When push comes to shove....
its the pilots and not the aircraft, that will win the aerial battles. Those war planes are only as good, as the men or women that fly them. I would guess that our pilots want a plane that will do what it is designed to do. And not be a piece of crap, besieged with mechanical problems. Planes that just decide to fall out of the sky, is not my ideal of tax-payers money, being well spend.