So it looks its best dressed up like the un-stealthy aircraft it was designed to replace. Got it.

I’d never trust any Ukrainian company with cash until I see the product shipped. The decades of rampant corruption in Ukraine’s military industrial complex (much of it state owned), the lack of investment, and the lack of any significant domestic contracts have led to a serious deterioration of the factories, their…

We were invited. Check with Poland... er... Libya.

Probably residents of the country we’re galavanting around in.

Turkey’s government is about as secular as Israel's.

I was going off what I read, and I thank you for the clarification in the flight controls matter.

F35 doesn't have super cruise despite the BS on the subject. Mach 1.2 for 150 miles is not supercruise.

She’d toll port or stbd, she wouldn’t roll aft.

Foreign countries are definitely not “drooling” over the F-35. Oh the guys in uniform are, sure, but everyone else is seriously cringing over the costs. Many orders have already been scaled back, and that’s going to happen more.

The F-22 can only carry a single 1,000lb JDAM in each of the bays.

And to add... the Raptor’s #1 job is air superiority. That is to lock down air space over an operation area so all strike assets could “blow everything up.” We’ve seen this doctrine before, as in the first Iraq war. In the early stages, air superiority will shoot down anything that attempts to get airborne. With that…

Gingrich was out of Congress/Speakership in 1999. By the time Wolfowitz cancelled C-130J, he was living in the DC area, no longer local.

I don’t know. The C-130J model had some rough patches in its development. Some people who is current ragging on F-35 had some really harsh words on C-130J.

They’re like the aviation version of a pick up truck.

+1. Even if it’s just a maintenance issue preventing fly-off, Navy and Marine aviators are very, very sensitive about ever craning an aircraft off pierside.

you know what they say, “An Osprey hanging off the deck is worth two in the water.”