One thing to thank the F35 program for...
 

USAF Acquisition Head Urges Radical Shift For Next-Gen Fighter Program

​http://aviationweek.com/defense/usaf...ighter-program


Extract..
​​​​​​"Rather than spend the next decade developing a singular new air combat platform, the NGAD program may be shaped to establish a pipeline for acquiring, developing and fielding a host of new aircraft types, with a new design entering service perhaps as quickly as every two years. Instead of pinning all hopes on a single model, the alternative, if it works, would allow Air Force leaders to hedge against the risk of technology breakthroughs and to surprise enemies with unexpected new capabilities"

Makes sense. It'll never happen.

Well that approach would certainly be amusing if the current "interoperability" farce is anything to go by...

Sounds great in theory, but numerous small fleets, constant churn, and endless R&D sounds mighty expensive. But then again, the single "too big to fail" programs have not been cheap either....

At least you get use out of your money much sooner, and there is learning across the fleets which could feed the next gen quicker. This is a much more agile approach. Although agile means messier usually.

This is better than fielding a very modular airframe skeleton, off which you could hang anything.

A great many people likely don't see what you see, which is the logistics tail that is required to keep a fleet in the air. Reduing the number of T/M/S has been a priority since the late 80's/early 90's within the DoD.

I'll offer a different 'lesson learned' and that is that F-35 is likely the last manned fighter the US will build. The rest will be controlled by AI, with hundreds of pounds of payload/gross weight removed for all of the things needed to put a human into the aircraft.

Not sure how much the results of the Falklands air battle (21-0 to the outnumbered Harrier) support that argument.

Targets, targets EVERYWHERE....






..justreplyinginkind :O

Haven't we heard that one before (about 1957)?

What happens if the enemy's software writer is better than yours?

Ask Bill Gates about a small company called Apple!

In respect of desktop/laptop computers I'd say that comes down to propaganda (or advertising) rather than software.

Microsoft are still going strong in their original role, Apple have morphed into a phone/media company (and are being overtaken by others). Sorry, thread drift...