Air Force to Revive Cold War-era Fighters to Replace F-35A

After public opinion on the F-35 program has reached an all-time new low, senior-level members of the Air Force have decided to initiate a multibillion-dollar revival of several fighter aircraft from the 1950s and 1960s in order to replace the failed super program to build a fifth generation multirole strike fighter to supplant the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

In a press conference, Brigadier General Alan Pennymaine remarked, “We have heard the voices of millions of Americans, and hundreds of blogs and newspapers which constantly take it upon themselves to decry the F-35, though I doubt half of you jackasses have even seen an F-35 fly outside of a video game.” Loosening his tie, and unbuttoning his uniform jacket, he continued, “We’ll be diverting the billion dollar spending packages towards reviving the F-4A Phantom II, the F-100 Super Sabre, and the F-102 Delta Dagger, and modernizing each of them with thrust vectoring and new paint jobs.” Now sweating profusely at the realization of the implications of such a change in tactical and strategic direction, Pennymaine carried on “None of those jets can actually dogfight against modern fighters… but they can really rock a cool all-metal paintjob. That’s what counts right? Positive publicity? God help u-“. His microphone feed was mysteriously cut off.

TACAIRNET’s in-house aviation experts and wizards were consulted on the technical benefits of utilizing obsolete fighter aircraft instead of the fifth generation fighter, which is designed to evade complex search radars and anti-aircraft weaponry, as well as destroy enemy aircraft before they even know the F-35 is in the area. Dave Snyder, who we can neither confirm nor deny is our Black Projects Division chief, was literally unable to come up with a solid answer to this peculiar question. “You can’t just drop thrust vectoring on any aircraft and hope it’ll turn into the greatest fighter ever made…”

One of many highly knowledgeable defense analysts, who have popped up in the comments threads on Facebook under various F-35 posts over the years offered his own insight which, according to him, echoes the sentiment of every “F-35 hater” today. “The F-35 is just plain crap. Like, it can’t even dogfight and each aircraft costs $1.5 Trillion… We can’t support that! What’s wrong with building more A-10s instead?!”, says Tim Conway, from Provo, Utah. After wiping nacho crumbs from his face with his ironic t-shirt, he continued, “If it was up to me, we’d get more F-4s and add thrust vectoring to them!”. We couldn’t get further comment from Tim, as he was late to his shift at McDonald’s.

The F-100 Super Sabre as well as the F-4A Phantom II experienced staggering losses in the last major aerial engagement involving the Air Force- Vietnam. Bear in mind that this was against fighters with lower levels of technology, all built in the 1950s and 1960s. The new Air Force plan will see these fighters step up to the plate against much more modern and highly-capable Russian and Chinese fighters, able to maneuver tightly and fire missiles at greater ranges than ever before. Museums across the United States will be expected to relinquish their exhibits of F-4s, F-102s and F-100s in a timely manner, so that government contractors can get them refurbished and back on flight status.

Chinese defense officials were quick to offer their thoughts on this new course of action. Through a translator, General Yu Lao Peng commented, “We absolutely welcome this change in direction! It is sensible, and China is fully committed to assisting with the production of parts, coated in our best variety of lead paints”, while rubbing his hands together gleefully.

North Korean defense ministers could not be reached for comment, though they were reportedly overjoyed at the fact that their Korean War and Vietnam-era MiG-17s would finally having a fighting chance of survival against enemy fighter aircraft once more.

Author’s note: if you didn’t quite catch on, Happy April Fool’s Day! The F-35 is nowhere near being canned in favor of old Convair and North American fighters… sorry, we’re not sorry!