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."

Comments

Fighter pilot translation

[Anonymous Coward]

The original article did not really say the F-35 can't dogfight, it stated that it suffered from energy deficit compared to the F-16. This article points out that it also benefits from less restricted angle of attack than the F-16. These are not inconsistent observations. I've fought the F-16 many times, and flew it once. The F-16 has significant AOA limits (limited by the FBW system). What does that mean? It means that the F-16 can carve a great turn and has a sweet 9G initial pull, but if you can live past the first couple turns the Viper is going to be AOA limited and you can pretty much have your way with it. I flew Navy jets (F-14/18) which have no AOA limit. Even with an energy deficit, the ability to "point the nose" has significant advantages, particularly today with high off-boresight weapons like AIM-9X. That being said, in 2016 I would expect to have a jet that has both AOA and thrust/weight advantages over a jet from the mid 70's. This sets up a classic rate vs radius fight. The F-16 has a rate advantage, the F-35 has a radius advantage.

For a (somewhat inaccurate) automotive analogy, the F-16 has more HP and torque, but suffers from understeer. If you enter a turn at the right speed you are fine, but enter too fast and no matter how much you turn the wheel you don't get any more turn out of the car. The F-35 allows oversteer. You can turn harder and the rear will start to swing around. You may loose 30MPH in the turn, but you will turn.

Re:Against an aircraft that first flew in 1974...

[Solandri]

The F-16, by virtue of its light weight (the F-35 weighs 1.8x more, F-22 weighs than 2.3x more), is one of the nimblest dogfighters out there. Its thrust to weight ratio is substantially better than the F-35's. You think a 40-year fighter jet is still in service worldwide just because it's cheap to maintain?

I agree that the F-35 is a boondoggle. They tried to make a single airframe do too many different things. But if its dogfighting capability compares favorably to an F-16, I'd have to take back some of my past criticisms. This report contradicts earlier tests last year which showed the F-35 losing badly to the F-16. Is the pilot just BSing, or have they really improved its performance that much in less than a year?

Pinch of salt

[Hognoxious]

If it can't dogfight, would they say so?

If it can dogfight, would they say so?

I'm rather surprised that anyone - especially ones who should know better - is saying anything.

BRB, door.

Re:One says it can, One says it can't

[LostMyBeaver]

I'm with mbkennel, there are many many many drones which are constantly improving for specifically attacking airplanes.

Making a small drone kamakazi is a far better idea than making a device which deploys weapons. Once the weapon leaves the deployment device (the jet fighter for example) it is extremely limited in its abilities to aim and eventually runs out of fuel etc... Creating one based on an airplane design which can be piloted either autonomously or remotely to chase a plane, smash into it and eliminate it is far more optimal. The cost itself is extremely low as well compared to multiple missiles and bullets deployed by a jet. It's more efficient as well.

So, this leads us to the follow up.

1) We believe no one is working on this tech. We don't actually know.
2) Why are we spending a trillion dollars on planes which require pilots and life support systems and all kinds of things like this when we should be focused on a making a factory which can autonomously produce large numbers of drones on demand extremely rapidly. Then instead of pissing away huge amounts of resources cluelessly, we can simply "print on demand" what we need and exploit the disposable nature of new tech.
3) Where is the value in piloted planes in 2016? Can you honestly say that a jet fighter can be superior to smaller, faster, more agile devices without the needs of transporting or risking humans?

The only answer I have is that most economies in the world depend on government sponsored jobs. Wasting tax payers money on worthless crap like this feeds larges amounts of money into the economy to produce jobs everywhere from useless sales people at DoE contractors down to the girl at the drive through window asking "Would you like fries with that?" three towns over where the floor cleaner lives. It's basically social welfare and/or something leaning towards basic income without saying socialism.

Governments of western nations generally are not allowed to build their own companies to compete with the free market. As such the only way to make government created jobs is to build stuff we don't really need. Sometimes, the only option is to just give money wastefully to some asshole sales guy who will jump off immediately with a golden parachute to avoid job losses.

I would like to see us be a little less stupid with the money than wasting it on putting pilots onto jet fighters and then having to publish articles about "Yeh... in the end, the F-35 is a good plane... the F-16 is a good plane too... I think I could get used to it... it seems like it was really really worth spending a trillion dollars to make another plane which isn't really clearly superior or really needed."

Can anyone actually make a clear statement like "The existence of the F-35 was worth it and the militaries which have it are now clearly better off than they were because of...."

Re:One says it can, One says it can't

[peragrin]

The problem is a stand away from battle and launch missiles makes a poor CAS plane and makes a poor cheap air to air combat vehicle

The f-22 is supposed to breach an enemy's defenses that is when bvr attacks are most likely to occur. The f-22 take out SAMs and initial air craft. The f-35 is cheap and in large numbers to follow behind and clean up while slower planes provide air cover for ground forces.

Saying the f-35 is for bvr takes away the purpose of the f-22

Re:One says it can, One says it can't

[Anonymous Coward]

The f-35 is cheap and in large numbers to follow...
At 100 million per aircraft I would hate to see your definition of expensive!

The F-35 program is clearly messed up and to expensive. However it's not meant to be "cheap" overall. The point is "cheap marginal cost". In other words, the next F-35 you order extra, on top of the ones you already ordered, should be much cheaper than ordering an extra F-22. They invested lots in making expensive production techniques to reduce the cost of mass producing the planes. The current estimate for "cost per hour" is $32000, which is much cheaper than the $44000 estimate for the F-22. That's the average over the lifetime though, so the next additional hour you want to add would be cheaper than that. That's really important if you get into a big long war where you need to keep producing more and more aircraft to replace ones being shot down.

Of course this is all in comparison to other US aircraft. The shocking thing is that much more effective aircraft like the Eurofighter come in around $18000 per hour or the even the Grippen, which has limitations such as range, but due to it's lower visibility tends to beat the F-22 in air to air combat comes in below $5000 per hour. Cheap is relative.

Re:One says it can, One says it can't

[Anonymous Coward]

And with stealth aircraft that has only gotten worse, not better, as you now cannot turn on your own radar, for fear of being the first to give up your position. Which means that your own stealth leaves you relatively speaking more blind than before. Before you could light up your enemy, since they were already lighting you up. Now, not so much.

Is this as much a problem nowadays? I can't imagine a realistic scenario in which our combat aircraft are going to be without AWACS support in any sort of conflict in the foreseeable future. Any modern allied aircraft should be able to see whatever the allied sensor grid can see. Granted, there are many "lukewarm" conflicts in which you'll need to visually identify first, but why would we send piloted aircraft to do this these days? That's precisely what we should be using disposable drones for.

I'm not saying dogfighting and close-range combat aren't important, but you'd certainly want to look at recent history and determine probable engagement distances. I have no idea what it actually is (a quick Google search didn't turn up anything - that information may be classified). But I have to imagine - or at least I'd hope - that such data would drive future development. Although... given this boondoggle, maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

That's exactly what the DoD thought when designing the F-4. They simply couldn't think of a scenario where dog fighting would be important anymore becuase radar and radios would identify hostiles and missiles would destroy them before they got into range. Therefore the first models of the F-4 Phantom had no guns.

Low and behold, during it's first major combat operation, the F-4 pilots still couldn't identify targets and had to close to visual range. Without guns, they were at a disadvantage to North Vietnamese MIG-15s and MIG 17s, as they were always having to go for the missile lock.

Just because you can't imagine a scenario where that will ever happen again doesn't mean it won't happen. Technology does not solve all problems.

Re:One says it can, One says it can't

[dywolf]

and technology hasn't progressed in the ensuing 50 years?

hint:
IFF didn't exist back then.
neither did AWACS.
both are a result of that lesson.

and the biggest reason the F4s came to a dogfight was they ran out of missiles. the number of enemy aircraft likely to be faced was simply underestimated, leaving them vulnerable once their load was depleted. and no they were not at a disadvantage: missile lock can be done far far longer away than a gun shot can. the idea of taking them out at range with missiles worked.

the problem was once the missiles were gone., and their were still bad guys left.

its just that our doctrine wasn't exactly secret, so the obvious counter of sending up more aircraft than we were loaded for easily presented itself, which forced us to spend more effort in establishing air superiority than we had planned for. but we did establish almost unrestricted air superiority.

let me be clear: there was no disadvantage from the F4 to the MiGs until the missiles were gone, and even then only if the remaining MiGs closed the distance, which didn't happen very often. the most frequent scenario where an empty F4 encountered another hostile was when they were already on the way home.