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Test Pilot: the F-35 Can't Dogfight
schwit1 sends this report from the War Is Boring column:
A test pilot has some very, very bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The pricey new stealth jet can't turn or climb fast enough to hit an enemy plane during a dogfight or to dodge the enemy's own gunfire, the pilot reported following a day of mock air battles back in January. And to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn't even comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet's cramped cockpit. "The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft." That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him. The test pilot's report is the latest evidence of fundamental problems with the design of the F-35 — which, at a total program cost of more than a trillion dollars, is history's most expensive weapon. Your tax dollars at work.
This damned plane has been a big scam from the beginning.
It was going to be all things to all people, but in reality it was a way to get other countries to pay for the R&D of a huge wishlist of things which was never going to come true.
As someone who lives in one of the countries who got suckered into the F-35, this program has been nothing but lies and bullshit since it was announced.
This was the military listing a huge wishlist of things, including a pony, they were going to do.
Instead, it's underperforming, not up to the claims, over budget, years behind schedule, and still a crappy replacement for the things it was supposed to be doing.
Everything about the F-35 has been a pile of lies of bullshit since it was announced. And it seems like everybody (except the people selling it and the people who got conned into signing up for it) has know this for that entire time.
I hope everybody says "piss off" and walks away from the contract.
This plane is proving what people have been saying for the last decade -- that it was never going to live up to the promises made.
As a supposed air-superiority platform, this is an utter failure. I bet they don't even have the VTOL version working yet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, the reality is, like shock and awe, you can't just pretend you don't have to cover certain parts of warfare.
So, bombing the shit out of stuff and thinking people will become demoralized and welcome you with open arms ... utterly useless if you can't put boots on the ground. For the same reason that bombing ISIS only goes so far.
And, likewise, if you can't maintain air superiority in an up close and personal manner, you can't do the roles like close air ground support. So if you do have boots on the ground, you can't keep them safe if you get your ass kicked.
People can pretend this will never be needed again. That doesn't mean if you ever found yourself in an actual war you wouldn't.
So, if the people you're up against have things which can beat you down in a dogfight, you could quickly find yourself realizing you're ill equipped for a given situation.
Somewhere along the line they decided to make the Swiss-Army knife of aircraft, which it turns out is terribly suited to most of its applications.
Which is moot, because the plane is so late and over budget it should never go into production .. in which case it's years of wasted money and effort to come up with a solution which doesn't work.
Which, sadly, was what people said from the beginning.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And the US spends $1000 Billion+ on a plane, designed to kill. Imagine, if you can, a world without war, it's easy if you try.
Originally, the F22 was to fill the air superiority role (and it does that better than any fighter ever made), and the F35 was the mish-mash of other roles. Everyone following this stuff knew the F35 wouldn't be great at any one particular role, but for dogfighting it was always a joke - and really, that was OK, as the F22 had its back if needed. But we stopped buying F22s way too soon, we don't have enough, and the huge R&D costs weren't spread across enough planes.
The F35 always seemed like the result of no clear charter for it's role: "just do everything". It's not a bad plane for the requirements as presented: for a jack-iof-all-trades plane it's great at nothing, but it's really as good as you could reasonably expect given the lack of a specific role.
The Air Force also has a problem that we've spent too long dropping bombs on opponents with no real air power. We should be using actual bombers for that role: far cheaper per bomb, but fighter pilots run the place. As a result, we get fighters trying to be bombers on top of everything else, and no plans to replace the aging bomber fleet anytime soon (admittedly, a B52 is fine vs an opponent who can't shoot back, but even the B1 is getting old vs an opponent who can).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The big red flag that nobody caught (since nobody actually reads the articles) is that the story is completely unsourced. Where did the author of this blog get his hands on this information? Why can't we see it? What's the name of it? When was it declassified? A quick google search finds the same story being echoed verbatim by the likes of the Daily Mail and others; all of which simply link back to this blog as the source. Until we see an actual source, it's bullshit - how are we supposed to know they didn't just make this up?
/. readerbase was supposed to be smart?
The article summary said "can't turn or climb fast enough" but the article itself showcases the pilot complaining about nose-rate only - i.e. turn rate. As anyone who knows anything about Air Combat Maneuvering can tell you, turn rate is the LEAST important aspect of maneuverability. Roll rate is far, far more important, as every aerodynamic maneuver aside from a loop begins with a roll. Aircraft with superior roll rate can shake better-turning fighters through maneuvers like the rolling scissors. Unsurprisingly, its through tactics like these that the F4F Wildcat held its own against the Japanese Zero, and when the Wildcat was up-engined to become the F6F Hellcat it dominated the Zero flat-out. The US Navy would later adopt the F4F Phantom, a fighter that eschewed turn-rate entirely in favor of absolutely insane thrust (the jet set several world speed records.) They were told this plane could not dogfight - and then pilots like Duke Cunningham defeated nimble little MiG-17s in close combat.
Once upon a time a group of industry experts who thought the Japanese had it right formed a clique named the "Lightweight Fighter Mafia," and their efforts eventually produced the F-16. Pleased with their accomplishment, they spent their time since then spewing BS about every single aircraft to come after it, including the F-18. To this day you hear people claiming the F-18 is a "turkey" and "can't dogfight" and that the navalized F-16 was passed over by the Navy due to sheer inter-service rivalry and pigheadedness. That this bullshit flies in the face of actual pilot accounts doesn't seem to slow them down a whit. The F-22 had its turn on the bullseye, and now it's the F-35s turn.
In light of the decades-old pattern of "sneer at the new expensive jet" popular amongst industry professionals and armchair warriors alike, a complete failure of the article to quote any opinion on the F-35s vertical maneuvering ability (the go-to counter to turnfighter tactics) and the simple fact that the source is completely undisclosed, I'm calling bullshit on this one - and on everyone who decided to sling out a pithy comment without doing a five-second bullshit check. I thought
Contrary to popular belief, G-limits are not generally due to pilot endurance but airframe load limits. They also aren't simple knockdown values. Saying an aircraft can 'pull 9g's' doesn't really mean a lot. Under what conditions? At what altitude? At what speed? With what stores? At what fuel state? What are the roll limits? A F-16 can pull a lot of Gs under specific conditions, conditions generally not met in combat.
A clean F-16 can blackout a pilot. A F-16 with a combat load, generally, can not. Same for all the F-teens. That lady saying 'Over-G' isn't telling you you're about to black out, she's telling you you're breaking the airplane and you need to stop.
Could you design an unmanned aircraft that can sustain 15g? Sure, but why? G load is the result of a lot of variables, so more G doesn't nessecairly translate into 'more maneuverable'. These days higher g loads don't necessarily net you anything and cost you a bundle in airframe weight. That means gas, guns or sensors you're leaving on the ground to make MGTW.
Missiles should be pulling the g, not the aircraft.
The problem is that the US always is fighting the last war. After 9/11, a lot of money has been spent to deal with asymmetrical warfare, essentially fighting Vietnam but in desert country. Drones are useful, because (if intel is correct), they can do relatively pinpoint strikes without videos of civilian death tolls hitting Al Jazeera the next day (again, assuming intel was right, and the place was an ammo stash and not a madrasa full of little ones.) In reality, the only way to fight a war like ISIS is to do what was done to Germany -- level all cities (and all buildings in the city) that even are rumored to have insurgents. Without the commitment to do actual, yucky warfare that completely breaks all resistance... half-ass measures just creates emboldened enemies (think "Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!".)
I really wonder if the US could fight a war against an organized country without a major sea change. The circus about military contracts was a major blow to readiness. First it was no-bid contracts... then contracts only given to HUBs that had relatively little to no experience. There is something humiliating about basic things like shower heads not being grounded, causing fatal electrocution and batteries with cracks in them repaired with Loctite.
The last time a "full-ass" conflict was done... was under George Bush Sr, when he dealt with Iraq invading an ally. The US came in, cleaned house, re-established Kuwait, and left without damaging Saddam so much that Iran or other outsiders felt they had a free invitation to invade the now-weakend Iraq. Of course, his son destroyed the country resulting in a power vacuum and the crap we have today.
The US also has the weakness that propaganda works on the people, but not the other way round. ISIS's sole reason they exist is because of YouTube and CNN. If their gory videos didn't make it out of the region, other nations wouldn't be recognizing ISIS's flag as a sovereign country, and they wouldn't be getting recruits worldwide from disaffected people. You get some FX artists good at moulage work, grab some kids and babies, make a video about a missile hit with all the damage done, and US people will be protesting in the streets for surrender, peace at any cost. No political official in the US has the cajones to stop the press from showing videos (even faked) 24/7. Losing the propaganda game lost Afghanistan and Iraq.
Who knows... maybe true war between nations has become obsolete... but that was said before World War 1, and it only took a month for uneasy neighbors to become dire enemies, and in the age of the Internet, it might just take only seconds to minutes before all hell breaks loose globally.
Cowards. But thats become the American way.
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.
â" Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The art of using troops is this:
â¦â¦When ten to the enemyâ(TM)s one, surround him;
â¦â¦When five times his strength, attack him;
â¦â¦If double his strength, divide him;
â¦â¦If equally matched you may engage him;
â¦â¦If weaker numerically, be capable of withdrawing;
â¦â¦And if in all respects unequal, be capable of eluding him,
â¦â¦â¦.for a small force is but booty for one more powerful.â
â" Sun Tzu, the Art of War
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all Hell. -- William Tecumseh Sherman
I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country. -- Patton
The American Military has advantages, it uses them. It is not cowardly to use one's military advantages. If I have a gun that shoots a mile and yours only shoots a half a mile, why should I close to a half a mile, I should stay out of your range and kill you when you are easy prey and can't shoot back.
I actually just made it up. Of course it can black out a pilot. I just wanted to see what score I would get.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.