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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."
Why is dogfight a parameter in assessing 5th generation plane?
It's like saying my car sucks because I can't use a crank to start the engine like the old cars could.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
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.
Actually they do. It was called the F-22. It was killed in favor of the (supposedly cheaper and as effective) F-35.
Of course the problem with both jets is that they're way too expensive compared to earlier jets the US already has. Plus the F-22 only works in clear, cloudless skies (rain ablates the stealth paint) and only if you never cross the International Date Line.
So while there was a 5th generation jet that could take on 4th generation jets, it was killed due to be an overpriced boondoggle. Its replacement is a new overpriced boondoggle that doesn't even manage to fill the role it was supposed to.
My personal favorite F-35 issue is that the F-35B model can't fly in areas where it might be struck by lightning, because that could cause the fuel tanks to explode.
I'm not sure the Joint Strike Fighter is designed for dog fights in the first place. I think they're conceived to engage enemy aircraft beyond visible range and function more as a networked fighter platform. In a lecture on flying the F-35, David Berke made the point that to be tactically successful in an F-35 he had to change his approach to combat flying versus his previous experience flying Hornets. He described the learning curve as: 1 month loving it because it was new, followed by 6 months hating it because he felt like he didn't know what he was doing anymore, followed by another 6 months during which he got the hang of the new approach.
There's also talk that the F-35 could be getting a new engine in the 2020s which will improve its performance.
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.
So they did their thrust/weight and wing loading comparison by loading all jets with 50% of internal fuel.
This comparison favours planes with small internal fuel tanks.
F-35 has huge internal fuel tanks, it can fly much longer with internal fuel than most other jet fighters (which need external fuel tanks, which are NOT calculated in these numbers) to fly as far.
Load all jets with amount of fuel that makes them fly about equally far and the numbers switch considerably, on favour of F-35.
The F-22 wasn't "killed". They just decided not to make as many as they originally intended. That happens with every big ticket military program - they always pad the numbers so they can divide out the development costs over more units to make it look cheaper than it really is.
The F35 is a merely a demonstration of the fallacy that combining everything into a single platform or department reduces costs or makes things more efficient.
Often things work better broken up with different things specializing in different things.
A tank, that is also an artillery piece, that is also a troop carrier, that is also a scout, that is also... its going to be shitty at everything and very expensive.
What killed the F35 was the inclusion of two very difficult features.
Stealth and VTOL. both of these things make a plane slower, less maneuverable in dog fights, and able to carry less weaponry.
The F35 should have been about five or six different airplanes.
First, the value of the stealth appears to be debatable. If the F15 eagle can see the F35 and engage it then where is the stealth? The need for that feature in a work horse is debatable in and of itself.
Second, the only people that care about VTOL are the marines and the british navy.
So those are two separate planes. Have a stealth plane for stealth stuff. Have a VTOL workhorse for the marines and the brits. I think Boeing was pitching one as a replacement to the harrier.
We go on from there. But the notion that you save money by having one plane is false. Look at the old Vietnam era planes. They are relatively cheap to maintain, cheap to replace if we want to do that, still very effective, and each one only suffers attrition when it is employed in what it does best. Which means the plane suffers LESS attrition than a generalized plane because a specialized plane is designed to take certain threats. A warthog is going to take more punishment than an F35 before being dropped by ground fire.
So yeah... split the plane up. Realize what we need version of... because a lot of our old hardware is actually fine. And then do the thing we need a new version of.
The big thing of US military doctrine is getting air superiority. We get that, its game over. Our old heavy ground support planes can come in and just pound the shit out of the ground targets with impunity. And while that's happening our armor rolls in if required... not confronting enemy armor, but largely disorganized ground troops.
The focus should be on getting air superiority. That's where you need the high tech hardware. After that... the enemy is meat.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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
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.
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.
WOW! Such savings! - Much cheaper!
So cheaper! Much savings!
(FTFY).
F-35 is not meant to be a mission-specific airplane. It's meant to do many different things, and do each one of them very poorly in the name of saving cost.
Oh wait... it doesn't save cost either. In fact it is orders of magnitude more expensive than 4th gen fighters. But, look at the bright said, at least it's an economic boon for certain well-connected congressional districts.
And that's the point that's being missed in this discussion, the fact that the US hasn't really gone up against anyone in head-to-head air combat since the Vietnam War
You mean except for the first Gulf War? While it was a huge mismatch the Iraqi air force had plenty of Mig-29, Mig-25, Mig-23 and Mirage F1 fighters which were reasonably modern at the time of the conflict. 36 Iraqi aircraft were shot down in aerial combat. That counts as going head to head even if the outcome was decidedly lopsided.
Honestly there are only a handful of countries that really could go head to head with US airpower and have a prayer of not getting massacred and even then it would really only be over their home country or close to it. The US has more planes, (generally) better planes and pilots as well trained as any in the world PLUS better infrastructure like AWACS and refueling, not to mention exactly half the worlds supply of aircraft carriers.