Is 6th gen even necessary?

>>35151780
it isn't necessary right now, but they aren't building them for right now, they're building them for the future,
people said the same thing about the raptor

Hey kid we need you to go into combat. But rather than giving you the best gear we are giving you stuff that should be good enough.

>>35151780
Its a lead worth maintaining.

>>35151780
> be USA fighter pilot in 2030
> flying my awesome 6th gen fighter
> can do mach 3 for hours shoot backwards over the horizon and transform into a badass robot
> leaving for a mission
> it's B-52 escort again

I could think of something else they should work on...

>>35151780
>No other power in the world is even close to touching our 4th gen capabilities,

I struggle to see how F16 and F15 can hold a candle to Typhoon, Gripen and modern flanker variants

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>>35152897
Late model F-15 are better then any of the magic body kit flankers and Gripen.

The F-16 isn't exactly a high bar to celebrate when it's a light single seat/single engine aircraft intended to keep cost down. It's also better in ground attack then any of those.

And there's enough fucking vipers to blot out the goddamn sun, unlike the 'we built four of them' production runs most countries manage.

>>35151965

> be USA fighter pilot in 2030
> flying my F-16
> it smells like 50 years of sweat and there is a Reagan-Bush '84 sticker holding a picture of Susan Summers by the old gauges.
>the gauges don't work anyway. have to use a Microsoft Zune duct taped to the console as an MFD

>>35151820
And the M4 is plenty reliable if you do your maintenance anyway.

On the contrary to OP, the F-35 has taken so long to develop that China has caught up to the West and bridged the technological gap.

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>>35152984
>China stole the f35 plans and built one faster than America
ror

>>35152994
I bet it wasn't even hard for them to steal it. A rule of thumb when it comes to espionage is that you should never trust the chinese employees. And you just know it was a chinese NSA employee who stole the blueprints.

>>35152984
China has come a long way but you can't say they've bridged the the technical gap. They still can't make good engines, their avionics are questionable and most of what they do know about stealth seems rudimentary copied from the US. The US has around 50 years of stealth experience with at least 25 years of real life combat application.

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>>35153008
The fact remains that the f35 is already matched by existing aircraft. The experience and tech edge was squandered by the overly long development of the f35.

>>35153053
>F-35 matched by existing aircraft

Like what?

>>35153077
F-22

>>35153001
Why would NSA have the blueprints of a fighter jet?

>>35153077
J-20 outrages it and has larger payload

>>35153137
J-20 is a strike fighter, only carries four BVR AAMs (compared to the 6 of the F-22, same as the F-35 until it gets two more next year), has shown none if the kinematic abilities of the F-35, has no HMD, is not able to be operated off of a carrier, much less STVL.

They are not even the same class if fighter, yet the J-20 is still laughable.

>>35153137
I mean so does the the F-111 does that make it a 5th gen fighter

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>>35152984
You mean this absolute piece of trash?

>>35153087
Kek

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>>35153168
Damn that's sexy.

>>35152942
> zune MFD
Code BROWN

Kek.

Wouldn't the next step be going unmanned? Afaik the human component (pilot) is currently the weakest part in the whole system.

>>35153508
Can replicate human decision making in an EWAR environment unfortunately. Computers are bad with ambiguity.

>>35153508
Tech isn't there yet, but yes

>>35153530
Cant*

Also realistic airframe stresses limit maneuvers still well within human limits though, nobody's pulling 9+g's loaded with ordinance.

>>35153508
6th is going to be a drone carrier
7th is going to be unmanned in it's entirety

>>35153508
compare number of mishaps of all the pilots vs number of mishaps of drones. Technology fails and if there is no well trained ape to deal with that situation, drone will go cannot compute and it is a write off for sure. Pilots can pull a miracle from their ass from time to time.