Originally Posted by
sandiego89
Sounds great in theory, but numerous small fleets, constant churn, and endless R&D sounds mighty expensive. But then again, the single "too big to fail" programs have not been cheap either....
A great many people likely don't see what you see, which is the logistics tail that is required to keep a fleet in the air. Reduing the number of T/M/S has been a priority since the late 80's/early 90's within the DoD.
I'll offer a different 'lesson learned' and that is that F-35 is likely the last manned fighter the US will build. The rest will be controlled by AI, with hundreds of pounds of payload/gross weight removed for all of the things needed to put a human into the aircraft.