Sprey.

This is coolbert:

From a comment as seen at the Isegoria.net Internet web site:

"A few years ago, defense reformer Pierre Sprey wrote that modern U.S. Fighter aircraft were inferior to the Korean War era F-86. That’s flat-out nuts, I’ve never heard a single pilot agree with him."

That F-86 could operate out of an improvised or expedient airfield and probably required less maintenance and less down time and was cheaper even by modern dollar cost. You could proliferate the battlefield with them. Used a gun but so what? Used in strictly the air defense role, an air superiority fighter jet that performance of the F-86 within the modern context barely adequate but more than that not being needed!

ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION THAT F-86 COSTING ABOUT $220,000 USD IN 1950 COULD BE BUILT FOR ABOUT $2,200,000 USD IN 2014. A SMALL FRACTION OF THE COST FOR A MODERN F-35!!

In response from an acknowledged aviation authority who KNOWS this stuff:

"The argument about quantity versus quality goes on . . . results showed those much more complex, expensive 'force multiplier' avionics made the US Air Force (and the Israelis and virtually every other European Air Force) un-defeatable by those flying the masses of airplanes built to the low cost, quantity strategy of air warfare." 

"Lesson: he who can fly highest, fastest, can control the fight. If a much faster turning plane such as the MiG 17, MiG 15 or Sabre is flying around at 25,000 feet, waiting for you to come down and turn with him, all he can do is watch and then try to dodge when you dive down, firing away, and zoom through his altitude and keep going, getting what we called 'extension' from him so that at a longer range away, you could zoom back up in safety and get ready to attack him again--at your leisure."

There you have it in the proverbial nutshell! Thank you aviation authority!

 coolbert.