You guys crack me up. When I was a young Capt, I too used to talk about all the acquisition screw ups and wonder if any of these higher ups had a clue.
However all this complaining is not supported by facts. People talk about the good old times when we had 10 different fighters a new one being unveiled every couple of years. But here's the facts. During the Vietnam conflict we had a kill ratio as low as 4 to 1 and has high as 12 to 1. These numbers vary throughout all of the conflicts but are generally accurate for engagements up until 1973. Then they built the F-15. Numbers vary on the kill ratio, 196 to 0 was the last one I heard, bottom line there has never been a loss. It's a great airplane, but it had just as many acquisition problems as all these current crop of aircraft. It took 12 years to develop and required many fixes along the way (F-15A vs F-15C)
Referring to bombers, same history applies. In WWII it took 200 aircraft to destroy a target, Korea about 20, Vietnam 10. Now we are at 24 targets per aircraft. And the survivability is unbelievable. Need I talk about the B-2 vs B-17 or even B-52 vs B-1.
Bottom line, it's always fun to bad mouth the current leaders and their decisions about acquisition, yes there are lots of mistakes made, but overall we have made great progress. I have no doubt the F-22 will have as stellar a history as the F-15 and the F-35 will be as equally great as the F-4 and F-16 were in their time. I for one have no desire to go backwards to the days of F-18s, F-15s and B-52s. I'll stick with F-22s, B-2s and F-35s.
BTW I'm 10 years retired, so I don't have a dog in this fight. I just remember the days of guys bad mouthing the F-16 over the F-4 and the denigrating the B-1 vs the B-52.