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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.
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?
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...Most recently, there have been concerns over its computer systems' vulnerability, and Chinese hackers have possibly stolen classified data related to the project....
We have tools built decades earlier that was better. Why cant we just let this go, a trillion dollars is a lot of friggen money, dont keep adding to it. If the vendor cannot come through on their promises cut them and go with someone who will.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
WTF?! When was the last time you've ever heard of a dogfight?
The days of air-to-air combat are long gone. And where air-to-air combat is still needed, long range missiles take care of it.
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.
Use the pieces to make something else. I hope they at least make the next one better looking. Who wants to be seen flying around in that bathtub? If you want safe VTOL, just put a second engine on the Harrier.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But how many US pilots have been in an actual dogfight since, say WWII. Most wars these days are no longer in the air, no large nations are fighting each other and ISIS doesn't have the capacity to fly an F16-like aircraft. Even during the Cold War, the most action was recon missions in enemy airspace which went largely unnoticed.
Sure, the F35 is a boondoggle but are these jets really necessary? The F16 seems to be holding up fine and the Russians, the only non-allied force with similar capabilities is flying mostly rust that is older than the F16 program.
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Technically the gun 'works'; but the vendor is too half-assed to actually provide drivers for the gun until some later revision, for which we will presumably pay more.
Optimists prefer to focus on the fact that, in order to preserve the oh-so-sexy-low-radar-signature design, the system only holds 200 rounds, so nobody expects much of it even when the pilot is able to use it.
It was designed to send money to certain locales and pockets. It's done a great job of it.
Not much of a plane tho.
When was the last time you've ever heard of a dogfight?
1999 in the Balkans though there may be ones I'm not aware of that are more recent.
The days of air-to-air combat are long gone.
There is no evidence to support this assertion.
And where air-to-air combat is still needed, long range missiles take care of it.
They thought the same thing in Vietnam and they were wrong.
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.
That's okay, AFAIK we're not at war against dogs.
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If a war were to break up, is Dogfighting really "the" efficient way to take care of fighter? With all new modern weaponry (AAM, SAM, laser etc.) I'm not completely sure if this feature is still relevant in modern time.
I mean, the british may had the most advanced battleship of its time during WW2, they still got utterly destroyed by aircraft carrier.
Elok
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
There is some ceiling on US military spending beyond which they will not be allowed to go. This portion of this for weapons needs to be split in some manner between weapons necessary to enforce US foreign policy, and weapons spending with domestic political benefits. At the time the JSF boondoggle was getting underway, it seemed the US would be facing weak opposition in conflicts. That allowed spending on combat weapons to be restricted, and more to be allocated towards pork barrel projects like the JSF. Indeed, with less projected need for weapons used in warmongering, projects like the JSF were important to keep military spending near its permitted ceiling. The situation is now a bit different. To support US foreign policy, a credible deterrent against a resurgent Russia and increasingly aggressive China is now needed. The JSF may need to go to free up cash for real weapons systems.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Oh look, another F-35 hack job by David Axe from War is Boring. Maybe if he wasn't so consistently full of shit, or actually had a source to quote I'd bother to read his blog.
First, it's a strike fighter, why the fuck are people getting so worked up about dog-fighting? You know that these planes are not yet rated for their full flight envelope, or you would if Axe did his job. You would also know that the F-35 has more than twice the range of the F-16. Imagine that, a strike fighter that carrier more weight in fuel than point defence fighter. It's almost like dog-fighting wasn't the primary design goal. You know what else can't dogfight? The A-10 that guys like Axe are always furiously masturbating over.
Second, this isn't the 1970s. Sure dogfights may happen, but a hell of a lot less than BVR attacks and SAMs. And before anyone starts talking about Vietnam, go look at the numbers for that war. The little blurb you got about F-4 Phantom from watching Top Gun is wrong. For every plane lost in a dogfight, two were lost to AA missiles, and five were lost to SAMs, in the fucking 70s. Lord knows the world hasn't had any other conflicts since then from which to draw lessons.
Third, it's the most expensive plane program in history at $1T? No shit, the program is to build and maintain almost 3,000 fighters over 50 years. In fact is "almost" as expensive as the $3T to keep doing what we are doing: pumping out a half dozen different air frames with no common supply chain so that each one can be good at exactly one mission. But if you still think it is too expensive, I have to ask, compared to what? The F-22? Not even close. The Eurofighter? Lol. Russia's latest vaporware? Sure if they ever build more than some prototypes. Some last generation platform with no stealth? Sure that will make a great strike platform against an air defence system in contested air space. The money you save on a "cheap" F-16 Block 60s at $70 million vs an F-35A at ~$85-90 million, won't even cover the cost of all the extra shit you have to attach to it to F-16 to get the same performance.
These endless hack jobs on the F-35 project need to stop. This isn't 2008, we have over 100 of these things flying already. They are a mostly known quantity, and they greatly out perform the systems they are going to replace.
Seriously slashdot? What is this crap?
They are slowly fucking up the front page design, one annoying step after another.
Inspired by the stealth design of the F-35 ('Operation Boiled Frog'), the Lockheed-Dice production team are hoping to fly under the radar by sneakily changing the front page one element at a time, so that in 6 months time the site will look exactly like Beta. However, as in the case of the F-35, the final product will be superficially flashy, but less functional than the previous design.