Up until about 1950 we had real dedicated fighter aircraft. Then the highly intelligent desk jockeys decided to take guns off of fighters. But then the worst thinking came along. They wanted to make fighters all things to all people. They wanted to make them not only fighters, but bombers and basically flying garbage trucks. You need only to look at the Mig 21 vs the F-4 in Nam to see how that turned out.
Probably the biggest thing here is we try to make what should be a fighter into all things to all people. That makes them so damned expensive we cant afford more than a hand full. Yet we see Russia and China build fairly simple fighters, and field hundreds if not thousands of thier fighters.
The F-16 started out as a “cheap” simple airframe but then got loaded up for bombing and other things. The biggest joke was the AF thinks the F-16 can do the job of an A-10!!!
What we need is a good air frame that is intended ONLY to be a fighter. Leave all the multi use bomb racks, bombing computers, laser designators etc off of them.
Give us a simple straight forward air superiority fighter, and build hundred is not thousands of them!!!!
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December 10, 2012 at 2:19 pm