sancho
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2009
- Messages
- 13,011
- Reaction score
- 27
- Country
- Location
You cannot deny that what we did with the USN is part of what is needed in terms of cost cutting.
I never did, but that was the replacment of several single role fighters with multi role once, developing F35 according the demands of 3 different forces and foreign partners is a whole different issue and that's what made F35 so complex and costly. Ordering more F22s and developing a naval version would have been cheaper and better for USAF and USN. You simply wanted to achieve too much with a single fighter development, especially by adding the F35B version for USMC. The result is a fighter that is neither cost-effective nor capable enough and the US forces have seen this with the V22 as well. Aimed to do too much at once, but such a complex development makes it expensive again.