My most humble apologies to WEBFan for inadvertently starting the engine top trumps session. My comments were based very much on my preference for the known, flying, dependable F/A-18. But they would be, I worked on that program, and a jolly good one it was too.
I have a trivia question which I hope can be answered without diverting the discusion. Of course I know that the 'J' in JSF stands for 'Committee', always a bad letter in US program parlance, but where the heck does 'Dave' come from? I've tried googling but everyone points back to pprune and says it originated here.
A less trivial question, after Dave-B is cancelled, what plans are there for the nice shiny new carriers? Nobody else is going to want them. Prison ships? Satellite launch pads?