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."

Comments

And all they wanted was a faster horse

[CxDoo]

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.

Re:And all they wanted was a faster horse

[0123456]

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.

Re:And all they wanted was a faster horse

[tsotha]

That may be, but this is specifically a fighter plane. A plane designed to dogfight. That is the metric upon which it is being judged here.

Not really, no. That would be the F-22. The F-35 is a multirole fighter - if history is any guide its primarily use will be for bombing.

Re:I dern't believe it!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Probably By Design

[muecksteiner]

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.

Unfair T/W ratio and wing loading comparison

[hkultala]

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.

Re:Unfair T/W ratio and wing loading comparison

[hkultala]

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.

Can the enemy actually shoot down the F35?

[duckintheface]

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.

Re:Can the enemy actually shoot down the F35?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, try this one. These new expensive planes can't be built in quantities that will make any difference if the US finds itself in a long war, and especially in one where they may have to actually defend our airspace. I don't really care if you have a small number of super fighters that are actually any good if you have to use them to defend the whole of the continental US plus our imperial corporate assets overseas. I'll just go where they're not. Also, I don't care if I can't shoot them down. Fly them enough in those quantities and maintenance or lack of it will shoot them down for me.

Oh, and building a number of planes and shutting down production lines after that? Stupid. Once the enemy figures out their tricks and starts shooting them down (or worse, figures out their tricks and DOESN'T shoot them down--at first) you'll need more. You'll really be wanting good performance fighters at reasonable cost then too...

On the other hand, these are the planes for the Internet generation. Full of technology to solve some problems and utterly oblivious to other problems along the way. I mean, money, budgets, geographic coverage--that's so old world and stuff, right?

On the other hand, both programs have been absolutely stellar successes at their actual mission: to transfer huge amounts of money from the American people to large defense contractor corporations.

Re:Can the enemy actually shoot down the F35?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you realize that the USAF intentionally equips its stealth aircraft with devices that will make them visible to radar when they perform in airshows and participate in international war games, right? This is not only done for safety reasons, but also to make sure that foreign nations can't get a look at the true radar signature of the aircraft.

That's not to say that American stealth aircraft can't be tracked by radar, because they can. But normally they're not tracked well enough for a weapons release quality lock, or they don't detect them until they're close enough to be killed first.

Re:To be fair

[hairyfeet]

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.

Stupid story stays stupid

[Plumpaquatsch]

US air doctrine for quite some time has been to avoid dog fights - period. First shoot down the dangerous enemies with long range AAM, then the rest with short range AAM before they get a single shot at you. Heck, already between the mentioned 4th generation fighters, the US planes always lost against other planes, Russian or European, in dog fights - this is nothing new for the F-35.

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.”

Re:I dern't believe it!

[arglebargle_xiv]

WOW! Such savings! - Much cheaper!

So cheaper! Much savings!
(FTFY).