Well said, rlm.
Unfortunately there are too many who believe because we have air superiority now it will be that way forever. Russia and China are not going to be sitting on their hands, they’re going to go after that superiority.
Exactly. When we go up against a dedicated, well equipped and well trained foe who makes the decision to challenge the US in the sky, and we don’t have the best equipment to make it an unfair fight, American blood is going to flow.
We are so used to having complete air superiority, that the idiots just cannot imagine that it isn’t a God Given Right.
I am a student of history (to the best of my ability) and when we don’t OWN the air, our troops bleed. Everyone today looks at WWII like it was a done deal, that there is no question that the allies were going to win, but early in the war we and the axis forces had our hands on each other’s necks, and the carnage was great. And the outcome was not a sure thing.
Imagine what Iraq would have been like if Saddam had an airforce as well equipped and trained as the Russians or the Chinese and decided to put up a fight. Sure, we could have beat them eventually...but we would have paid a price in hardware and lives.
Sigh. I wish you didn’t have to start this thread. There are a lot of people who have strong opinions about this, and there always seems to be the same type of discussion so it gets hashed out again and again.
There are the people who say it should be cancelled because it is a pork barrel project.
There are people who advocate unmanned craft.
There are people who say we should re-engineer our existing fighters to be stealthy.
There are people who say there is no need for air superiority because the last wars didn’t involve fighting for it.
There are people who understand engineering but don’t understand history, aviation or warfare, and there are people who don’t even understand engineering, much less the rest.
It is true the platform is expensive. But there is nothing more expensive than the blood and lives of our men and women in uniform.