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It appears physics and engineering capped out in the early 1970’s.

I often made the same assessment myself where we reached a plateau sometime between the 1960 to 1975 era. When you think about it, JFK had jet planes that flew just as fast as our planes fly today and that was 50 years ago.

After all these years, the F-16 continues to be the best damn MRF ever.

Agreed. BTW, I'd also like to have seen that the F-20 (upgraded F-5) could have done too.

The only meaningful change since then have been the F-117 Nighthawk and the B-2 Spirit. But they were incremental, not fundamental, changes.

Agreed although in the case of the B-2, IMHO, it is/was a waste of money, it's basically a hanger queen, a maintenance hog. The F-117, less so, it did its job.

Nowadays, we have the F-35 flying anvil which took 20 years to even get a test drive and are useless for any purpose.

It screams "junk" to me It's a worse waste of time and money than even the B-2.