This period of aviation history was always fascinating to me.
The development timeline was much shorter than new military aircraft today. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and other technology was rapidly developing. There were always several new airplanes coming out, which were much more specialized than today.
Now, the big projects are measured in decades because the aircraft are made into big general programs that have massive costs and use one platform for multiple branches of the military, like the F35. The pace is glacial. Many new engineers move to new employers before the parts they engineered even get programmed into a CNC. An excellent feedback loop for the designers is therefore cut off.
The development timeline was much shorter than new military aircraft today. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and other technology was rapidly developing. There were always several new airplanes coming out, which were much more specialized than today.
Now, the big projects are measured in decades because the aircraft are made into big general programs that have massive costs and use one platform for multiple branches of the military, like the F35. The pace is glacial. Many new engineers move to new employers before the parts they engineered even get programmed into a CNC. An excellent feedback loop for the designers is therefore cut off.
It was a different time.