I was genuinely shocked when I read some of these points. I still have hard time believing things like survivability after the ejection and the need to repaint after every flight.
All fighters have ridiculous maintenance hours. Good ones are like 10 or 15 hours of maintenance per hour of flight.
Using paint that needs to be reapplied all the time probably isn't a good idea, but it can also just be a choice to pay to hit the bleeding edge of capability (say a stickier paint gives the plane a higher signature).
I'd also probably take that article with some salt. There's nothing preposterous about deciding to manage fuel temperature, something that article misconstrues a bit (I think by not understanding what they are doing).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479508
I was genuinely shocked when I read some of these points. I still have hard time believing things like survivability after the ejection and the need to repaint after every flight.