Originally Posted by
George K Lee
And you might ask the Iraqis whether or not the Block 10 was a fully combat capable aircraft.
Without wishing to indulge in semantics, there's a difference between the phrase "fully combat capable aircraft" and "reduced combat capability compared to the Block 15 onwards".
The potential early obsolescence / limited capability of early LRIP blocks of aircraft is not exactly a new (or unexpected) phenomenon. As others point out Eurofighter has similar issues - as had Tornado F2 or even the MDD F4B if you want to go way back.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, it would appear that far from easing upgrades, software and IT hardware technologies make them harder. Or maybe there were just proportionately bigger budgets back in the day.....