The Pentagon has responded to that possibility with three tactical fighter programs, at a total projected cost of $350 billion.

Additionally, his support for the A-10 and the lightweight fighter program (later the F-16) helped ensure that they were carried to completion.

The $14 billion budgeted next year for the tactical fighter programs and the Osprey represents just one installment.

The F-5 started life as a privately funded light fighter program by Northrop in the 1950s.

Continuing all three fighter programs would cost $350 billion over the next two decades.

That results in large expenditures on overlapping systems, like three separate new tactical fighter programs.

Officials who helped initiate the fighter program did not seem offended by the rivals' last-ditch effort to push their prototypes.

I understand you're involved in a very futuristic fighter program.

And look what happened: we got all three fighter programs.

In late 1964 two indigenous fighter programs were initiated to follow up the MiG-21.