Originally Posted by
ProPax
F-35 per se started in 2000. But it can easily be traced to a Joint Strike Fighter program which started in 1993!!! But even if we take the X-35 as a starting point, it's been 19 years since its inception. The technology has stepped so far forward that it is now possible to fly planes via a satellite while sitting in a shipping container somewhere in the wild west.
Whereas the Su-35 can be traced to the Sukhoi T10 of 1977...
Originally Posted by
ProPax
F-35 is, as close as makes no difference, obsolete. As usually, it took Lockheed too long to develop a fantasy concept. It has a pilot onboard which in today's world is considered Victorian. Recent UAV developments showed that the signal can be transmitted fast enough to even perform SOME evasive maneuvers and launch air-to-air missiles.
Apart from the fact that China, Russia, the US, France, the UK and Japan are all looking at a future manned/unmanned mix. The only UAV to try launching missiles in combat against another aircraft was shot down. The work of Colin Willis (who will be known to many on here) based on his PhD thesis is instructive in terms of the potential and limitations of unmanned platforms in air combat (although as it's published by an academic press, it may well be as unaffordable as it is instructive).
Originally Posted by
ProPax
F-35 was made for the Big War, like a WWIII. It's designed to attack or repel a massive armada of enemy forces. Anything other than that, and it's useless. As with the F-22 it's "too valuable to...". F-22 started flying in 1997 but managed to avoid all conflicts where it could be useful - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria. Pentagon was worried that it could fall into enemy's hands and reveal its secrets. The same will happen to the F-35. It will be kept on friendly bases and guarded from any exposure.
One of the key reasons that the F-22 didn't participate in operations over Yugoslavia might be that the Dayton Accords were signed ten years before the first F-22 entered front line service, while Allied Force ended more than five years before that occurred. The part of the Iraq war where the F-22's capabilities against air defences might have been hugely useful took place two years before the 1st FW became operational. And as the Iraqi AF didn't fly, it's a moot point.
The F-22 has been used over Syria, as googling 'F-22 Syria' will illustrate.
Originally Posted by
ProPax
.......And my personal prediction - F-35 will soon be gone just like the F-22 was with a couple of hundred built.
This prediction will require some 180-200 airframes to be dismantled for spares for it to be realised.