says who ? You ? How do you know? Who told you that this is or would have been the case? You are implying that the only way forward was a plane with similar costs to the F-35? Then you are being contradicted by the LM people who a few years back had completely different ideas of the cost and performance of the same plane you are defending now.
How can you quantify the cost of making a plane which would have fulfilled the F-16 role at a similar price point without ever having been part of such a procedure? I am not saying I can, but surely you cannot either. Such a competition never materialised so no one knows. Filling the same shoes doesn’t mean it would have to be like the F-16 physically or even come from the same lineage. It could have been a completely different design, meeting the same requirements. The F-16 and the MiG-29 came about trying to meet pretty much the same requirements, they don’t look alike do they?
You are forgetting that taking something from LO to VLO can mean the cost of tens of millions on the final price. However the benefits of going from LO to VLO may not be what is working to your best interests if you are trying to make a decent front line fighter.
and that is the point you are missing. The F-35 was NOT meant to be a front line fighter, even during the initial stages of design, the idea circulated with various degrees of veracity was that it would supplement the F-22 and enjoy a free reign after the F-22 has achieved air superiority that is not a front line fighter that you can take to a war of attrition, that is a plane for a very specific role. NO other country besides the US has the F-22, what are the rest to do ?
You are forgetting that stealth is a two edge sword, you enemy can’t see you so you see them first and you shoot. Fine by me matey, but what if they have stealth too? maybe not as good as yours but stealth non the less, what are you gonna do now? Every argument you have ever put forward about stealth now applies to them too.. and what if they are a bigger country than you and they could afford 48 of their slightly worst stealthy planes but you could only afford 24 of your super dupper wow F-35s .. they have you at 2-1 and you can’t do anything about it because you can’t see them and they can’t see you and you ended up having half as many planes as they do and they conduct twice as many sorties day as you do and they shoot down twice as many planes as you do from the conventional 4gen fleets.
Do you begin to see the problem now? In WWII, the russian tanks werent’ the best, certainly not better than the German ones.. but they were so god damn many that the german tanks run out of shells blowing them up and they were still coming.. Do you catch my drift ?
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