http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/u-s-looking-to-new-generation-fighter/
Despite F-22 choking its pilots – issue that may not have been solved even now – and F-35 having more problems than all European armaments programmes put together, US Department of Defense has decided that work should begin on a new stealth aircraft. It is easy to understand why – with F-22 out of production, and F-35 facing massive cuts in orders, US military aviation giants – Lockheed Martin, and Boeing – are desperate to find a new cow to milk. Ever since General Dynamics and Northrop Grumann have stopped producing fighter aircraft, these two firms have had free rein of US aviation industry. That situation has resulted in averagely effective and cripplingly expensive F-22, and utterly ineffective but almost-as-expensive F-35.
That decision comes in face of proposed budgetary cuts, and may indeed be a way for armaments industry to make cuts irrelevant, by inducing cost overruns that will have to be paid by taxpayers. While it certainly is useful for keeping industry going, it is hard to see why next platform has to be LO or VLO, as neither F-22 or F-35 are more advanced or more useful than their European counterparts.
Contrary to the claims in the article, F-35 is anything but high-performance aircraft. It is low-performance fighter/bomber/AWACS mix that does many things, but none well. However, as F-35 has harmed defense industry of US alleged allies – in reality, occupied countries – only high-performance fighters in production in these countries are French Dassault Rafale and multinational Eurofighter Typhoon, latter of whom is suffering cuts due to budgetary reductions as well as US diplomatic pressure aimed at making room for low-performance gold-plated F-35 bomber.
As far as I am informed, I totally agree. But can you please give me an example for a country which has cut back its Typhoon-order in favour of F-35? Was it a european country of the Eurofighter consortium or an export costumer ?
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Mostly export customers, but Great Britain and Italy are buying F-35 too, and without their commitment to F-35, it is possible that Typhoon would have been designed with carrier variant.
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Ah ok, so you mean it that way. I was a bit suprised, because the British as well as the Italians have cut back both their Typhoon orders and their F-35 orders.
But I guess since Canada and Japan already proclaimed to restart their next gen. fighter competion (in case of further rising costs of the F-35, which I assume), Typhoon´s (and Rafale´s and probably JAS 39) chances might improve.
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What about lockheed martin skunkwork’s new 6th Generation fighter. Not sure about avionics and engine and whatnot but this might work because its fast. “Speed is the new stealth” is their motto. I guess they are trying to build fear off of the concept of the SR-71? Maybe?
http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/37p6ydB-mlI/hqdefault.jpg That’s the concept art of what it would look like.
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Speed is new stealth might work for bombers, but for fighters, high cruise speed is far more important than maximum speed.
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