U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told Defense News in a Jan. 5 interview that the service “does not view the F/A-18 and the F-35 to be substitutable at all.”
By U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Cmdr. Darin Russell [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
“They fulfill different requirements. They’re both fine aircraft, don’t get me wrong. But it’s fourth generation, and F-35 is fifth generation.”