Stock of the United States’ largest defence contractor Lockheed Martin was downgraded to Hold from Buy at Deutsche Bank by 14.5 percent, with a price target of $523
F22 is working just fine. The new planes from China seem like tech demonstrators, so a similar stage to X35 in 2000. So they could still have plenty of production problems ahead of them.
Cope how? I'm not a fan. The worst thing in the world for Lockheed would be if US's adversaries decided they weren't going to be designing any new weapons systems. Lockheed runs on fear of what's next.
I'm not big into airframes but i think it's a dieing artform making these jets. Some drone strapped to a pulse rocket will eventually make them all obsolete.
It's more about sensors and communication, there's no reason you can't have f35 use drones and stuff. But the better plane will see and target the enemy first. And it can operate without GPS. In other words it's better to have 3000 f35s flying missions plus a bunch of drones. Being able to deliver a lot of firepower first is a huge deal.
F35 is guaranteed to be better than a "6th generation" Chinese plane and they can be upgraded anyway. And it's actually very successful now with a very cheap per plane cost.