You mean like the PAK-FA? Or maybe the F-35 successor?
What other modern plane development programs don't actually take decades?
Include Boeing and Airbus planes into that too. Include helicopters. All of it is a time consuming and expensive thing to do. We are not riveting metal together and putting piston engines in fighters anymore.
Oh I am aware. PAK-FA, a program that started in 2000 because the previous program for the Mig 1.44 that start in 1979 was delayed so often. And now we have the Mikoyan LMFS a program based on the Mig 1.44.
I have high confidence that the Russians will manage to eventually make a 5th gen fighter using a legacy of nearly 50 years of development. But no, the JSF program is the one that is heavily delayed.
Yeah, the F-35 is delayed. Originally, Initial Operational Capability declarations for the services was supposed to be in 2010. Now it's 2018 and while the USAF and USMC declared IOC for their variants, the Navy still has not.
Before it's outclassed by something that didn't take so many decades to get to the field in usable form?