Donald Trump's Dream Fighter Plane Is Just That
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/news/a24482/donald-trumps-f-35-f-18/Dec 22, 2016
There is no "comparable" F-18 to the F-35.
In his attempts to be seen as a cutter of bureaucratic waste, Trump has found an easy target in defense programs. First came the new Air Force One (which the U.S. does need), and then Trump was on to the F-35. The president-elect is correct, of course, that the Joint Strike Fighter is a bloated, delayed, mess of a program. But the rest is a bit trickier.
The big problem with the incoming POTUS's latest communique by tweet is that there is no such thing as a "comparable" F/A-18 to the F-35. For one thing, the F/A-18 doesn't have the stealth profile of the F-35, something even its enormous budget cannot take away from it. The Super Hornet is a 1990s update of the original F-18, which entered service in the early 1980s. Boeing (which merged with original F-18 maker McDonnell Douglas) made numerous updates to the design. But this is an aging platform, and while Trump can ask Boeing how much it would cost to upgrade the Super Hornet even more than it already has been, there are limits to what can be done.
The second big piece is the "joint" in "Joint Strike Fighter." The Air Force, Marines, and Navy are all planning to use F-35 variants. The Navy's F-35C is built for aircraft carrier landing, something the F/A-18 already can do. But the Marines' case is problematic because they'll be using the vertical-takeoff-and-landing F-35B. There is no VTOL version of the F/A-18....
