Re “you are going to have to give me a compelling reason to do that again.”
I recall similar words being uttered by a very pale and sweaty Harrier test pilot in the late 70s, who had just completed the first night evaluation of a vertical shipborne landing. The ship was of course ‘HMS’ Bedford (Sam Kidd), a very realistic 2x4 and chickenwire night-lighting mockup of an aircraft carrier, on an otherwise completely blacked out airfield.
Yet x years later, a developed system, aircraft and ship, was ‘at war’; and now with further development is the norm for such operations.
Development flying entails the rule of war - ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’; with time and financial wriggle room things get sorted. However, there is increasing evidence that the F35 has little wriggle room, weak funding, and is rapidly running out of time as military strategy changes.
Another rule of war involves adaptability, agility, and flexibility; yet many modern aircraft programmes suffer increasing complexity, proportional to Moore’s law - because we can do it, not always because we need it, breeding ‘tight coupling’ where any small change involves many other interactions, cost, time, …
Thinks, why was I always duty pilot in the tower for the difficult flight tests - also the day that the Harrier nose leg oleo failed on a ski jump takeoff; … (‘I know nothing, I come from Barcelona’), a harbinger of doom.