No and No.

F-18 took 9 years from paper to entering service, 4 years for a first flight.
F-35 has taken 26yrs to enter service in some countries, 14 for it's first flight. Many countries that invested in the program still don't have serviceable planes.

The f-18 cost didn't more than double during development either.

*80s *engineering *wings

Adding video to channels (80s, Engineering, Wings) - requested by ant.

Moving this video to transmorpher's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

The F-35 was doomed from the start when different branches wanted different things. Vertical takeoff, stealth shielding, etc.

Recent dogfight tests have shown it loses to earlier jets. Too many compromises hurt it's ability to be a great fighter.

That was about 4 years ago as they were fine tuning the fly by wire system. And the sensationalist media which thrives on reader outrage took the story and spun it for clicks/views. People love to hear about military over spending just as this video from the 80s shows.

In recent dog fights, the pilots praise the F-35 greatly.

The positive reports on mock dogfights I've read are comparing it to F-15s, not comparable 5th gen fighters. Some of the recent "praise" is also dependent on the g-force limiters being removed.

The problem with the F35 is the squishy organic component in the cockpit.

The concept of a jet fighter is pointless these days and the idea of a "dogfight" doubly so.

Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon say the F-35’s superiority over its rivals lies in its ability to remain undetected, giving it “first look, first shot, first kill.”

Hugh Harkins, a highly respected author on military combat aircraft, called that claim “a marketing and publicity gimmick” in his book on Russia’s Sukhoi Su-35S, a potential opponent of the F-35. He also wrote, “In real terms an aircraft in the class of the F-35 cannot compete with the Su-35S for out and out performance such as speed, climb, altitude, and maneuverability.”

Other critics have been even harsher. Pierre Sprey, a cofounding member of the so-called “fighter mafia” at the Pentagon and a co-designer of the F-16, calls the F-35 an “inherently a terrible airplane” that is the product of “an exceptionally dumb piece of Air Force PR spin.” He has said the F-35 would likely lose a close-in combat encounter to a well-flown MiG-21, a 1950s Soviet fighter design.

Robert Dorr, an Air Force veteran, career diplomat and military air combat historian, wrote in his book “Air Power Abandoned,” “The F-35 demonstrates repeatedly that it can’t live up to promises made for it. … It’s that bad.”

The development of the F-35 has been a mess by any measurement. There are numerous reasons, but they all come back to what F-35 critics would call the jet's original sin: the Pentagon's attempt to make a one-size-fits-all warplane, a Joint Strike Fighter.

History is littered with illustrations of multi-mission aircraft that never quite measured up. Take Germany's WWII Junkers Ju-88, or the 1970s Panavia Tornado, or even the original F/A-18. Today the Hornet is a mainstay of the American military, but when it debuted it lacked the range and payload of the A-7 Corsair and acceleration and climb performance of the F-4 Phantom it was meant to replace.

Yeah, the F/A-18 was trash when it first came out and it took YEARS and multiple changes/fixes to allow it to fully outperform the decades old aircraft it was designed to beat when it was released.

The F35 is not the best at anything it does, it is designed to fully be mediocre at all roles in order to allow it to be a single solution aircraft. That may change with more money, time, and data retrieved from hours spent in actual combat, but as it stands it is what it was designed to be. A jack of all trades and master of none, not something I would want to be flying in a role where I could encounter a master of that role.

As @ChaosEngine says, it is far beyond time that we move to a design where the pilot is not in the plane. There is no reason at this time that we cannot field a plane that could successfully perform it's role with the pilot in a secure location nearby. Such planes could be built cheaper, could perform in g-forces that humans cannot withstand, and would be expendable in a way that current planes are not. However, this would mean that our corporate welfare system for huge defense contractors would take a massive hit. We can't have that, can we?

The reason why we still have human pilots in fighters is because you can't jam or hijack a pilots brain. Any machine that is remotely controlled can be jammed at the very least. Leaving it unresponsive to commands. The exception here is that it could be pre programmed to perform a specific bunch of tasks, perhaps even something as advanced as air to air combat but, it loses a lot of flexibility. And it can be easily exploited.

E. G. you know a robot fighter jet is on it's way. Jam it so it cannot be called to cancel it's mission. Put some children into the target area.... That can happen and does with real pilots too, but they are able check and recheck as many times as they feel necessary either their JTACs or the amazing optics on modern jets giving a clear picture from over 10 miles away.

And that if course is with the ethical concerns of having an automatic killing machine fly around, which people like Stephen hawking warn us about. Perhaps in the immediate future the danger is quite low with only collateral incidents, but can you imagine say Trump with this kind of power. A trained soldier regardless of being broken in during training and even with all of the testosterone and adrenaline flowing through his body is still a compassionate and thinking human being. The likelihood of ordering a military wide atrocity is very low compared to an army of machineswhich will carry out any tasks no matter how gruesome. Can you imagine what Trump would do if people were no longer in the loop to share the responsibilities and burden of war? And by extention, that technology would likely be used to control the populace. You think the police in the US have there fair share of power tripping jackasses slipping into the service, well imagine if every officer was basically a silicon version of Trump. That's the worst ki d of robocop movie ever lol