The military concept of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a theory about the future of warfare, often connected to technological and organizational recommendations for change in the United States military...
What do the above airplanes all have in common?
Not one of them features all aspect stealth.
The Russians have moved toward retaining high agility with moderate stealth and the Chinese (reading from our playbook) appear to be trying for basically the same.
The Europeans have only gone down the stealth path when it comes to UAVs and are instead concentrating mostly on high speed air to air missiles along with tweaking their AESA arrays...only God knows what the Navy is up to, but they have some fully funded classified projects in the works that seek to keep the Super Hornet viable until a 6th gen fighter is developed. The Air Force is probably teamed up on some of those projects which would explain the upgrades being pushed to the F-15/16.
Considering the price that the US military is paying for the F-35. Thinking about the combat experience that is going to shoved out the door to get that airplane, the question must be asked. Is stealth worth the price? Are we going to trust the same leadership team that promised us an affordable fighter to get it right when they say that the F-35 will be competitive for the next 50 years when our enemies have produced stealth aircraft 10 years before their estimates?
This high tech force in lieu of retaining personnel is nothing but Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs" just watered down. Instead of cutting edge aircraft, armored vehicles and communication systems...all we get is an airplane.
