A Great Idea for the Hollow Fighter Force

Regular readers of News Wars know I'm a big proponent of buying weapons off-the-shelf to replace our aging military equipment, worn out from so many recent wars and unreplaceable thanks to our addiction to hi tech hardware, which often takes decades to design and decades more to replace. Bayou Renaissance Man echoes this solution:

Another factor is that those calling for more aircraft
carefully fail to mention that a brand-new latest-generation F-15 (as in the F-15K currently being sold to South Korea or the F-15SG currently being sold to Singapore) or F-16 (as in the F-16E/F Block 60 variant currently being sold to the United Arab
Emirates or the even more advanced F-16IN being offered to India)
, with systems fully as modern as those of the F-22 or F-35, can be bought for
half to two-thirds of the cost of an F-35 or a fifth to a third of the cost of
an F-22. Admittedly the older designs aren't stealthy, but neither are any of
the F-15's or F-16's in the USAF's current fleet: and in most other areas
they're comparable (or even superior) to the F-35 in overall performance (or can
be made so with relatively little additional investment). Additional
enhancements such as thrust-vectoring technology, improved wings and other
features have already been flight-tested in the F-15S/MTD, F-16XL and F-16
VISTA/MATV/NF-16D programs. They could be incorporated
into production aircraft with minimal difficulty.

See? Its not just me!