Could be ones from belarus or Ukreine !!!
the USAF was reported to have smugled out some flankers from there

Very possible IMO.. “private collector” = CIA.. I’d always assumed for years now that the USAF had gotten its hands on some flankers or at least its pilots had somehow gotten extensive hands-on time to do a thorough evaluation of its capabilities. This is based on a number of comments and interviews of USAF brass over the years where they seemed so familiar with the Flanker relative to the F-15 in particular..

I agree with EdLaw….especially the laser weapon part. Which means the advances should come from the onboard power generation because i don’t think even the F22 and F35 can generate that much power to sustain non-chemical based laser weapons. In terms of chemical based…it may not give more shots than missiles and at being less flexible in certain conditions. It is a line of sight weapon afterall, meaning very easy to give away your location (a few seconds of lasing is just too long) if the enemy manage to lose the laser tracking. We may see sales pitch such as…enough power to power New York 😀

The F-35B should be able to generate quite a bit of electricity if you pull out the liftfan and plug in a generator hooked upto the driveshaft.

One thing to condsider is that there is no longer a USSR so the urgency that seemed to drive weapons development and procurement isn’t at the same level as during the cold war. Having said that, I think that there’s very little merit in the argument that since the USSR is gone, the Raptor should have been scrapped. Crazy. The mission requirement for for dominance against a constantly improving threat will always be there though the adversaries may change.

Barring the development of some overwhelming new threatening technolgy, I don’t see the USAF coming out with the requirements for a 6th gen fighter for another decade or even longer. Right now the US technological lead as embodied in the F-22 and the coming F-35 is so vast and I see this even widening in the future despite other countries efforts to catch up. The USAF should continue efforts to procure as many of these platforms and others like the long-range strike aircraft as it thinks it needs to achieve it mandate; hopefully the politicians will keep an open mind.

Ideally, the Israelis could probably use a lot of 250-lb SDBs instead of heavier bombs that they have been using if only to minimize collateral damage.. why use a sledgehmmer when a tack hammer will get the job done in most instances?

Space-based radars are also in development and one of the first applications will be to provide J-STARS capabilities to map any future battleground. This will provide another layer of tactical recon and one that will be hard to target.