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.

Comments

Drone It

[thedonger]

How much extra to make a drone version with 360 degree cameras? Fuck it. We're at $1 trillion. What's a few hundred billion more?

Re:Drone It

[Penguinisto]

Perhaps, though to be fair, much of this can be worked around (for how much? Tons o cash, eh?)

It's fairly standard that smaller/slower aircraft are very often more agile than the bigger boys - you just have to find the aircraft's strengths and play to those. For instance, the tiny T-35/F5 can commonly out-maneuver an F-15... at lower altitudes. At higher altitudes, the F-15 handles itself better in the thinner air of the upper stratosphere.

The F-16 is more than agile in lower altitudes, because it was built to be a combination air/air air/ground fighter, which leads me to believe that maybe these dogfights were conducted at lower altitudes... I am also curious (haven't looked) as to what the flight/fight profile of the F-35 is in the first place. if it's Air Superiority, then that usually means higher altitudes where there may be a better advantage. Anything else appears to be a whole lot of incompetence in design.

All that said, they had to know there were going to be compromises when doing the whole stealth (maneuverability) and STOL/VTOL (engine power) thing.

Or, best bet may be to scrap the damn thing and hold a competition for an aircraft that's worth a damn, and this time make the entrants build a working prototype *first*, without any governmental money up front... like they did in the old days.

Re:Drone It

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not "at $1 trillion." The $1 trillion figure is the total program cost, through 2038, including all development, procurement, training, operations, upgrades and repairs. Between now and 2038, by simply extrapolating 2015 figures, (which is a conservative approach) the US will create about $385 trillion of wealth and the Federal government will collect $71 trillion in tax revenue. Spending 0.2% of that product on a powerful weapon is entirely reasonable.

As for the F-35; it's a stealth multirole fighter with VTOL. Dog fighting was never the top priority. Using the F-16 to disparage new designs, as was done with the Eurofighter and the F-22, is now a traditional tactic of pentagon critics and should be dismissed as the bullshit that it is.

The story is a hit piece from an anonymous source written by a peacenik named David Axe that advocates, among other stupid things, abolishing the US Air Force.

Re:Drone It

[aix tom]

Especially the one belonging to Vladimir Putin.

I wonder how the same dogfight test would play out against the Sukhoi PAK FA, the somewhat comparable new Russian stealth fighter. The F-35 seems to have a maximum g-load of 9g, while the PAK-FA has one of over 9g. The thrust/weight ratio of the PAK FA also is higher, at 1.02 to 1.36 depending on configuration and fuel load, compared to the F-35s of 0.87 to 1.07. (At least as far as the "official/unclassified" specifications seem to go)

Re:just let it go

[Penguinisto]

Welcome to Sunk Cost.

Sucks, but breaking that addiction is incredibly hard... doubly so when egos are just as much on the line as money.