?Lockheed not ditching agile fighter designs - 5/13/2015 - Flight Global
There appears to be some uncertainty over what course future fighter design(s) will follow. According to the linked
Flightglobal piece above, LM may produce a fast, agile fighter. Yet the same article links to another report that puts much more emphasis on weapons and sensor capability before the more traditional fighter attributes. I also recall that USN Adml Greenert at one time advocated less sophisticated 'bomb-trucks' more heavily loaded with smart, long range weaponry. You pays your money (lots of it) and you takes your choice - perhaps. Maybe in future B52 type weapons platforms will be intercepted at very long range by similar sized 'fighters' loaded with long range missiles? Or maybe not.
I guess it will probably depend who your enemy is and what their capabilities are, which probably comes back to having an appropriate system for the threat presented, which in turn probably means several different role-optimised platforms. It seems to me that 'one size fits all' procurement is an economic solution before a military one. The irony is that multi-role seems to come at huge expense, maybe even greater than having multiple platform tails? If the cost is similar or near similar, surely an optimised platform is preferable as it will handle the presented threat more capably?
My overloaded brain can't see a clear way through this maze; hopefully there are smarter folk who can. Or perhaps, in F35, LM have already accurately predicted the future requirement of a smart fighter that's maybe a bit behind the speed and agility curve?
Rambling over, to the relief of all no doubt.
LF