re: #117 Dark_Falcon

The F-16 needs to be replaced in the next decade or two. It’s getting long in the tooth and Russia and china are building planes that can outfight it. The key is much better program oversight, but I don’t know how that can be done. The incentives for Congress tend to be more about dramatically finding waste that has already happened then wagging their fingers at it. Real oversight is somewhat thankless, and it takes time they see better spent kissing babies and raising money.

And which national monument were you planning to sell off to afford the cost of replacing every F-16 in the inventory with an F-35? It’s going to end up being like the F-22: Bought in small numbers to replace a few air-wings, with the others either being shut down or forced to soldier on with F-16s.

And note, that’s assuming that all of our allies who’ve expressed interest in the F-35 actually buy in. A couple are getting twitchy, looking at the bird getting less capable in development while at the same time getting more expensive. They may come to the conclusion that the “need” is not that great and go looking elsewhere for cheaper alternatives.