It is more about economic power.
UN could make Iran to give up on nuclear weapon using economic sanctions, but in this situation cats are much stronger economically.
There is a win for Germany:
- more opportunities for high skilled robotics engineers, so they can stay at home, and don't move to US
- tax income for country, which can be spend wisely.
> Clients with millions of dollars on the line will never want to place their fate in the hands of an algorithm.
They will want, if it will unlock multi-billion market opportunities. It happened multiple times already, e.g. algo trading robots replaced some human traders.
If worker is good, and have enough cognitive power to learn all that algorithms and solve problems, he can land in Google/FB and enjoy life and safety.
They can drop JDAMs, small diameter bombs from 30 miles away and turn back.
You are probably saying about Close Air Support role. It can be fulfilled by high precision weapons, which can be applied from many miles distance, but also Air Force consider replacement for A-10 for this role, which will not be F-35.
And some other cases of CAS can be covered by apaches and drones.
> he F-35 is a 1.5 Trillion black hole; a stark lesson on the sunk cost fallacy. The F-22 exists, and works.
You compare fleet of 3k aircraft + operation costs for 80 years with fleet of 180 F-22 jets.
Also F-22 can't fly from aircraft and amphibious assault ships, and do most of the ground attack missions.
These types of debates are going for few decades already.
1,3trln is joint air-force budget for next 80 years (since F-35 is intended to cover 90% of all air-force/navy/marines air tasks), includes not only 2500 highly sophisticated vehicles them-self, but maintenance, and probably training and weapons, and covers 50% of national security problems in modern world.
I think 1.3trln is moderate price for that.