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Well, it's both. Russians drive old cars because they're poor and because old cars are reliable (by reliable I mean can be easily worked on). If Russia destroyed their old cars a lot of Russians would be walking or driving scooters by now--a future I see for many Americans at this point.

So speaking as someone who spent their entire career working on aircraft, honestly this is boomer logic and it's grounded in "muh gut" because you think a modern Mercedes with 10,000 luxury features that break and need constant repair compared to your grandpa's old shitty Chevy that is still running with 900k miles on the odo, is somehow comparable to aircraft. Well... it's not. Two totally different situations where the technology is mostly serving different purposes. The core components of operating a car are mostly still analog because you really don't need anything else. No matter how bad the problem your car is having, the brake stops it and you just get out. Mercedes doesn't give a fuck if your stupid screen fails because the screen is worthless as far as operating the car. There's no QC or standards or anything for the MTBF on the screen in a car. If you think about *aaaaall* the tech in a modern car, it's all luxury shit.

Aircraft don't have that luxury. If your air conditioning goes out on your car it's just uncomfortable. If the air conditioning goes out an aircraft, all the avionics overheat and shut down and you explode and die.

The number of air accidents that were *directly* caused by advanced technology features are exceedingly few. Even of the MAX8 drama, one of them was mostly caused by the aircrew fucking up a recoverable situation.

The number of air accidents that were *directly* caused by cracks/wear/age are countless and that is the killer of old aircraft. Additionally, *maintenance* is the #1 cause of accidents, and old aircraft need the most maintenance. The newer the aircraft I ever worked on, the less work it was for us. F-15Es have failures that happen every single flight (one fuel tank is reading too high, a radio stopped working, the radar begins throwing faults, nearly every flight something goes wrong) - when I was on the F-35 and we got block 3i certified, they would go several days without any maintenance issues beyond normal servicing (and the LO but that's a different issue).

When it comes to new vs. old aircraft, new aircraft *might* have a chance of tech-related problems, but have *no* chance of age related problems. Old aircraft not only do get refit with modern tech, but even if they didn't, there's the *slight* chance of tech-related problems and a *much higher* chance of age-related problems.

In Missouri like twenty years ago the entire nose of an F-15 once snapped off during maneuvers because the longerons had cracks that were too difficult to inspect. After holding down the entire F-15 fleet, a shitton ended up being mothballed because they all had the same cracks and they're irreparable. F-16s used to kill a dozen pilots a year until the GCAS system was introduced.

"Tried and true" is nonsense in aircraft where every single hour of flight is putting heavy stresses on every part.

All you have to do is look up USAF accidents. The amount of old fighters that crash is unreal. The number of crashes in more modern fighters are extremely rare. Retards whine and talk shit about the F-35 but the F-35 is literally the safest thing the USAF has ever flown and the few number of mishaps underscores that. The F-16s has had 9 airframe losses in the last three years. The F-35 has had 9 losses in its entire career starting in 2014.