[Skybird]

That still would make it

- a plane with short legs

- an overpriced plane due to the expensive stealth technology - that stealth technology that more and more is being seen as overestimated in the modern hightech war of tomorrow, since better sensors will compromise it sooner or later. The cost-effect balance just does not show a positive number in black.

Skip the whole program. Focus on cybertech. Drones. Build something on basis of the existing conventional fighters.

And finally get a reasonable AA missile that can outrange modern Russian ones.

Any possible war against any of the real big players will likely not be a meeting on the battlefield anyway, but a cyberwar. A war of currencies waged on financial markets. Economic domination. A drone war. An ELINT war. And this will be a war that very easily can cripple Europe and America. Chinese cyberstrikes against civilian Western infrastructure, energy, economy, traffic, I fear more than anything conventionally military they could show up with. And the claim the American military infrastructure is protected and hardened against such a war I do not believe as long as the claim has not proven its truth in real conflict. Not even mentioning the Europeans' believe that it will not get that bad anyway. Infantility is a widespread disease, I often say to myself these days.