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It Turns Out the F-35 Can Dogfight (defensenews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Writing for Defense News, Lara Seligman reports, "For the first time since a controversial report detailing how the F-35 performs in a dogfight emerged last summer, an F-35 pilot gave an in-depth analysis of his experience flying the jet in a close-range battle scenario. Norwegian Air Force Maj. Morten 'Dolby' Hanche, the first Norwegian to fly the F-35, analyzed the jet's performance in a dogfight in a March 1 blog post published on Norway's Ministry of Defense website. Although Hanche never mentions the 2015 report, 'F-35A High Angle of Attack Operational Maneuvers' revealed last summer by blogger David Axe on WarisBoring.com, he counters many of the anonymous author's claims."
If you read the article he mentions being capable of being marginally more offensive than he could be in an F-16. While this isn't to be dismissed as meaning 'nothing.' F-35 defenders should be careful to trumpeting the fact that a pilot finds the F-35 is not, in fact, worse than a 40+ year old airframe design.
The problem with the F-35's dogfighting is that it's performance is not remotely comparable to aircraft being sold abroad by the Russian aviation community. Yes, it has capabilities that many aircraft do not, and some capabilities that have not even been fully enabled as well; however, ALL of these abilities are unrelated to the basic physical performance of the aircraft and the basic performance of the aircraft is the area of primary concern as a platform for enabling these technologies.
Are people under the impression that the Su-37 can't get a 'look-thru' helmet cueing system? That, unlike fundamental airframe design, software capabilities cannot rapidly advance post construction of the aircraft?
I don't think the F-35 is useless, but it sure is an INCREDIBLY expensively mediocre aircraft intended to carry excellent (someday) software and sensors.
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The first report didn't say 'it can't dogfight'. They identified deficiencies in the flight control system which was set up for a higher margin of safety during flight testing. They also identified a not-so-surprising energy deficiency against an F-16.
The Norwegian pilot flew with the combat tuned FCS, and they effectively pointed out the advantages of high AoA control.
Both reports taken together are important. The F-35 can dogfight, but like any fighter, it has strengths and weaknesses.
The whole debate seems to me to be missing the point. The main driving design principles of the F-35 were to have it to detect and destroy from longer distances while reducing the distance in which it can be detected and destroyed. No, you can't just discount dogfighting and everything else, but the whole point is to avoid dogfights in the first place by taking down the opponent from long before they'd have a chance to do the same to you. It's particularly designed to be effective at taking out antiaircraft systems.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
The F-35 can dogfight, but like any fighter, it has strengths and weaknesses.
Whether or not it can dogfight against other manned fighters is irrelevant, since that scenario is unlikely. A more important questions is if it can dogfight against drones with half the turning radius, when outnumbered 5 to 1.
The era of piloted aircraft is rapidly closing. I fear that we are preparing for a gunfight by spending a trillion dollars on a really nice knife.
You're overestimating drone capability as well as mis-stating and mis-understanding the purpose of drones.
We should be designing aircraft to meet future threats, not current threats.
no one's working on any type of dedicated air to air drone.
No one in America is working on it, because it would be a threat to the MIC. The USAF is run by pilots, and for pilots, and nearly all drone innovation has come from outside their ranks. Defense contractors dread the far lower costs of drones. They prefer lucrative boondoggles like the F-35. Politicians don't want to stand up to the MIC, because they will be subjected to withering attack ads claiming they are "weak on defence".
It is more likely that China and Russia are working on air-to-air capability, since they have more to gain from challenging American hegemony, and, although they are corrupt, their corruption doesn't involve the same military-political-lobbyist links that America has, and they don't have super-PACs supporting the status quo.
and his fan boys. Boyd of OODA loop fame was posited as a fighter expert like small quick simple planes as fighters for dogfighting which has influenced fighter design for awhile. Here's something I have in common with him though, neither one of us has ever shot down another plane in combat even once.(I love mentioning that.) Anyway the problem with all of this is they forget one of the first fighter experts, Oswald Boelcke, of Dicta Boelcke who actually managed to shoot down other planes and influenced the Red Baron. (Both got killed in WWI so have to mention that.) His opinion was pretty much dogfighting was for suckers and the best thing was to shoot down the other bastard before he knew what the hell hit him, either from above, the back, from the sun, or all of the above. Or as I like to say it "Shoot him in the fucking back!"
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.