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As a side note, the USA produced about 14,000 P-51's during WWII. The 1945 cost was $50,985 per copy, which is equal to about $640,000 in 2012 dollars. Do you think they US Government and Defense establishment could even come close to duplicating such a feat today, even with all the advanced technology we supposedly now possess?

True, an F-22 costs like 200+ mill a copy. I favor the F-15SE for half that, let's face it, we do need to keep up our defenses but we need to see what we need the most and prioritize. I'm not so worried about the tankers and B-52's even they don't see as much stress as a fighter jet does, I see 1957 vintage KC-135's fly over me everyday.

OK, I know I'll get into trouble here but here goes:

I guess if I was Air Force guru, I's go with the F-15SE, some F-16's, I'd kill the F-35. F-22's, I'd put on hold for now. The B-2, I'd retire, it is a White Elephant and maintenance hog. I'd keep the B-52's and B-1's now with the idea of bringing back the B-1A to cover the gaps, the original 1974 program specs of a higher speed bomber. I'd focus on cheaper and more mass "produceable" planes like the F-5 or F-20, the basic model, maybe toss in an AM/FM radio and A/C. B-) The F-22 and Sukhoi 30 and others out there are good planes, but if you "Zerg Rush" them even with 3, 4 or more planes like say the MiG-17 even, then you're in trouble.

At the other end, I like the idea of having a plane like the Embraer Toucan, it does resemble a World War II plane but it will be used for counter insurgencies and tank strikes, something that even a bonafide WWII plane is capable of doing, we should have kept the A-1 or even P-47 for this.

It's like the old joke, the Air Force of 2030 will be headed by something like the F-222 at 10 billion a copy, both jets are state of the art. I keep thinking back to the old Kurt Vonnegut science fiction story from 1958, "The Manned Missiles," where both sides have weapons that are so smart, they counter each other. The idea was to make more minimalist weapons systems, in the story, it was more like a kamikaze space fighter/missile controlled by a human to confuse computer controlled systems. We should never go as far as that, but perhaps there will be a day when a simpler approach will work, double that if you employ the zerg rush. The Germans had good tanks like the King Tiger but made so few that a zerg rush of Sherman and/or T-34 tanks took care of them.

Still, I think I'd put a lot of research and money into missile and other defense of our country using ABM's, lasers and particle beams.

I think it is nice having all this "gee whiz, Flash Gordon stuff" of today (as Mom would say) but there will come a time that it will be too cost prohibitive on all sides and there will be a time when we will have to settle for less. I think when it comes to performance, aircraft basically plateaued about 1960 or so with the exception of electronics but I covered the latter with the cost of buying, maintaining them and so on that there will be a brick wall at some point and soon.

Your proposal is exactly what causes the cost per aircraft to increase and the number of affordable airframes to decrease. China, Russia, and others are gaining invaluable time to catch-up with the U.S. air capabilities. This is time which could prove to be far more expensive to remedy than all of the costs to date.

There’s an international aspect to cancelling the F-35. Many of our military allies have contributed to the program, and put off acquiring current generation fighters and strike craft in the hopes of leapfrogging to the next-generation F-35. Cancelling that would not only be a slap in the face diplomatically, but would also leave them without any potential replacements.