the F-35 can be summed up into one thing:

What makes an aircraft without a pilot fly faster and further than a plane with a pilot?

104:0 kill ratio, and Sprey's correct about the F-15 being a "turkey?"

It was this "Fighter Mafia" design ideology that led to the F-22, which is a pretty damn great air superiority fighter that people criticize for being too focused on air-to-air combat.

Actually, the F-22 is the descendent of the F-15, which Sprey hates, even to this day. The motto for the F-15's development was "not a…

Sprey never worked for General Dynamics. He didn't design the F-16.

In July 1990, no one would have expected that within several months we would be in our first large scale conflict since Vietnam. And while it's easy to dismiss the Iraqi Air Force on account that they weren't a superpower, that ignores the fact that they had an Air Force that was battle hardened and operated one of…

1999 over Bosnia. Before that, the Gulf War in 1991. Since WW2, we've actually had way more air-to-air engagements than we have had large scale amphibious invasions, and we have an entire branch dedicated to those.

Is it foreseeable? Unfortunately no; we don't know when some territorial dispute will get out of hand. Or…

Yeah, I'm not a big supporter of the F-35B in particular. Needing that lift fan drove the basic airframe design for all three variants. Interesting footnote; they couldn't justify the costs of an F-35B with the wing size it has because there would be too few of that variant produced. So, the F-35A model got stuck with…

Haha, okay, "hate" is a strong word. It's not like he's the CEO of Comcast.

He's spent the better part of the past 30 years making music (good for him (no sarcasm)) but for him to trot out and recycle the same criticisms about the F-35 that have been made by people who are better qualified while at the same time…

Well, yeah, you're not see an F-15A/B/C/D do that. It's not part of their training; they're trained to go out and hunt down everything in the sky that's not part of blue force.

During Anaconda, when the Shatner hit the fan, one of the F-15E drivers there got a call for support and he put down some gunfire. I think he…

The AF originally wanted 780 F-22s. That number got whittled down over the years as costs went up ("the death spiral").

Bask when he was the SECDEF, Robert Gates decided that the F-35 was just as good as the F-22, a whole lot cheaper, and the money would be better spent on things like Predator drones and the war in…

Haha, maybe next time Sprey says anything, I'll just post this instead?

Thank you.

On the one hand, you've got a jet that takes everything that made the F-15 a world class champ, then adds LO, more powerful engines and wicked avionics. On the other hand, you've a jet designed to make everyone happy; who's main role is ground attack

Can the F-35 win out against the Raptor in air to air? In BFM....No.…

"I'm sorry, but nobody who is not an engineer or scientist should be allowed to publicly discuss low observable design because it inevitably results in an avalanche of stupidity."

Orrrrrr.... maybe someone who is an engineer should discuss it as they would present the subject matter to students in a class? Maybe try to…

That's one of my problems with this; he's not saying anything new about the F-35 that hasn't been said before. He's just recycling existing talking points and interweaving them adding his "name" to them to give them validity. POGO wants to kill the F-35 program and I can't say that I disagree with them. He's telling…

sure, but everything runs up against the law of diminishing returns sooner or later. the question is at what point is the sword simply sharp enough? especially when everyone else is running around with balsa wood clubs?

I think "death spiral" is a better analogy than "Law of diminishing returns." The "Death Spiral"…

Thanks and haha, he didn't forget, he's ignoring it. He hates what the F-16 has become.

Yeah, as much as I loathe the F-35, Sprey's probably worse.

The F-35B variant kills it for all three. The international cooperation isn't helping matters either, because it's become a design by committee. Cockpit controls keep getting moved around because Nation A has things here, but Nation B has those things over…

Misleading title. Pierre Sprey did not design the F-16. He's never "designed" anything with wings. Sprey did NOT work for General Dynamics, he was weapons system analyst that was hired by the Pentagon in 1966 as one of McNamara's "whiz kids." By his own account, Sprey was a dilettante with an engineering degree but no…