F35
KenV. Not sure where you get 38 years from. I am pretty sure that 1st flight was late 1974 which makes 43 years. First production delivery was in June 1979, which makes 38 years. Much has been written about F35, much f that not very complimentary. Most people are extremely concerned about the eye watering cost to UK of both development and production programmes. of course, to that we need to add the new QE Class a/c carriers. So what do uk get for its money. For F35, the main 'selling point' seems to be that it is 5th generation..... This promarily involves Stealth and Sensor Fusion. Sensor Fusion I can understand, particularly in a modern battle space. But Stealth; the key issue is how long into its service life that remains a benefit before it becomes obsolete. After that, what type of a/c are we left with. Fast ? Agile ? Good Weapons payload ? Good range ?
I still struggle with the concept of a stealthy aircraft operating from an A/C Carrier. Surely any adversary would go for the weakest links and target either the Tanker or the Carrier. It seems we are locked into this programme, but deploying both F35 and the Carrier is already stretching our limited defence budget and programmes such as Tornado and to an extent Typhoon enhancements are paying the price. How interesting to compare UK with say Italy (F35, Typhoon, Tornado till 2025 and AMX), Germany (Typhoon and Tornado until post 2030) and Saudi Arabia (F15, Typhoon, Tornado till 2025 at least). The current plan to retire RAF Tornado from 2019 will result in clear and dangerous capability gaps, but as mentioned, it isn't 5th generation.