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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.
Dunno but it was an interesting read; the contrast between the F-16 and the F-35 greatly reminded me of the the 'MIG-21 vs F-4 Phantom' situation...
What on earth does one have to do get the nickname 'Dolby'? Reduce noise? Perhaps he only got 5.1 out of 10 in his last assessment...
It may have something to do with the fact that when a missile is launched backwards from a fast moving aircraft, it'll be flying backwards for quite a bit.
The question was never if the F-35 can dogfight. The question was: can it dogfight better than other, cheaper options? And the answer to that remains a resounding "no!"
In related news, recent findings show that a Basset Hound can dogfight. Not very effectively, and the dog seldom wins the fight. But evidence has been uncovered of basset hounds fighting other dogs.
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 part about the cockpit view being better in the F-16 was interesting. There are probably good reasons for the current cockpit configuration in the F-35, but it seems like some sort of panoramic rear view camera should be possible, perhaps hooked into that fancy "third generation" helmet that he mentions? Having to lean forward a bit to look around the seat when looking back at the aircraft's six sounds like a disadvantage. What if high g-forces make that difficult in some situations?
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.
The Russians had this back in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
The discussions on the F35 often center around its capabilities as a fighter. I think it is important to remember that neither the Navy nor the Marine core want a plane that is primarily a fighter. Most previous jets in service for the Navy and Marine's have been designed as fighters for the Air Force and have been repurposed. The Air Force already has a air-superioirty fighter in the F22. With the F35 the Air Force for the first time has had to make some concessions and the result the Navy and Marine's are getting a jet that is vastly more capable for their needs than the repurposed fighters they have had in the past
Sure there are drones that can do all that: they're called air to air missiles, in particular the Russian K-77M missile.
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.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The American's and the British had it in WWII on the bombers. Before that, I'm sure someone can find an example of a planes from the 20's, and maybe even from WWI that had an omni-directional gun turret.
A big issue in the early fighters was that they couldn't figure out how to fire forward. The ammunition was unreliable, and if you tried to fire through the propeller blades, it would shoot off the propellers. In the early years, this was solved by adding "wedges" to the props such that if the ammo hit the prop, it wouldn't destroy the propeller.
The early aircraft would have also investigated alternative designs, including omni-directional gun turrets, and sending a guy up in the air with a rifle or sub-machine gun.
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.
> always trying to get behind the enemy aircraft
Sort of, but not exactly. Imagine a giant sphere with the opponent in the circle . If you're anywhere in the rear half of the sphere, you have positional advantage . If you're in the front half of the sphere, the other guy does. (Ignoring gravity and energy, for sake of simplicity) . Of course it's not just one sphere 3,000 feet in diameter, but an infinite number of spheres of various sizes. So basically half the battle space is "behind" and half the battle space is "in front", not just the line DIRECTLY behind.
If you're 10 degrees left of directly behind and 20 degrees above, you can fire on him. With a front cannon, you point your aircraft in his direction and fire. With a rear-facing cannon, you'd need to point your aircraft such that the enemy is DIRECTLY behind you in order in aim the cannon at him. That's exactly where you don't want him! You'd never maneuver to try to put him directly behind you when he's firing from anywhere in the "behind" half of the air space.
One may think "a rear cannon and a front cannon both have to be aimed, so they're the same". There are two differences. An obvious difference is that maneuvering the aircraft to aim forward is easier than maneuvering to aim backward for the same reasons that driving forward is easier than driving backward.
Just as important, the pilots aren't only maneuvering for aim, changing which direction the aircraft points. The aircraft are also moving through the sky. You're trying to "lead" the opponent with your aim, aiming where he WILL be later, when the butllets get there. In other words, you're aiming in front of your opponent. With both aircraft moving in roughly the same direction, with turning with roughly the same arc, shooting in front of you will naturally tend to shoot in front of the other guy . Shooting behind you will tend to shoot behind him , where he's already been rather than where he's about to be.
Seeker missiles don't have to be aimed as precisely as cannons, but they should be shot in the right general direction , so the same ideas apply. It's just less crucial.
nuff said
Ps- if there are any fighter pilots in here, or people good at fighter sim games, yes I know that I greatly oversimplified and left out 90% of the relevant factors. I did so in order to focus on one or two relevant factors without distractions.
Honestly, is the the right news groups for topics like the one in this thread? It doesn't contribute anything to anything and frankly if the people here are still stereotyping and actually establishing their universal beliefs based on these stereotypes, said people are really not contributing anything valuable to human kind.
Let's make this simple. The world has a lot of people. There are a lot of religions, races and nationalities... and if I understand an article I read a few years back, there are actually more than two naturally occurring genders, 17 if I recall the number correctly.
In every race and gender and nationality etc... there are every type of people. In my experience there is nothing within nature that decides whether a person is more or less of anything due to race, gender, etc...
Now, there are idiots, assholes, morons, schmucks, criminals, criminally stupid, evil, etc... in every category which seems to be proven by some of the contributors of this thread. It appears that society contributes greatly to deciding what kind a person one will be. I have learned that at least within America, there is a far higher likelihood that members of every genetic category will voluntarily choose to be the crap left over at the bottom of the barrel. On the other hand, like every other country on earth, America has an group of people which achieve excellence as well.
If you're the type of person who seems to think that race, gender, etc... define us and believe that the actions of the few define the many, then you actually do fit into a category yourself which you would truly find to be far worse than the categories you're placing others in. The good news is, most of these people usually end up removed from society in one way or another. The bad news is, it seems that at least some of them run for president.
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...."
Missiles ARE a type of drone.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The solution to firing forwards was the interruptor gear, initially, then later sticking the guns out on the wings. Also some aircraft then were in the pusher configuration. Some such as the DH2 did have a gun with a mount which allowed pointing the gun, but the pilots found that fixing the gun forwards was better.
I didn't know about the crazy deflector wedges until today!
The turret concept was referred to as a turret fighter. They had a brief period of polularity pre and early WWII with fighters such as the Paul-Boulton defiant, but in practice they turned out to be not all that great. They could of course fire backwards, but they couldn't fire forwards without wrecking the aerodynamics. They fared better as night fighters, where dogfighting was much different than as dogfighters.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
Yes, that has been the driving design since the sixties. It has never come to pass. Problem has always been, and will probably continue to be, identification of far away targets (BWR). IFF "doesn't work", i.e. there are too many situations where your own forces won't have IFF, or it will be switched off. There are also all the third parties that don't have IFF (civilian aircraft). This has always lead to an ROE where you'll first have to acquire visually to confirm your target. In almost all instances where fast jets have operated.
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. And without radar, no BWR shot. (Advanced IR has gotten much more important, but isn't generally good enough to shoot with.)
So, sensors and technology do get better, whether they'll finally be good enough to actually be safe to use, that's still very much up for debate. My money is on "no, not really", dogfighting is still going to be the order of the day, as it always has been.
Stefan Axelsson
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!
How does destroying targets while being safe make you a poor combat vehicle? The primary goal of a combatant is "destroy enemy targets and not be destroyed yourself".
F-22 is and will remain a great long-range air superiority fighter. It can carry more anti-aircraft missiles and get into battle faster. But F-35 can carry larger ground-attack weaponry without ruining its (superb) radar cross section and can be operated from a smaller basing footprint. There's a role for both of them.
Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
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.
Who cares what the lumps of meat think, in AI we trust. ;-)
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.
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.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
2) You will never be able to manufacture while moving at the same efficiency as you can in a large factory with established infrastructure lines. In fact if you are trying to manufacture while moving you would have been better off dedicating the spare and weight capacity to just carrying the finished product. You are infinitely better off with a huge stock pile and an efficient damage resistant logistics system
3) A piloted plane does not have the communication system point of failure that a remote controlled drone has. If all your aircraft can be either taken offline or severely degraded through targeting communication facilities they will be. For example, if a war happens between major powers and one side is using manned craft and one is using remote controlled craft how long before the long range cruise missiles hit every sat dish and tower they can find and how long before the anti sat missiles take out that communication network? Once that happens how will your drones perform against the manned craft?
Also I think you need to think about the F35 or any other plane in a different way. They are not combat vehicles, they are weapon platforms that operate in combat environments. Their role is to bring weapons into range of a target, & deliver those weapons. At one end of the demand spectrum something like the B52 is brilliant because it can carry a truly stupid amount of weapons. But you may as well be flying a giant neon sign saying shoot here. At the other end of the spectrum is the F22. It can get in get close and get out. What it can't do is carry lots and lots of weapons.
So "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.... low radar signature, interoperability with allies, large install base reducing part cost, high commonality between variants, relatively cheap even at early production levels (1/3rd cost of f22)
Air to air is useless. A missile can out maneuver any plane. The fact is 99 % of all air attacks today already have complete air superiority.
They are different in the fact that most missiles are not configurable platforms.
nosig today
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.
almost as ignorant as your "reagan governed like a liberal" comment.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
There was just (March 6) a good documentary on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Background Briefing radio show about where the JSF was right plane for Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/radionat...
Quite the interesting show and it seems like there are lots of problems still with the plane. Like how it still doesn't like the heat so that the weapons bay doors have to be opened every ten minutes when it's hot out. On the ground or in flight! The problem with the weight of the helmet still hasn't been taken care of so pilots can still be killed. The training simulators that pilots have been using haven't actually been verified to be accurate.
The deflectors were done by some witty Brit and then he crashed - and lived, by the way. I think he was shot down. The Germans found out it when they examined his downed craft and realized it was brilliant but they wanted better. Enter Focker (spelling) who was a Dutchman and working for the Germans at the time. He figured out the interrupter gear and that lead to "Bloody April" as I recall.
I'm lazy and just got back a little while ago so, to the others suggesting they fire missiles backwards, that's do-able and whatnot but doesn't seem to work that well in reality. They did so with mounted rifles in WWII (and WWI) but those were projectiles fired with force and not projectiles that carry their own propellant. As I recall, getting a missile to reliably ignite and stay lit, while flying backwards at Mach 1 or higher, is not an easy task. It turns out, it's more complicated than GI Joe has led some folks to believe.
I like WWI documentaries too - not just WWII and science/physics. I am not a historian. In fact, I don't even intent to know the above information. It just kind of happened. Eventually, you see, hear, or read it enough times and it sticks with you.
The Century of Warfare
The World at War
WWII The Complete History
Those are good series. I believe YouTube has all of 'em and I want to say all of them were BBC.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Marine corps wanted a plane for infantry support. A new A-10.
So, the A-35 can be a "fighter" as they say, but can it really do the work A-10 is doing?
In the "balloon goes up" exercises/scenarios that we use to train our forces in the Pacific, the Air Tasking Orders almost never feature A-10s in support of the Marine MAGTF. Our fixed-wing close air support is almost always AV-8Bs or F/A-18C/Ds, with the occasional Navy Super Hornet. We process dozens of immediate Joint Tactical Air Requests daily during the major phases of ground combat (not to mention any pre-planned targets), and we do it without ever having access to sections of A-10s. Part of the reason we are able to do this is because our aviators are heavily trained for CAS, and everyone is taught on the same tactics/techniques/procedures for smooth integration of fires. USAF aviators are primarily A2A guys and they don't speak the same language as the Army troops they are supposed to support.
That said, the F-35 can't carry much internal ordnance, and currently can't fit the *Small Diameter* Bomb in its weapon bays. For the money that we are spending, I don't think we are getting a good value at all. I think the USAF and USN should have shared a multirole design, basically a stealthy F-18. The Corps should have procured its own VTOL jet. After reading on WarIsBoring how the VTOL jet concept has never Worked As Designed (launching from austere airfields after the Navy flattops depart), I'm honestly wondering if we should adopt a compound helicopter and eliminate the Corps' fixed-wing CAS platforms entirely. A Compound Heli would have the speed and range necessary to escort Ospreys (AH-1s can't keep up), but we can operate them from LHAs/LHDs/LPDs easily, and carry more birds too.
Can it give actual close air support to troops on ground? Loiter over enemy positions, firing armor piercing ammo to tanks and APC-s?
Why do so many people on the Internet associate CAS with slow-turning gun runs? Must be the pro-A-10 PR that has burned this image in people's minds. Close = "must coordinate with the ground commander to avoid killing friendlies". That's it. Some people will argue that dropping bombs from fast jets, accurately, isn't always an option. This is largely because our air-ground communications assets/methods are woefully archaic. It's why DARPA, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps are pushing such rapid progress on PCAS: http://www.darpa.mil/program/p...
What good the 4 internally carried missiles are doing in that situation?
You never know when you might encounter "leakers", enemy aircraft that have slipped past the Combat Air Patrol. ALL fighters carry some kind of ordnance for emergency self-defense.
Honestly, is "the the" right news groups for a screed on the topic which you have just presented?
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
You're mixing up two different roles. In air combat situations it's BVR. For ground attack it's not.
Which is why you have AWACS, E-2C, ground radars, and ship radars. Fighters are just one piece of an air combat system.
Yep, I'm well aware of that history. There's a reason all modern fighter craft still carry guns, although apparently the F-35 will be able to only carry a fairly minimal amount of ammo, which some have taken issue with. But that's why I suggested that it's important to look at the actual data rather than making assumptions about what sort of engagements pilots are likely to encounter. To be honest, I have no idea what that data is, so I'm not trying to say one way or another. But it seems logical that you wouldn't want to sacrifice too many of your long or short range missiles for your guns if that's what you're using 99% of the time (hypothetically speaking) - it's still considered a weapon of last resort. A soldier keeps a knife or a pistol on him, but obviously reaches for his combat rifle first.
And just because technology doesn't solve all problems doesn't mean technology can't easily solve some problems. Communication of complex information, including surveillance, in real-time happens to be something that modern technology is pretty darn good at.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone on slashdot, really. "Stealth" technology has nothing in common with Star Trek like cloaking, it simply is a matter of reducing the signature. With greater computer power available, it was only a question of time until it became obsolete.
Of course, all of that is without even talking about how unreliable and fragile the stealth tech really is (the coating must be redone after each sortie and is vulnerable to rain, among other problems)...
Nope, I wouldn't call it "dangerous". Rather "realistic". What Stillion is saying are the same things that were said in the sixties... They weren't true then, and they probably aren't now either. So there's nothing new there. Development is surprisingly slow. And that you can kill an unaware and (essentially) non-manoeuvring target with a BWR missile is actually an improvement. The earliest missiles couldn't even do that. (Pk with any sort of radar guided missile is surprisingly low in actual combat). Against a manoeuvring and aware target a long range kill is a very difficult thing to achieve. Just turn 90 deg to the missile to make it lead you that much more (it has to) and then make an out of plane manoeuvre when it's too late for the missile (at the end of its flight it has too much speed and no fuel left for hard manoeuvring). Or you can turn tail and run away from it. That works well at long ranges as well.
Which incidentally illustrates your point nicely. There have of course been lots of tactical adaption to the new battlefield in the fact of long range missiles. Due to physics (air launched missiles are limited in size and weight, in order to have long reach they have to burn their fuel early and then cost on down from up high, etc. etc.) many of these tactics are difficult to counter by the missile developer. Hence long range missiles aren't used for kills against targets that can turn and pull Gs, they're often deployed as "pushers", forcing the enemy to manoeuvre into a disadvantageous position. Until you turn the missile into a "drone" the same things are probably going to be stay or less true.
But all this depends on there being all out total war, where you can deploy your weapons without restrictions. That's only happened a small number of times since the advent of the jet aircraft. The overwhelming majority of engagements have happened under much more restrictive ROEs, and a plane that can't operate under such, realistically isn't much use. Or rather, is at best a strategic deterrent, not very useful operationally against an enemy that can shoot back. The last two wars you've been in, that wasn't really true however, hence the explosion of drones...
Stefan Axelsson
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.
That depends. With the sort of conflict you've been in the last couple of times, you didn't even need AWACS as the enemy couldn't shoot back. Hence drones...
Against an enemy that can shoot back AWACS is more useful, but not a panacea. While AWACS can warn you of far away aircraft, it isn't that much better at identifying them, and they don't help you shoot them. You have to use your own radar for that. And when you do, you've given up your own stealth. Opening yourself up for a return shot.
Against a stealth capable opponent, the argument that "stealth aircraft can get in the sneak attack" can be turned against the AWACS. If that's true, then the AWACS aircraft (being such a valuable asset) has to be protected at all cost, this means lots of escort and a very defensive posture. Both of which means that the effectiveness of AWACS is diminished. (It's interesting to note that NATO planners expected AWACS to survive for one, max, two, days if the balloon ever went up. Not very survivable. Sure, AWACS is better at detecting stealth aircraft than other aircraft are. But on the flip side, it can't turn-and-burn to get out of the way of a missile worth a damn either. Having to rely solely on ECM/chaff/flares etc. that historically haven't been 100% either. So its anybody's guess which factor will dominate.
So of course you're onto something fundamentally true. "What do you need the aircraft for?". Scenarios can be very different. But fundamentally, if you have a highly capable "top of the line" aircraft, expecting to meet adversaries that are likewise equipped, then don't hope for many long range kills. There are much too many things conspiring against that happening. The need for identification (a must in anything short of an all out, no holds barred, total war scenario, one we haven't had that often, thank God) is only one such thing.
Stefan Axelsson
Or the friends and family of the passengers of Iranian Air 655...
Now granted, and to their credit, the crew of the USS Vincennes did try to make the ID, but failed, with horrible results. If that had been an F-14 instead, the pilot+RIO would have had even worse tools at their disposal to make the ID...
Stefan Axelsson
The "destroy from long distance" strategy, or shooting BVR (Beyond Visual Range) missiles, simply does not work against a capable fighter jet with a well-trained pilot... due to laws of physics: a = v^2 / r.
If a fighter at 0.6 mach pulls a 9g turn, a missile at 3 mach would have to pull 225g to follow the same turn radius. No missile on the planet is able to do that. The long-range AIM-120D AMRAAM can pull about 30g, and the latest top-of-the-line missiles still under development top out at 60g.
BVR missiles against capable adversaries have a real-world Pk (probability of kill) of only about 3-7%.
(source: https://defenseissues.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/usefulness-of-bvr-combat/)
BVR missiles only work if the target is unaware of the incoming missile (misfunctioning radar, poorly trained pilot), or unable to pull a tight turn (a heavy weapons load, low on energy, fuel issues, technical problems...).
This is why dogfighting and raw fighter performance still matters. Stealth and all the gadgets in the world are not going to change the laws of physics.
^ armchair expert with little knowledge of actual combat doctrine and capabilities.
these design capabilities and doctrines are not meant for lukewarm battles, where things such as airliners might be overflying the Ukraine, etc.
they are meant for shooting wars, where the question of who a target belongs to is a binary answer: us or them.
and even an armchair expert should be well aware that the F22 and F35 both are intended to be part of a data grid, where their accompanying AWACS craft, well back from front lines, is providing targeting information and identification, precluding the need to use their own radar until after the initial contact.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
From the original article:
"The 2015 report criticized the F-35’s lack of power and maneuverability compared to the F-16 during high angle of attack exercises. The F-35 “was at a distinct energy disadvantage in a turning fight,” the author wrote, also noting that “pitch rates were too slow to prosecute or deny weapons.”
In contrast, Hanche wrote the F-35 is capable of a significantly higher angle of attack than the F-16, providing the pilot greater authority to point the nose of the airplane wherever he wants."
These two statements are in no way related. The first two issues are about energy loading and pitch rates. The second is about angle of attack. They are in no way related other than grossly. While it is true that high-alpha maneuvers are useful in obtaining snapshots, as a general indication of maneuverability they are not very informative.
That someone writing for DefenseNews isn't aware of, or at least doesn't comment on, this key difference in statements is rather worrying.
Since when is the F-35 "cheap"? And in what "large" numbers? The project has one of the most epic cost overruns of any military project ever (so far $1.3trillion) and it is likely never be procured in the numbers initially envisioned. Save the A10!
> Why do so many people on the Internet associate CAS with slow-turning gun runs?
Because every article on the A-10 puts considerable attention on the gun. Because it's cool, and big, and heavy and BIG IS BETTER!
Which is a bit sad, because it's not a terribly effective weapon on today's battlefield. Against T-54/55's it's certainly credible on the sides and turret roof, but that's about it. It can pen under 60mm from 1000m range, but a T-64 has 45mm in the turret roof and considerably more than than everywhere else, including the sides and rear. Against applique, composite or reactive armor,or against anything newer than the 1970s, it's not particularly useful. If you do need to penetrate anything newer than that, you'll need at least a CRV7 and much more likely a Hellfire or Brimstone. All of those have less dispersion (or zero), higher pen, and weight a whole lot less.
Now of course the GAU is very effective against anything lighter than that, including APC/IFVs, arty, logistics, what have you. But those don't need a GAU to kill, something like a BK27 is just as useful and weights a little over 1/3rd as much, not including the ammo can or feeds. That 180 kg represents four Hellfires, which is a lot more dead tanks than the GAU.
My basic point is that if you lay out all the various targets you might face in CAS and rank them on a line from soft to hard, there is a point somewhere on that line where the GAU stops being effective. And the vast majority of those targets lie on the softer end of the point. Now you could slide that point up or down with different weapons. But to slide it up you have to a LONG WAY before you add even more more target it can hurt. But if you slide it the other way, you might remove only one target while still leaving overall numbers unchanged.
Your suggestion of a drone that could be used to "smash" into enemy aircraft has some issues. Such a drone would be like a missile, except much slower and with much longer range. While a missile will optimally hit a target aircraft, that's not required. Missiles will detonate in close proximity to a target, turning a near miss into a successful kill. Drones could also carry a warhead, but that will impact speed and/or range. If direct impact is the only "weapon" a drone has, that's going to be hard to achieve with something that is not significantly faster than its target, regardless of increased maneuverability. There's a bigger window of time for a pilot to react and more chance that a last second maneuver will generate a miss. The slower speed also makes the drone more vulnerable to counterfire. I'm not saying the idea won't work, but it would take a lot of drones to guarantee success. Clouds of drones have their own problems, the main one being control. A competent enemy would certainly be trying to jam anything controlled remotely, and unless you have a way for a single pilot to control multiple drones you have the problem of coordinating them. Could they be autonomous? Sure, with an increased risk of hitting the wrong target. (Why hello Mr Civilian Airliner! You look kind of like a bomber or military cargo plane. Time to die!) It's not a bad idea, but it's not a simple recipe for success either. Offense and defense constantly adapt, and then it's back to the drawing board. If we're not actively developing this, one factor might be that we think it's too easy to counter.
Smile, it makes people wonder what you're up to.
I'm not sure how relevant that is, since those drones will probably also be in the US arsenal, rather than in the enemy's, at least for the foreseeable future.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
and, ok, yes: the F4 wasn't designed for nimbleness. It was designed for range, speed, and robustness, being a an all weather interceptor design for carrier battle groups that the air force later adopted for both bomb trucking and air-air roles. Not quite the workhorse the Thud was when it came to ground attack, but still fairly adaptable.
In comparison The MiG 17s and 19's were more maneuverable...but slower.
Mig21s, the other major type seen, were about on par in maneuverability, being likewise designed for speed above other concerns.
And those design limitations combined with the Air Force fighter culture having lost its dogfight mindset (ie, it wasn't a big focus of training doctrine) meant if caught our pilots could be in trouble. But again, this was corrected and overcome. Dogfighting became a part of training again, and gun pods were quickly produced that could be attached to the aircraft.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
: The problem in Vietnam, from what I've read, wasn't a lack of missiles. It was a lack of a reliable long-range way of identifying aircraft, which meant that the rules of engagement called for visual identification. (It might also have been a lack of a reliable way of figuring out where friendlies were to be expected, possibly because both Air Force and Navy aircraft operated in the same airspace.) Those RoE meant that the Sparrow long-range missiles were useless, and that, without a gun, the only air-to-air capability was the Sidewinder missiles. Those weren't anywhere near as good as modern heat-seekers, and in particular could only be fired from a position fairly close to directly behind.
If an F-4 was attacking enemy aircraft by surprise (the ideal scenario), the Sidewinders were very effective. In any sort of meeting encounter, a MiG was safe as long as it could keep its tail away from a less maneuverable aircraft, and it could take advantage of its superior maneuverability and the fact that its cannon could fire effectively at considerably more target angles (although shorter range).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There were WWI two-seater aircraft with defensive machine guns that could sweep a large area of sky. Actual turrets were going to be much too heavy for the aircraft of the time, but I believe there were at least some with ring mounts that were pretty close to omni-directional.
Going into WWII, the British had the Boulton Paul Defiant, a fighter whose armament was four machine guns in a turret. Having a manned turret made the thing overly heavy with worse performance than its contemporaries, it had half the armament of a Hurricane or Spitfire, and it was less accurate in general. Bomber turrets were in general not all that accurate; I believe one problem was firing across a high-speed crosswind. The US relied heavily on having tight bomber formations with a whole lot of heavy machine guns in a small volume of sky. The individual guns weren't accurate, but there were a lot of them, and they made a bomber box unhealthy for German fighters. (An ideal bomber destroyer would be heavily armed and armored for a fighter, and hence relatively slow and unmaneuverable and unable to deal with large numbers of long-range US escort fighters.)
Modern missiles can lock on at wider angles from the shooter's front, I believe, and that's a step. Designing air-to-air missiles so that they can effectively fly backwards or with a Mach 1.5 crosswind has turned out to be difficult.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sure, call me an "armchair expert" if you will. (That's not strictly true, but my time in the business is long ago, and I was only ever on the outskirts).
But, that doesn't unfortunately save you from underestimating the complexities of even the "simple" battlefield scenario you're drawing up.
Even in an all out shooting war, with nothing civilian in the air---the only remotely modern situation I can think of is the Falklands---you still cannot escape the IFF problem. You don't know if "those aircraft over there" are a flight of enemies starting their attack on you, or a flight of your people, returning from a job well done, or someone else. They won't be running active IFF over enemy territory, for many good reasons (Google "MiG in the middle" for one explanation why that is not a good idea, but there are others, such as when German night fighters used RAF tail gunner IFF signals to direction find the bombers during WWII).
This is especially true in a more complex situation in an all out shooting war, where you'll have allies, and the enemies allies to contend with as well. There are too many variables, and too many things that can go wrong, for you to start shooting at everything that doesn't squawk today's code. And since there aren't that many codes to go around (due to radar limitations), in a few days the enemy will know all your variations, and will pick up on them really fast. Faster than you can change them. And the faster you change them, the higher the risk that someone will not get the message.
And data links are good and well, but they don't work in a highly contested ECM battlefield, you know, the kind that a technologically advanced enemy can muster. And the more you transmit the easier you are to find. (Our data links are better than yours, i.e. NATO's, and ours don't work nearly as well as you advertise. And yes we have our own mini-"AWACS" in the grid as well.)
So no, its not nearly as easy as you make it out to be. It's like a (missile) air defence officer told me just the other year, after a cooperation with her american counterparts: "So I was very keen to learn how they handled the more complex situations on the modern battlefield that we can only handle by not shooting. And even though they have all this gear we can only dream of, their answer was the same as ours, they don't shoot either!"
So the situation still isn't that different from the Falklands, you sit in the actions information centre of the Cardiff and you see a blip with no IFF that matches the expected flight profile of an Argentinian C130 Hercules. Do you take the shot? The people on board the Cardiff did take the shot. To their regret...
Stefan Axelsson
Seems to me that we the taxpayers have been duped - again. Paying so much money for a (still incomplete, mediocre) fighter so far over budget and past deadlines, that action to curtail things like this need to be in place. Perhaps put a hard limit on cost (with a reasonable buffer for overruns); with a caveat that those companies pay back for failing to deliver. Those companies CEOs should bear the full brunt of the payback, and the saved deep overruns can be used to acquire and pay those companys' employees. CEOs can suffer for their underhanded, unsubstantiated bids. CEOs: if you are so worthy, then why are we paying for this crap?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.