Bullocks!
Allow me to share my direct, 1'st hand experience from the aerospace industry.
- First, 70% is avionics. That's where the big advances are.
Second, not engines, not airframes. Both of these are well established tech. fields with only incremental bit-by-bit innovation. Plenty of professors around the world do cutting edge research in these fields, there's no black magic in them.
Third, consultants, often blue-eyed professors or their pet grad students, will consult you on anything and everything re: technology right out of the public funded university or institute lab.
Lastly, drones are due to replace fighters to the extent that insiders say the Russian and American 5'th gen. jets will be the last of the breed. With the fall of the Berlin wall and the peace break-out thereafter, there's no more business case for these pie-in-the-sky zombie's. Sure the above will keep a minimum fleet and yahoo's like Brazil, Canada, Oz and Germany can fly them at cost while China, India and Pakistan may continue their mini cold war and spit out their own version of the clunkers; the business is definitely on its way out.
Warfare business moved from land, to sea, to air and now to outer-space.
If you have the money, I can make you the best fighter jet in the world!
