The fact that the F-35 is significantly slower than a 55 year old jet really shines light on how compromised its design is. This is nonsense. The tradeoffs for

The fact that the F-35 is significantly slower than a 55 year old jet really shines light on how compromised its design is. This is nonsense. The tradeoffs for speed are fantastically expensive and haven't made sense since the 1950's. You reach Mach 3 only with an extremely high fuel expense, with afterburners, so expensive it limits your combat time to minutes. This made sense in the obsolete 1950's role of interceptors (like Avro Arrow), which chased obsolete 1950's strategic bombers. The adversary is obsolete, the role is obsolete, and the tradeoff is also obsolete. While we're doing nonsensical comparisons with cold war interceptors -- they also carried air-to-air nuclear missiles [1][2]. The F-35 is not only slower and heavier, it also carries smaller weapons! (edit: I should clarify I'm not defending the F-35 (I'm ignorant about it), only criticizing the interceptor comparison, which is invalid). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-26_Falcon