up in the Air Force, and retired in the National Guards, and had flown every fighter in the American inventory since he trained from the A-4 Skyhawk and the F-15 (except the F-117 and the F-22) and I asked him what it was like flying against an F-22.
In his den, he had plaques all over the wall from all the fighter schools and such he had gone to, so he was no slouch, and he said he had flown an F-16 against an F-22, and it was like being “a baby seal”. And he said that quite flatly and definitively.