Is that a retraction of the defense of F 35 ? Or is it still a sacred cow ?
You currently have 189 5th gen planes.
Poor(er) countries like China and Russia can afford more in few years.
Heck even India can afford more Pak-Fa than you have F 22.
If F 35 doesn't come soon or isn't able when it comes, you will cede air power to these countries.
F 35 is not even inducted yet and you are talking about replacing it with 6th gen planes in a thread about strengths and weaknesses of JSF.Listen to yourself man!!
What good is all the money spent on F 35, if you simply replace it with 6th gen.If you induct a plane, you keep for atleast 3 decades .I think the money point was also made as a plus of F 35.US should have stuck with the Raptor/Eagle High-low combo till 6th gen came if that were the case.
Mind you, I am debating the point you made here, not the technicalities.
Saying F35's weakness won't matter because we will have 6th gen soon is a lazy argument.
dude, make sure your fact is RIGHT before getting into a debate with other.
1st point. F-22 and F-35 is not the same things, even F-22 and PAK-FA or J-20 or J-31 is a total different league of aircraft.
2nd point. J-20, J-31 and PAK-FA is still in Trial phase, how do you know how much the Russian and Chinese can afford?? You have exclusive knowledge of the future?? Even the Chinese and Russian cannot figure out how many squadron they want and they can afford and you are telling me, you know?
3rd Point. India is not getting PAK-FA, they are getting FGFA, not PAK-FA. It is derived by PAK-FA, but please don't expect the performance will be one on one on par with PAK-FA
4th point. We are currently building, and each 30 days we roll out a new F-35 airframe, We are
BUILDING F-35 as we speak now, current 75 already build. Not like we stop building F-35 altogether. While China have 4 or 5 J-20 and J-31, Russia have 4 PAK-FA and Indian have 0 FGFA
5th point. We have already
INDUCED F-35 into both USAF and USMC service.
6th point. We can make more F-22, the production line is still there, infact we have replaced our crashed F-22, five of them, so the number build is not 189, but 194.
Even though you don't have the fact right, I will still answer your question
Having 6th Gen is not an excuse of whatever and admit the F-35 is a lost clauses. US being the biggest customer (While other are buying less than 700 F-35 in total) the F-35 project can survive if only US is purchasing the jet.
We
WILL BE the only country that have full squadron inventory of 5th Generation jet before 2030 (Project supposed to be finish replacing all 4/4.5 gen in US with 5th Gen by 2028), where you expect both Russia and China are still in production with their own 5th Gen jet. With current projection J-20 IP at 2017/2018 J-31 IP somewhere 2020 and PAK-FA IP at somewhere 2017
and FG-FA at 2022
Even though you may think F-35 is inferior than PAK-FA or J-20 or even J-31, and assume you are right, we will still have number superiority with our 5th gen against the 4/4.5 Gen aircraft then operating from Russia and China or even INDIA. Unless you are trying to tell me F-35 does not even worth fighting with 4/4.5 gen.
by the time you any of your guy have full squadron somewhere later in 2030, we would already IPing our 6th gen. See, the point is not using the 6 gen as a stop gap of F-35 but rather use them as an technological superiority to build the gap between other nations. We will not lose the fighter edge, unless you stupid enough to think the F-35 project will still be flipped. But we have already paid most of the production cost and now up to unit cost, as long as we have 500 billions (which is 100 billions less than this year) we will be able to afford all the squadron.
And the cycle continue. When you are researching your 6th Gen, after you make all your squadron 5th gen, we will be researching 7th Gen then. Unless you can speed up the process and replace all your current squadron before we roll out the 6th gen, the world will always be 1 generation behind us.
So, your theory of F-35 will not get US Air Superiority is simply and plainly, stupid.