I assumed that dogfights these days ended with independent missiles like AIM-120, AIM-54 Phoenix, and AIM-7 Sparrow firing miles before planes could even get close to visual range for dogfighting.
That is something I hadn't thought of although I have seen a B-2 Spirit flying over the Air Force Academy. I haven't done any reading as to the efficacy of stealth in combat. I assumed that those planes were low profile to ground-based RADAR systems. But honestly my interest in any of this is bookended in my early adolescence and now my adulthood because of hex&counter wargaming. I quit playing them when I was 16 because driver's license. And now that I am a single adult in my olds I play solitaire wargames about historic wars, battles, cultures, and geography because I'm enjoying the reading that it leads to for me. So stealth is for me largely an undefined magic with no one ever making the case for its combat effectivity.
How ever you cut it the F-35 doesn't seem to be much of a replacement for the planes it's pushing aside. It's supposed to be replace the A-10 and the F-16 and doesn't seem to fill either gap as well as the existing platform. Maybe it will turn out to be magnificent on the modern battlefield but so far it looks like a costly dud.
The M16 rifle was a dud during its early years, but once they worked out the kinks, it became a respectable, mainstay weapon for decades. I know I'm comparing apples and oranges, but maybe the same will be true for the F-35. Then again, I don't know if there's a lot of wiggle room for updating and refining planes seeing as how they aren't built anywhere near as quickly, cheaply, or in quantity as a rifle.
That's a good point. Planes do tend to get better over the course of their deployment but I don't know that most weapons systems come out of the gate this much worse and this much more expensive than the previous generation. I'd say one of the big fears of the F-35 is that an endless trough of expense is getting deployed. The program is not doing well at deployment and it's way over budget. because so much hope and money has already gone into it the pentagon will just keep pouring money on it until it's up to snuff.
So what you're saying is that the Pentagon is up to their eyeballs in one of the most expensive examples of the sunken cost fallacy we have ever seen?The program is not doing well at deployment and it's way over budget. because so much hope and money has already gone into it the pentagon will just keep pouring money on it until it's up to snuff.
The JWST could give the F-35 a run for its money. Some of the space science industry has been hurting as a result. I got ex-NASA workers telling me that NASA technicians are riding contracts that extend far past the launch dates of the projects they work on, just in case they were to have a schedule delay that pushed back the launch. They're literally getting payed to work on their own motorcycles, cuz gov't. Because you know that shit wouldn't fly in the private sector.