The U.S. Air Force Has Doubts About the F-35
Does anyone knows what&#x27;s the argument to use manned planes over drones anyway?<p>Turkey, which is kicked out if the F-35 program for political reasons, demonstrated huge success in battle through it&#x27;s home grown drone programs.<p>F-35&#x27;s were supposed to be the stealth weapons who were to be able to penetrate Russia made air defences etc, but Turkey proved in Syria that relatively cheap drones can do just that. Before the Turkish drones, only Israel was able to hit a Russian made air defence system and that was done when it wasn&#x27;t operational at that moment. During the conflicts between Azerbaijan-Armenia, Syria, Libya the Turkish made drones hunted down multiple such system and provided very impressive footage of the action.<p>Again, Turkish drones are suspected to be used in first ever AI based attacks, where for the first time machines decided who to kill and who to spare[0].<p>Though Turkey has a sizeable engineering capacity, it&#x27;s not a rich country. Budgets used to develop these drones are nowhere near the F-35 or similar projects. One wonders, what&#x27;s the argument to invest so much in planes when there&#x27;s low hanging fruits in the drones business.<p>It seems to me, the 5th gen plane projects are like trying to breed the next gen horses instead of developing the automobiles.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.popularmechanics.com&#x2F;military&#x2F;weapons&#x2F;a36559508&#x2F;drones-autonomously-attacked-humans-libya-united-nations-report&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.popularmechanics.com&#x2F;military&#x2F;weapons&#x2F;a36559508&#x2F;...</a>