Uncooked

I feel like we need a new poll now that the primaries are over the list has been narrowed to two candidates.

These videos helped me to form my opinion about the F-35-- Originally I was against it for much of the same reasons you guys are, but once I saw these my opinion shifted a lot. The robot narrator can get kinda tedious at times but they give some really good insight and information. ZtZNBkKdO5U LyHlp7tJrxY 31oJIo8EVwY

I'll grant you that the F-35 is probably the least useful for the Navy, which already has a modern multirole that's versatile and light on maintenance. But for the Air Force, they absolutely need an F-35 or another new fighter. The F-16 is aging, and USAF F-16 aircraft have already undergone a number of life-extension programs and avionics upgrades. The maintenance-per-flight hour is sky high compared to the F-35 or the Super Hornet. The same could be said for most of the USAF's fighter aircraft. Not to mention that the F-16 wouldn't be survivable in the kind of environment you'd see in a conflict with another superpower. It's RCS is high compared to the F-35 or even the Super Hornet, and it would run into serious resistance with the latest Chinese or Russian fighters (PAK-FA comes to mind, whenever they finish that). I wouldn't trust an F-16 to do a first strike in very heavily contested airspace, but I would trust an F-35.

Well is there another 5th generation, stealth, multirole fighter that can take it's place? Because the aircraft it's replacing (the F-16, AV-8B, and F/A-18C and D models) wouldn't be able to compete in a conflict with a peer-strength adversary (i.e. China), and are all relatively old and maintenance-heavy. The F-35 has its flaws, but it's waaay too late to scrap it at this point.

INTP-T

To be fair, this is all part of a testing program designed to find issues-- they found an issue, now they're gonna fix it. It's not like the A-10, or the F-16, or the F-22, or whatever fighter didn't go through the same phase.

Welp, we crashed the servers. GG.