Pilot: F-35 can’t dogfight
Bobo sends us a link from War Is Boring which discusses a report allegedly written by one of the test pilots of the new F-35 jet which says that the Joint Strike Fighter can’t dog fight. In the test, the F-35 went up against the F-16, you know, one of the aircraft the F-35 is supposed to replace;
The F-35 was flying “clean,” with no weapons in its bomb bay or under its wings and fuselage. The F-16, by contrast, was hauling two bulky underwing drop tanks, putting the older jet at an aerodynamic disadvantage.
But the JSF’s advantage didn’t actually help in the end. The stealth fighter proved too sluggish to reliably defeat the F-16, even with the F-16 lugging extra fuel tanks. “Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement,” the pilot reported.
There’s much more at the long article which draws from an unclassified, but official report, supposedly.
So let’s summarize what we know about the F-35; it can’t fight in the air against other older aircraft and it can’t support ground forces. So what good is it? You know, other than providing employment for Lockheed Martin suits. It provides transportation for one pilot, too, I suppose, when the engine isn’t exploding like the one that blew up during takeoff last year at Eglin AFB.
The test pilot explained that he has also flown 1980s-vintage F-15E fighter-bombers and found the F-35 to be “substantially inferior” to the older plane when it comes to managing energy in a close battle.
Obviously, the pilot isn’t aware that newer always means better.
Category: Air Force
…Keeping in mind that the design philosophy of the -35 was that it was never supposed to dogfight and instead whack the bad guys from a distance with Slammer and Sidewinder…this is worrying me. Because why, after all this time, are they suddenly interested in how good a dogfighter it is? Has something come to their attention that suggests that stealth may NOT save the day? Stay tuned…
Mike
I think that it is important because of the mistakes of the past. The one I am thinking about is assuming that the cannon would not be needed due to missile combat, mainly in the F-4. Think of when a subsonic Mig shot down the supersonic thunderchief F-105. It was assumed that the speed would make it safe against slower aircraft. Let’s not even bring up the Starfighter F-104.
You mean the F-104 Lawn Dart?
I always heard it referred to as the Falling Star
I’m pretty sure even modern stealth fighters are detected by ‘passive’ radar provided by widespread cell networks — that is, disruptions in local grids can be analyzed to give locations.
It’s probably not accurate enough for targeting without VERY wide-spread sensor networks (not like those aren’t getting cheaper by the second), especially since the processing time is non-instantaneous and planes move fast, but it’s apparently good enough for locating within a fairly small range (well within visual range) and giving vector information, hence dogfighting.
(I’m not an expert on this, I just recall reading about it, and it makes a lot of sense given interference patterns in UHF communications.)
Well, it costs billions, just like obama wanted, helps bankrupt America faster!
It’s kind of like the difference between goldfinches and starlings.
Goldfinches are agile, bratty little birds that chase each other over territory and females and corner in mid-flight like they are on rails. They can do right angle turns that would turn a jet jockey green with envy.
Starlings, on the other hand, are best known for engaging in murmurations, which are large masses of birds flowing in the same direction so that they appear to be a large single organism instead of individual birds. They don’t do much of anything, they take up space other birds want, and if they land in the trees in your neighborhood they will wake the dead with the noise they make and leave incredible messes everywhere. They serve no useful function at all.
The Starlings sound a lot like our politicians.
Or Bernasty.
I wonder if All-Points Logistics has a contract with Lockheed Martin?
That would explain a lot.
Holy shit. Everybody always bitches about the “powerful gun lobby.” I’d say they ain’t got shit on Lockheed. Those guys have their heads so far up Congress’ ass. F-22 and the F-35. Jesus.
And we thought $500.00 hammers and toilet seats were bad.
Come on guys,we always dig for the truth at TAH:
Navy’s “$600 Toilet Seat”
The P-3C Orion antisubmarine aircraft went into service in 1962. Twenty-five years later, in 1987, it was determined that the toilet shroud, the cover that fits over the toilet, needed replacement. Since the airplane was out of production this would require new tooling to produce. These on-board toilets required a uniquely shaped, molded fiberglass shroud that had to satisfy specifications for vibration resistance, weight, and durability. The molds had to be specially made, as it had been decades since their original production. The price reflected the design work and the cost of the equipment to manufacture them. Lockheed Corporation charged $34,560 for 54 toilet covers, or $640 each.[5]
President Ronald Reagan held a televised news conference in 1987, where he held up one of these shrouds and stated: “We didn’t buy any $600 toilet seat. We bought a $600 molded plastic cover for the entire toilet system.” A Pentagon spokesman, Glenn Flood stated, “The original price we were charged was $640, not just for a toilet seat, but for the large molded plastic assembly covering the entire seat, tank and full toilet assembly. The seat itself cost $9 and some cents.… The supplier charged too much, and we had the amount corrected.”The president of Lockheed at the time, Lawrence Kitchen, adjusted the price to $100 each and returned $29,165. “This action is intended to put to rest an artificial issue,” Kitchen stated.
So let’s review – the F-35 can’t dogfight, the F-22 deprives pilots of oxygen, current gen fighters are dangerously old and the Air Force wants to do away with the A-10. Oh well…air superiority is overrated anyway, right?
Back in the day (Vietnam), the issue was the USAF was all about bomber command and the ICBMs. They weren’t interested in fighters, and those fighter jocks had a hell of a time convinces the bomber princes that a plane had to have more than just big engines and missiles. Now, they don’t even have THAT excuse. The fighter mafia won control of the USAF, and these knuckleheads STILL are screwing up fighters. Why? I think it’s because far too many of them are auditioning for their post USAF career over with Lockheed rather than doing their damned jobs.
Oh, and they’ve ALWAYS hated the A-10, and the only reason they built the Warthog in the first place is that the Army threatened to do it if they didn’t. They’ve wanted to kill that program before it even started.
Once again, it begs the question of whether national security would be better served by disbanding the Air Force as we know it and reestablishing it as the old Army Air Corps.
Last I heard (which wasn’t lately), the oxygen generator problems with the F-22 had been fixed, and it can fly rings around anything on the planet. As I recall reading, at Red Flag, it took 6 F-15s to take one down. The only problem is that there are only 187 or there will be only 187.
And nothing can replace the A-10 that I”ve heard of.
I’ve only seen the F-22 at air shows, but what it does during it’s demos is pretty damn impressive.
read the Aussie analysis of the new Sukhoi PAK-FA linked below… damn thing sounds like a hell of a plane. And, bluntly, a better plane.
Repeating history-when the Phantom came out, the Air Force didn’t equip it with any guns because missles kick ass and nothing else was needed.
Vietnam proved otherwise, and guns made their appearance.
So we’ve got another fighter that won’t even have to dogfight right? Just lob missles and inshallah?
Mmm Hmm.
If the Air Force had to reinvent the wheel right now, it’d probably end up square.
Only after they spent a few supertanker loads of money on R & D by outfits that bribed the right politicians!
Not disputing your basic point but the Phantom was originally a Navy fighter. The Air Force adopted it later. And yes, the F-4C and D did not have an internally built gun until the E model came out. They did build a gun pod that hung on the centerline but that was after some hard lessons were learned.
Like the Falcon missile?
Well, AAMs have improved a bit since 1956. (smile)
But the point remains. From what I understand, missiles aren’t foolproof. And at shorter ranges, they’re not necessarily the weapon of choice – for the much the same reason you don’t use a hunting rifle to hunt quail.
speakin’ of missiles – the next Tom Hanks flick is about the Gary Powers/Col. Able exchange back in the ’60s according to the preview I saw at Jurassic World.
Only a matter of time before the dim bulbs trot something like the Genie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie out again. Gotta love that 50s-60s mentality :).
Hey, what’s not to like about an unguided missile with a small (1.5kt) nuclear warhead and an operational range of less than 10km? (smile)
Stealth only works against electronics. Eventually someone will eyeball the F35, and send up an OPFOR jet to take out your ass. The F35 had BETTER be able to dogfight, otherwise it’s just a skygoing steam train (goes real straight, real fast, useless for anything else).
So what will this sooperdooperwonderjet be able to do other than turn into a flaming wad of scrap metal once an enemy Fighter Pilot spots it?
They closed down the best dogfighting school in the country (Top Gun), and are now wondering why they can’t dogfight?
A dogfight involved actually detecting and closing with an aircraft. The F-35 is a stealth. The first time you detect it is when it opens its weapon bay, shortly before launching your death.
They can’t dogfight because of the aircraft, not the pilots. As far as the stealth capabilities, they may or may not work but I don’t necessarily believe that a missile will hit its target each and every time. Pilots found that out the hard way during Vietnam and newer pilots didn’t know how to dogfight. I am aware that the new missiles are much better than they used to be but a good pilot can still evade them.
Yea and what about that F-117 in the Formor Yugoslavia in the 90s?
The F-117 was put into a situation where it couldn’t win. There were few other aircraft in the air that night because of bad weather and the people that shot him down had been experimenting for awhile on just this scenario. The pilot successfully evaded one missile but the second one got him.
I heard a story a while back in which Iraqis claimed that one of their MiG-23s tracked an F-117 with a spotlight back in ’91. Probably bullshit, of course, but it demonstrates how low-tech old-school common sense can cheaply and easily negate high-tech whiz-bang advantages if somebody uses their head.
Not to mention it’s a VTOL – which melts the hard pad surface with exhaust heat – and will do battlefield close support – except it doesn’t have armor, doesn’t have a working gun, has extremely limited ammo capacity, and a very short loiter time. So it fails in support of the Army and doesn’t perform as well as the aircraft it replaces in the Navy, Marines, and Air Force.
Don’t just blame Lockheed-Martin – the supply sites for this pig are scattered through a boatload of Congressional districts from New Hampshire to California, and no Congresscritter is going to vote against a program bringing jobs into their district.
So far it’s failing two out of three of the main reasons we built the piece of shit F35 in the first place.
Building a plane that can’t dogfight in a fighter configuration is a lot like building a sailboat with a mast that can’t hold enough sail to catch the wind, sure it looks pretty at the dock but there’s really no point in trying to sail that bitch anywhere.
Congratulations, USAF. You just bought a really sexy A-6, except that the A-6 had a better payload capability.
A lot of people I know in the AF. Have said this is hands off the worse protect they have ever seen
Well that test pilot’s career is toast.
It’s even worse. See
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2010-01.html
damn, that’s depressing. Bloody interesting though
I have spent a lot of time inside airplanes and I know how to fly. Never mind.
Seems to me that the wrong people are running these programs and maybe for the wrong reasons. I’m thinking that the requirements team should be contain about one half + 1 combat arms people (half of them E5 to E8 and no one above a LTC), one quarter pilots and crew chiefs (“if I have to fly it then …”), one quarter logistics people (gas, spares, maintenance, runways — all of that), and one accountant (someone has to keep track of the cost). This team should be available for the entire project and assist during the “beta testing”. There should be a sprinkling of “this is what those other people are doing” to identify future threats.
If you cut down on the gee whiz stuff, the time from concept to first flight goes from decades to a few years and overall cost drops by an order of magnitude because there is very little R&D cost to be recovered.
Are there any DOD programs that are GOOD examples?
Virginia Class Submarine works, but then, it’s the ashes of the Seawolf Class boats put into a smaller hull size.
The A-10. Oh, wait. They’re getting rid of it.
No surprises here. Alas …
While not totally discounting the article, I am always skeptical of any writing that uses a document which it does not link to or post.
After many years, I am leery of anyone doing a summary and quoting snippets of a document, especially one that is a mere 5 pages long.
One wonders if this is more of a “click trap” rather than factual.
Why do I feel like the movie “The Pentagon Wars” is about to have a sequel?
F-35, THE FLYING LEMON!!!
Flying piece of crap…Can’t fly, can’t fight, can’t do this, can’t do that. They should have drug out one of the Tomcats, loaded it up and sent it out to intercept this latest greatest pile of crap…Used to park south or north of the base and watch the Cats tangling with F-16’s…Thunder in the Valley, lol.
So…what we are saying, is that the good old F-16 beats an X -Wing fighter? (Sorry about the Star Wars reference)
The Army version has a variable camouflage pattern capability…
Going to War is Boring for this is like going to a Glock board to ask about a 1911.
Pentagon flak responds back to criticism. Doesn’t address the poor dog fighting performance.
https://gma.yahoo.com/military-don-t-worry-f-35-most-expensive-213045869–abc-news-topstories.html