An anonymous reader writes: The F-35, love it or hate it, has its share of problems. From the cost, nearly $400 Billion, making it the most expensive US defense program in history, to its share of technical problems make it an easy target. Yet, there is very few ways to replace it. Considering that parts of it are made all across the U.S. and most of the planes it plans to replace are getting quite dated, the program seems "too big to kill."
However, there are ways to do so. One good example, jump to the next generation of planes:
"Another way of cutting our losses would be to abandon the fifth generation fighter entirely (apart from existing Raptors and F-35s), and focus instead on the development of sixth generation fighters. Expectations for Gen Six fighters generally focus around stealth, supercruise, and networking capabilities, potentially with tailless configurations, the capacity for the installation of laser weaponry, and the possibility of unmanned operation. Several other countries have played with this concept. Japan, Russia, India, and France have all examined the possibility of skipping the fifth generation and moving directly to the sixth. Expectations of relative great power peace over the next decade, combined with still-large Cold War-era fleets, have made this a plausible option."
