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cm2012

The F35 is the most in demand military plane in the world for the price. They spent 20 years iterating on it and its now the best plane for the cost with its capabilities.

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And a truck full of low cost drones can swarm your airfield and take all your F35s out while they're still on the ground.

The future isn't in pilot-in-seat aircraft at all.

“Drones will make xyz technology obsolete” is probably the most naive armchair conclusion you can draw from the Ukraine war. Food for thought: Russias most impactful innovation of this war so far has been building more precise glide bombs, which notably are dropped by fighter planes (and the reason why Ukraine went after those planes with their drones).

I'm not saying you won't need fighter planes but why do they have to be manned when they can be autonomous or semi-autonomous with remote pilots?

Hence recent projects like X-BAT and YFQ-44A. Sure, YFQ-44A says the mission now is to support crewed fighters, but I don't expect that to last.

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