The thinking that the age of guns was over bit us in the ass in Vietnam. Had to go back to guns and reteach dogfighting.

The thinking that the age of guns was over bit us in the ass in Vietnam. Had to go back to guns and reteach dogfighting.

Okay, we all keep talking about how the F-35 is not supposed to dogfight.... but are there equally-impressive technological leaps in missile technology?

How many missiles does the F-35 have?

How many can it fire at one time, or how many targets can it fire missiles at?

Do people still remember that enemy pilots, once lit up with a missile lock, goes into evasive maneuvers?

Better pray that the enemy pilots are crap at defensive moves or that the new missiles have very high pKs, otherwise, BOOM! You got an F-35 in WVR territory.

Now what happens when a missile is shot at the F-35? "Oh, but that's never gonna happen because it's stealthy and besides, if he gets shot at, that means he's screwed up royally anyway"... so basically, the idea is to kill the enemy at arm's lenth otherwise you are dead. Great. How much is an F-35 again?

Oh and as for "multi-role fighter," well, if it can't dogfight, it's not really multi-role now is it? That's like saying the A-10 is designed to deliver ground-pounding punishment and adding two sidewinders to it makes it "multi-role." Hahahahaha!

I don't understand what's the obsession with this one-size-fits-all mentality anyway. Even for T-shirts, sure, it'll look good for a few people but the rest of them would either have it too small or too big. If we can't even have a one-size-fits-all car that can haul like a diesel, have the fuel economy of a hybrid, but have the speed of a sports car, and can do off-road tracks and race in road courses, what makes people think we can have this in an aircraft?

"Oh, but it'll make supplying parts easier." I'm quite sure what however many billions has been spent on an aircraft that isn't even in service yet, that could've been spent on supplying different parts to different aircraft.... with change to spare.

I think it is also wrong to design an aircraft to how people think air battles are fought NOW. "Pah! When was the last time we used guns to engage the enemy?" I'm sure similar sentiments were voiced during the design of the F-4 Phantom.... only for it to be equipped with guns later on. Sure, we could probably send drones up armed with a couple of missiles and controlled by an 18-year old on the ground and be efficient now, but what happens when the enemy ups the ante? Do we really want to be playing catch up?

That'll be like saying "we don't need to practice air-to-air dogfighting skills because when was the last time we had a knife fight?" So what happens if you find yourself in a knife fight and you haven't practiced on your knife fighting skills?

True, but that was then. We are no longer flying F-4D's armed with AIM-7E's and AIM-9D's. Comparing a 1970 AAM to today's AAM's is like comparing a 1970 transistor radio to an iPhone.

Strike Eagles can't go where F-35's can go, basically period, end of story.

My two cents...

1) I am biased as I am a WSO going through the Strike Eagle B-course.

But saying the strike is not much of a dogfighter... That's not correct. Especially with -229s installed.

3) There are a lot of things we in the Strike can do that the F-35 will never do. Period dot. TFR for example.

4) All I will say about the WVR vs BVR fighting is that we train to both in the strike eagle. And we are as capable as the F-15C BVR, if not more so with the added crewmember helping with SA and task management.

5)EW and EA is a huge multiplier and hindrance on all sides. In ways that at least in the Sim world, have never been represented even close to realistically. For examples of what it can do, and BTW these are old techniques from the Vietnam era, check out the SAM sim forum, they have an excellent thread on that.

how do you know where F-35's can go yet, they're not even in service??

Same can be said for an F-16 or an F-35 about the loadout and orndance. And yes Strikes have been configured for CAP before, and used in that role.

The CFT's well for a CAP BVR role, we have more gas than anybody else to play with. We can stay in burner longer, and can stay on station longer, and can run away longer than anybody else might be able to (F-22 notwithstanding)

BVR with the APG-82 AESA, and -229's we are every bit the A/A BVR machine the F-15C is. and more so
And as for the performance advantage with -229's if you take the CFT's off a Strike with -229s it can supercruise, they add that much power to the jet.

Not saying we aren't disadvantaged in a WVR arena, we are, but that does not mean we are incapable, and we might be better at it than most people think

For example, BFM going to the merge, I get tally on the bandit and keep my tally through the merge and hold it the entire time, the pilot focuses on flying his best BFM trusting that I am telling him everything he needs to do to defend the jet, the joke is a perfect WSO would make it so the pilot never looks anywhere but the HUD during a BFM engagement. He is maintaining his airspeed and G perfectly while I call the fight for him.

And as for TFR, F-16s are capable of it, but they don't do it. Too dangerous for them. Too many accidents.

GrayGhost, have you ever flown the F-35, the F-16 or the F-15E? I mean, in real life, not a computer game?

I don't like shooting the messenger, but keep in mind that the article is based on that WarIsBoring "analysis" of the F-35 citing an unclassified document (that it won't share, supposedly) and a unnamed test pilot. Color me skeptical: a F-16 with drop tanks is G-limited to around 5.5G's, far lower than what an F-35A is capable of and the F-35 has a huge thrust advantage as well.

In addition, the F-35 is still in testing. Even after being declared initial operational capable in the next year, that doesn't mean the aircraft has all of its capabilities available. For instance, engine limitations will be put in place until all aspects of the engine are tested for higher limits.

As a little background to how military aircraft development works, each part of the aircraft goes through testing and evaluation until it is certified to do certain things.

Take weapons for example. When the F-16 was developed, it could only carry a few select weapons. Even dumb bombs were tested by evaluation squadrons and after dropping them and analyzing their safety and efficacy, the F-16 was certified to fly with them in a operational capability. Over the years, as new weapons have been developed - such as the JDAM, AIM-9X, etc. - the F-16 has had to go through certification with those weapons until literally the instruction manual for an F-16 to drop said weapons was written and cleared for usage. Testing will go through everything from making sure the avionics are feeding the weapons the right information to making sure the weapon drops from the wing safely each and every time. Such programs can take months to years to go through.

The F-35 is the same way - except now, the F-35 has the entire US arsenal to go through. Whereas the F-16 came into being with relatively few weapons, especially smart weapons, and has had decades to be certified as new weapons have come online, the F-35 has to pick and choose which weapons to test and integrate. Hence all the talk about how the F-35's gun isn't certified yet ignores the fact that the F-35's gun is very low priority - they're looking to certify weapons likely to be used tomorrow like the JDAM or AMRAAM.

The other part of this is TACTICS. The US emphasizes tactics to a huge extent. Ever notice how US aircraft capabilities and specifications can be readily found online? But never tactics? That's because tactics are some of the most classified things pilots learn for their plane.
Tactics for each plane take years to be developed. An F-16 has had decades of tactics development - the F-35 very little.

One of the key things about the analogy with dogfighting the F-4 from Vietnam is that a lot of people hear "oh, the F-4 needed guns" and think that was the F-4's flaw. In fact, that wasn't it - the F-4's kill ratio went up in the latter parts of the year but very few kills were by guns.

The big change was that the tactics on how to fight the F-4 changed. The Navy discovered that the F-4's big advantage was in its power - instead of getting into a turning fight with MiGs, the F-4 used its power advantage to get into vertical fights with the MiGs. This is what schools like Top Gun are for: developing the tactics on how to fight and fly the specific planes. A Super Hornet fights considerably different from an F-16 and so on, and that's what they teach their students.

In a few years after the F-35 is in operational squadrons and in weapons school squadrons, if the F-35 still sucks, that's one thing. But assessing that today? Way way too premature.