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F-35 Might Be Outperformed By Fourth-Generation Fighters
savuporo writes: Defensetech.org posted a story relaying a report from National Security Network titled "Thunder without Lightning: The High Costs and Limited Benefits of the F-35 Program". According to the story, F-35 is outperformed or showing only slight advantages in simulations and limited real-life tests by decades old 4th-generation fighters like F-16 and F18, but also MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker, that are of course made by Russia and latter also produced in China.
The story also refers back to earlier report last month of F-35 performing poorly in dogfights. "In one simulation subcontracted by the RAND Corporation, the F-35 incurred a loss exchange ratio of 2.4–1 against Chinese Su-35s. That is, more than two F-35s were lost for each Su-35 shot down."
Hint: if there's one thing military history has shown, it's that the bad guys tend not to fight wars the way you want them to.
The F-35 (program) generates FAR more pork than competing fighter jets. That's the only performance that matters. This is just like the NASA projects that are legally required to be completed, then mothballed because they're already obsolete, only with a hint of 'design by committee' to help sink it.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Clearly this can only be solved by immediately investing in a multi-trillion dollar program to develop the next generation of stealthy dogfighting fighter jets.
The future's probably in souped-up drones anyhow. You don't have to worry about pilot safety etc. and can gamble more in a dog-fight. Manned planes will not go away, but will become a niche.
Table-ized A.I.
As long as the enemy has superior dogfighters that are outclassed in other modes of combat, the dogfighting capabilities of your planes will be forced into relevancy. Especially when the rules of engagement require visual confirmation before weapons release. We've already had one commercial airliner "accidentally" shot down during a military conflict last year (MH17), so it's unlikely those requirements will be relaxed any time soon.
No, the cons outpay the pros.
While what you say is technically correct, you should also put this into perspective by adding that since Vietnam, the USAF has never had to fight a sustained air war against an even marginally organised adversary. So there were no real chances of getting gun kills in the first place, because all air wars fought since then were against opponents whose air defence capabilities got all but vaporised in the first 24h of conflict.
But the kicker is that there are other kinds of adversaries out there as well. Think Iran: if the U.S. had gone to war with those guys, it would most definitely not have been over in 24h (which is arguably why neither they nor the Israelis have bothered recently). In such a conflict, it is all but certain that dogfighting situations would have developed: situations in which fighters without guns on board would have looked just a silly as they did back in Vietnam.
Dogfighting was supposed to be a thing of the past in Vietnam skies when F-4 Phantom II showed up without a gun toting advanced tech and missiles. It got chewed up bad by Mig's
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That was fifty years ago. To put it in perspective, fifty years before the F-4 people were still using biplanes and the synchronized machine gun was the latest killer technology.
Things have changed. There's no reason to include a gun any more - it's a waste of space and weight.
Why is dogfight a parameter in assessing 5th generation plane?
If it carries a human it is already out-dated...
The whole anti-F35 argument rests on the report that one (1) F117 was shot down by Serbian forces using VHF technology. Otherwise, they are only talking about the possibility of long range tracking... not fire control radar. And in the case of that F117, there was no mention of the effective RCS.
The arguments about dependency on forward bases is destroyed by VTOL capability, a fact that was not even touched on in the discussion. Similarly, while it was mentioned that the F18 could drop external fuel tanks in combat, no mention was made of the fact that the F35 could drop (or fire) external munitions in a similar situation.
Overall, the review seems shallow and slanted against the F35. Personally, I think the military has far too many toys and their budget should be cut in half. But that does not make me blind to the sloppy arguments of this review.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Actually they do. It was called the F-22. It was killed in favor of the (supposedly cheaper and as effective) F-35.
The F-22 has all the same problems unfortunately and a totally misguided idea that stealth will solve everything. It's certainly not been used in any conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq and to be honest they can't keep the thing maintained so that it can spend any reasonable time in the air.
The only thing that Lockheed had was to create a myth around the F-22 and F-35 and hope that the planes never got seriously tested either in conflict or even in training. If the planes did get found out then the standard response is to say that the plane does not have all of its operational equipment and claim that the planes don't need to dogfight because the enemy will always be destroyed over a hundred miles away.
You are stepping close to the "dirty little secret" of the USAF, that the F15 on up they have had to put limiters on the planes lower than its real abilities because the simple fact is the planes can pull off moves that will kill the pilot, the meatsack behind the stick just can't handle what the plane is actually capable of.
This is why building new planes (instead of simply building more of the teen series) is not only wasteful its pointless, the planes we have now can already do more than any human body can take. instead of pissing more money down a rathole for the F35 we should simply buy more of the teen series and if the fighter jocks still want their 1980s "stealth" tech? Just buy the F15 Silent Eagle which the last numbers I saw showed you could buy 3 of them for less than the cost of a single F35 and still have change left over.
And am I the only one who feels like we are taking pages from the playbook of the Axis in WWII and making the same dumb moves? Instead of building affordable planes we keep sinking billions into "wonder weapons" that have the exact same outcome as the 262 and Panther in that they 1.- Cost too much per unit, 2.- Are VERY prone to breakdown so 3.- They spend more time in the shop than they do in battle so 4.- The enemy will always outnumber them by dozens if not hundreds to one. We have gotten lucky that the only ones we have been fighting are goat herders, because if we fought somebody like Russia or China with an abundance of fourth gen fighters? Our new toys would be facing 20+ to 1 odds and probably get spanked right out of the sky.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Stealth technology was used quite a bit at the start of the conflict - when it should be used. Once they are unable to lob missiles at you and can field no planes then, well, stealth really does not play an important role and there are far less expensive solutions.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So what you're saying is that the plane is incapable of dogfighting unless you throw away one of the design requirements?
No.
Here is an example. The numbers are from hat, not actual numbers.
You go to fight 600 miles away. You load the F-35 to it's full internal fuel load. When you arrive to the fighting location, you now have 50% fuel in your tanks, and you have the same T/W and wing loading ratios than in the report.
You also go to fight 600 miles away in F-16. You load it's internal tanks full, AND add two drop tanks. When you arrive to the location, your external tanks are empty, and you drop then. You are then fighting with full internal fuel load. Now, your real-world performance is WORSE than the numbers in the report, because you are fighting with full fuel tanks instead of half fuel tanks, and the report used fuel tanks that were half empty, half full.
Or, you go to fight 300 miles away. You load F-35 to half of it's internal fuel load. When you arrive the fighting location, you have 25% fuel in your fuel tanks, and you have much better T/W and wing loading ratios than in the report, as the report fuel tanks that were half empty, half full.
or, you load F-16 to it's full internal fuel load, and when you arrive to the fighting locaiton, you have 50% fuel left in your tanks, and you have the same T/W and wing loading ratios than in the report.
In all real-world cases, you have have smaller relative amount of fuel in your fuel tanks in F-35 than in F-16, and the numbers will shift in favour of F-35.
The design requirements say that F-35 has to fly a long distance with internal fuel, and that's just to make it stealthy, but not needing to use external fuel tanks.
Last but not least: http://breakingdefense.com/201...
"“a guy with maybe 100 hours in the F-35 versus a guy with 1,500+ Viper hours? I’ve seen thousand-hour F-16 guys in two-bag D-models beat up on brand new wingmen in clean, single-seat jets. It happens. It’s the reality of the amount of experience in your given cockpit.
“Let’s see how it [the F-35] does when guys who are proficient in developed tactics do [sic] against guys with similar amounts experience–the realm of the bros in the operational test or Weapons School environment.”
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No, this is a small stealthy bomber that can defend itself pretty well if someone manages to spot it.
Which is a pretty reasonable thing to ignore. There's a reason why various nations have spent large amounts of money on designing and manufacturing weapons which are only of benefit over prior weapons when firing BVR. If/when there's a war between the US and someone who can actually harm them if they limit themselves to visual range, they will change the ROE. The same is true of any advanced nation.
That was fifty years ago. To put it in perspective, fifty years before the F-4 people were still using biplanes and the synchronized machine gun was the latest killer technology.
Things have changed. There's no reason to include a gun any more - it's a waste of space and weight.
There is no need for knives in modern combat either, so why do we have bayonets? Because sometimes, and very often in war, things go FUBAR and you need backup weapons better suited for close combat.
It does - and technically the aircraft should be designated FA or FB, for Fighter/Attacker or Fighter/Bomber, such as the F/A-18 Hornet, or the FB-111 (an F-111 variant with longer range intended to serve as a strategic bomber). Generally though "B" has referred more to the strategic bombing role, whereas "A" has referred to the tactical ground attack role (a la the A-10, etc). It's not universal though, and some multirole aircraft like the F-15 or F-16 are still referred to as such without a change of designation.
And speaking of the F-111, this is what happened with the last attempt at a "jack of all trades" aircraft. It was the Tactical Fighter X program, intended to fill the needs of both the Air Force and Navy. It led to the Navy backing out and canceling their part of the project altogether, while the Air Force wound up with the F-111, a "Fighter" in name only that was basically ever only used as a bomber, because it could only defend itself with missiles, and wasn't capable of dogfighting.
Meanwhile, the Navy, having decided that dogfighting was important after all due to the lessons from Vietnam, went back to the drawing board, free from having to incorporate the Air Force requirements, and came up with the F-14.