Agreed, but how long has it been since USAF/USN faced a wholly competent enemy AF?
In VN, most opponents flew outdated MiG-17, and their top guys got loads of kills.
In Korea, our F-84 was no match for the MiG-17, and with the F-86, it was a tie. We got more kills due to better pilots v. the Norks, but against the “secret” Russian pilots flying for the Norks, the kill ratio was even.
In DS, even against the Iraqis, the F-15 drivers admitted the fights were not one sided.
I love our a/c, think the F-22 is great, but would you want to be in a knife flight against a skilled Su-35 pilot?
Stealth is great..... until the Pentagon says all shots must follow eye-ball range confirmation that enemy is really the enemy.
All very good points. To me, the F-22/F-35 is your first-strike weapon to take out their air superiority while B-2/F-117 takes out command & control. Then the F-15s/F-16s come in to mop up and maintain air superiority. But that’s just me. For CAS, the A-10 is the only thing that works. 40 years of trying and failing is proof of that. The A-10 is designed to take hits down low, no other system is. I say build more new A-10s. The original company is out of business, use the tooling and prints to contract somebody to build more.
By the way, I think the A-10 retirement plan got tripped up on the sunset clause. The A-10 is being upgraded to A-10C as we speak, you’re not supposed to do that to a system that’s retiring within 5 years.