John Carrier wrote:
Kinda sad, 30 years design progress and we get an airframe that can't exceed
... or even match ... the Turkey's performance (except at high alfa ... big
whoop!). Wouldn't have been a big deal to retrofit advanced WCS/Radar
capability. Of course the maintainability could not have been solved
without a clean sheet of paper redesign (pretty much what the E/F is
compared to the original Bug anyway).

Yea, the "-ilities" are where a HUGE percentage of the costs accrue with
a weapons system. Huge. Guys who talk with their hands want it all of
course, but as soon as you start calculating dollars-per-kill, you have
to move away from the old airframes. Have to.