That’s an overly simplistic look at it.

The F-35 program (and others) use and have used this process in the past. The only thing happening now is that the program is saying that the sims have caught up with teh original plan.

It was not an “open panel” that allowed the F-117 to be hit, it was:

— Poor mission-planning (flew the same root repeatedly)
— Good EW discipline (did not leave the radar on)
— Poor situational awareness (no RWR in the F-117)
— Good intel (spotters along the route)
— Dumb luck (he flew directly at the radar unit)
— Short range (he was hit at less than 10km)

Kandea F-35A loses panel in flight….

http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/12/01/kadena-f-35a-loses-panel-in-flight/

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Copyright of the pictures: Arnold ten Pas

To be fair, it was mostly due to economies of scale as they were offering 126 Eurofighters vs only 36 Rafales.

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Sorry, it was after lunch and I was slipping into a food coma.

Not to mention how well Venezuela is thriving under Socialism.

My phone has more processing power than most fighters flying today. Its cost is MINUSCULE compared to PCs 20-30 years ago. I remember seeing a 486 PC from the late ’80s that cost $5000 ($10.8k in today’s dollars). My new PC is a BEAST (8c/16t @ 4Ghz), 16GB RAM, 500GB M.2, 8TB Raid10 SSHD, 1070GPU, Dual 27″ 1080P and cost less than $3k. It has to power to run multitudes of what is needed in the F-35. The computers in the F-35 are much cheaper than is in the F-22 or any other fighter when the functions that it does are compared. One of the reasons why the F-35 uses C++ is to keep the processors cheap and the development time low.

Btw, a majority of the code for the F-35 is actually running in the ALIS system (ground-based) rather than on the F-35 itself.

Numbers don’t lie, no matter how you want to twist them. Several countries have compared the F-35 to Rafale, Eurofighter, et al and the F-35 came out on top, including price. Don’t get caught up in early LRIP pricing but look at the trend in pricing (getting cheaper every day).

when did Denmark fly the F-35 and test it in real time?

They never did and the reason is simple, there are only single seat versions. They would have to have pilots go through the training program before they could fly it (the same applies to the F-22).

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see the details of a side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison between all competitors (Rafale, SH, EF, Gripen, etc) but understand that most numbers will come from the bidders rather than hands-on evaluations.