F35 - Flaming Coffins?

>Drone is where its at.

I think so too. Drones are cheaper and aren't limited in maneuverability by a human pilot that will pass out when the G-forces get too high. The "5th generation fighter" will probably be the last generation that is used to make up the backbone of an air force. I'm sure that manned fighters will still be around for quite a while but they'll probably be used in a supplementary role to drones instead of the other way around.

As always,it looked good on paper.This thing may have worse faults than it's predecessors.It may never reach full operational standards.

>Flaming Coffins

carrying on the Lightning tradition at least

see wired.com/2016/06/ai-fighter-pilot-beats-human-no-need-panic-really/

There is absolutely no need for life support on fighters.

Well that's an entirely different topic there Juan.

The pilot will be fine, he can just eject. This is no coffin. The only thing that is burning is US tax payer money.

...

>Is our military still flying WW2 planes?

Not quite but the B-52 and C-130 are from the 1950's and are still used. B-52's haven't even been produced since the 1960's.

Who's laughing now?

I personally don't understand why we can't have swarms of drones flying at all times over an airspace. Put a few air to air missiles on them, keep them up high and have them set to shoot down any enemy plane.

Put a few more in the air with SEAD missiles and enemy air defenses will never be turned on out of terror that a little buzzing drone will rain death.

After that if you must have people flying planes you can fly any old truck with bombs on them to do air strikes. But drones can do that too.

And who the fuck cares if a few, or even hundreds get shot down? Make more, for a fraction of the cost and no loss of life.

I would rather buy a few jets who are specialised in some task than a overpriced goldnugget piece of shit that is shit at everything and when you lose ONE of them its a disaster

171 F-35s produced and growing, 187 F-22s produced.

Meanwhile in Russia and China:

8 J-20 Prototypes
6 T-50 Prototypes

Does anyone else get really triggered when Eurofags try to talk about the US Military and it's immediately clear that they have no idea what the fuck they're talking about? Like shit, read a book you dumbass.

>187 F-22s produced.
Don't see you exporting or making any more of them.

There was really no need to replace the F-16 with the F-35. Just upgrade the electronics on the F-16 and keep using them for another decade or two until we're ready to replace the bulk of the strike force with drones. The F-35 is just a huge money pit at this point and only serves to funnel public funds into the hands of defense contractors.

should've realized it when he linked to RT

general rule of thumb is, use RT only as a breaking news outlet, because literally every other thing they do is propaganda

Not fighter jets.
Also disregards modern variants from the 90's or other craft like the C-5 or B-2.

383,minus at least one wrote off.

1963

Actually it's more than 3 that were written off in crashes, and each time it's close to $ 700 million that goes into the trash can.

I was just pointing out that the USAF is still flying aircraft that were manufactured over 50 years ago. True, we don't have any fighters that old but the F-16 was first produced 40 years ago and is slated to be replaced by the F-35.

A 70 year lifespan for a fighter seems ridiculous but 40-50 years doesn't seem that far-fetched.

Technically the money is in the trash can as soon as it's spent - written off or not.

Fighter jets generate no economy.

Well not entirely, the manufacturing, if kept alive, keeps expertise and many families well fed.

Want some Rafale in replacement? They're trendy lately.

If that helps the economy why don't we just build hundreds of them and dump them in the ocean? Lots more jobs, right?

One potato has been deposited in your vatnik bucket

you're getting robbed by Lockheed and you're defending them for it.

oh look, /k/ faggot has arrived

Or you could keep just them in service for decades and employ even more people to maintain them and manufacture replacement parts.

Well that's nothing more corporate welfare can't fix.

It's still better than just handing out money to people to spend on absolute degenerate garbage. I hope that this is clear to you.

The fun our air force could have with those things...

Sand
t.Guy who works on these things

Fighter pilots are always flying real low and fast, we tell them not to and then they go do it anyway. It's just the kind of people that fly fighter, are also the kind of people that buzz highways and people's houses.

Corporate welfare is degenerate garbage.

We didn't have a lot 40 years ago, the least of which includes internet or powerful computers both for computing combat info as well as designing aircraft.

Like whatever if they only want a single craft for all three branches for the next 50~ years, at least the older craft weren't prohibitively expensive and could carry extensive payloads. The F-35 meme is all relying on MUH TECHNOLOGY to heavily assist the pilot in more ways than uneccessary as proven by the K:D records of our past few fighters with /already working/ tech; relying on a meme while disregarding the payload deficiencies for lack of hardpoints cause MUH STEALTH and focus on internal weapons.

The Americans literally spent another moon landing worth of money on this pile of flying shit lel

welfare is garbage, welfare that promotes useful skills is slightly less garbage.

You couldn't buy the Harrier Jump Jet off us quick enough pal

>muh MIC

neck yourself, cretin

War is not a useful skill.

war is the single most useful skill

Only in a degenerate non-capitalist society.

SHART

I can't wait for them to cut the program. I'll get to channel my inner Aussie for days.