The U.S. Navy Is Making Plans to Replace the F-35 Stealth Fighter

[rangerrebew]

June 27, 2020

The U.S. Navy Is Making Plans to Replace the F-35 Stealth Fighter

The Navy is currently analyzing airframes, targeting systems, artificial-intelligence-enabled sensors, new weapons and engine technologies to engineer a new sixth-generation carrier-launched fighter jet to fly alongside the F-35 fighter jet and ultimately replace the F/A-18 aircraft.
by Kris Osborn

The U.S. Navy is currently analyzing airframes, targeting systems, artificial-intelligence-enabled sensors, new weapons and engine technologies to engineer a new sixth-generation carrier-launched fighter jet to fly alongside the F-35 fighter jet and ultimately replace the F/A-18 aircraft.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-navy-making-plans-replace-f-35-stealth-fighter-163620

[rangerrebew]

Just because it can't go supersonic or fly near thunderstorms?

[PeteS in CA]

Of course successors for the F-35 are being planned (just as the F4F was replaced by the F6F and the F6F was replaced by the F8F and the F8F ...) and not due to issues mentioned that will be fixed. It's due to advancing technology. And those Gen6 replacements are decades away, not imminent.

[SZonian]

Headline doesn't match the story...

"... to fly alongside the F-35 fighter jet and ultimately replace the F/A-18 aircraft."

[PeteS in CA]

Headline doesn't match the story...

"... to fly alongside the F-35 fighter jet and ultimately replace the F/A-18 aircraft."

F-35 bashing is a cottage industry. The Navy's "never" been a one-plane-does all set-up. In WW2 they had fighters, torpedo bombers, and dive bombers. In Vietnam, at different times they had some combination of F-8s, F-4s, A-4s, A-6s, and A-7s. The purpose of the F/A-18s was to replace F-4s and A-7s, being used with F-14s and A-6s. Had the F-35's development been less troublesome, it would have come into the fleet after the F-14 was retired but before or around the time the A-6 was retired. So about 20 or 30 years from now something Gen6 will probably replace to F-18. That's the way it looks from my desk chair anyway.