Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
It's better to have 300 F-22 successors in 2030 than 500 F-22s. This reduces the period of uncertain air superiority to about 2020-2030 unless the bureaucracy fails to launch and manage a timely successor program.
We won't have anything close to 500 F-22s, just that 187 or so. In light of our history, we won't have anything in 2030 but an artist's concept and a prototype that is confidently expected to make it's first flight sometime in the near future. The F-22 may be flawed as you say but it is the best we have and there aren't very many of them.

That period of uncertain air superiority is likely to last a long time.