Neither does mine. 🙂

I actually believe those who actually fly the thing can be trusted to speak about it. But I see a big difference in who does that. An Italian AF jockey can easily say “hey, this aircraft sucks because it’s lazy and slow” if he sees fit. Mr.Beesley can’t.

So in other words, you’re saying that Mr. Beesley is lying, since he hasn’t had anything negatve to say? You can’t have it both ways.

Well if you’re going to discuss post Soviet era upgrades, after disallowing the AMRAAM to be discussed, that’s not really apples to apples, now is it. Flankers and Fulcrums didn’t get multifunction displays, HOTAS, etc… until much later in the game(and they still had inferior radars until the BARS). Russian equipment required the pilot to do a lot more functions manually, which required them to be looking down into the cockpit much more, than Western designs. This made it much more difficult for the pilot to focus on tactics.

They were certainly more user friendly, and didn’t involve having to look down in the cockpit, flipping various circuit breakers, awkward methods for calculating missile flight times, awkward RWRs, etc… not to mention huge advantages in situational awareness, tactics, and pilot skill.

By the time the AMRAAM effectively entered service the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.

The ergonomics and user friendliness of Western avionics, combined with AIM-7Ms would still have been superior.

Supporting 240 front-line F-35Cs would require easily half again that number just in terms of FRS and aircraft in overhaul. The USN’s planned buy is 480 aircraft, which is enough to sustain that plus account for attrition. As the cost to procure and operate these aircraft keeps rising, it’s clear that this will never happen and the actual number purchased will be less than 300. Which is not nearly enough to sustain 20 VFAs worth of aircraft.

Each LRIP iteration has seen costs come down, and no aircraft have been bought at full rate production prices, so it’s disengenuous to remark about ever increasing prices. I’d love to see the source for increases in operating costs.

I also guess that all the reported hacks of the JSF program traced back to China was just for fun.

http://johnltdo5455.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/russians-angry-with-chinas-copy-cat-military-hardware-technology/

The network they hacked had nothing higher than FOUO information on it.

China was only the fifth nation to test a nuclear weapon, but the fourth to demonstrate thermonuclear capability and went from one stage to the other faster than any other country. Once they have sussed something out with the benefit of hindsight, further progress can be extremely rapid.

I’m not speaking of sciences in general. I’m speaking strictly in the areas of aircraft design/VLO shaping/RAM, avionics/AESA radar and T/R modules/IRST/sensor fusion, engine technology, etc… The most sophisticated operational aircraft they’ve built to date, is the J-10, and much/most of that came from the Israeli work, on the Lavi. They’ve had quality control issues on some of the reverse engineered Flankers. They’ve yet to equal the AL31, much less F100/110/119, in fighter engines(even the PAK FA’s won’t have their representative engines for 8-10yrs). This is why I’m skeptical of them suddenly having breakthroughs in all of these areas.

Which of the technological areas in question, have either party demonstrated parity much less having leap frogged the US? They’re late to the game, they have a a large learning curve to overcome, their R&D budgets aren’t in the same league, they don’t have prior experience to build upon(in the specific technologies). I’m not saying they won’t be good aircraft, but it would be unprecedented to make the kinds of strides necessary, given those constraints, to achieve parity/superiority as a weapon system, on the first attempt.