Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: vaskidmark on September 21, 2015, 10:45:47 AM
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http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/08/f-35-loses-dogfight-to-red-baron/
stay safe.
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Lockheed officials have separately downplayed reports that the same F-35, flown by the same pilot, previously lost mock dogfights with the Goodyear Blimp and a beagle on a flying doghouse.
I wonder if the AF Captain joined Snoopy at that French cafe to quaff a couple of root beers after the engagement.
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Does the F35 not have guns?
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I get that contemporary doctrine calls for engagements at longer range with missiles, managed by a complex system of mutually-supporting resources from airbirne radar, satellite intel, ELINT, etc.
Thing is, we had this debate before and saw how it plays out in Viet Nam. Air Force doctrine and tech geared for one kind of war, but politics forcing a ROE that requires up close and personal, knife-fight range ID before engagement. Result being much of our high tech is negated as we are forced to get within spitball range of the enemy. So the enemy's obsolete, but lighter and more maneuverable, fighters all the sudden have parity or an advantage as engagements are LOS with guns or IR-seeking missiles instead of at 100+ miles with RF-guided missiles managed by blue suiters riding around in AWACS/JSTARS drinking coffee.
Zombie Santayana needs to eat some brains in our upper echelons of leadership, both military and civilian.
Does the F35 not have guns?
F35A (conventional deisgn) has an internal 25mm gun. F35B (sorta-semi-maybe-kinda-on-alternate-tuesdays vertical takeoff/landing variant) and F35C (AC carrier variant) both have the "option" of a "gun pod" that would take up a hard point, displacing fuel or bombs/missiles.
The bigger issue is that the F35 has a poor ability to maneuver. It goes pretty fast, carries a moderate amount of munitions, but sucks up close & personal.
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I thought they found out that long range capability means nothing when they are required to visually ID their targets first.
I guess it shouldn't surprise me.
That must mean this is actually fake.
Air Force Institutes ‘Don’t Be A Dumbass’ Safety Campaign
Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/06/air-force-navy-try-and-institute-dont-be-a-dumbass-safety-campaign/#ixzz3mOEOx800
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Private Swarmed By Women Wanting Cut Of That Sweet E-2 Pay
Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/01/pfc-swarmed-e2-pay/#ixzz3mOFgmChI
Wow, I didn't know Privates were paid that well. =D
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F-22 Scores First Combat Kill Against Eight-Engined Red Aircraft
Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2012/12/f-22-scores-first-combat-kill-against-eight-engined-red-aircraft/#ixzz3mOG2J5b7
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duffelblog.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F12%2Fsanta1-639x400.jpg&hash=6062c4b35d651508aad2bb42d9c5dc5f20038905)
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I thought they found out that long range capability means nothing when they are required to visually ID their targets first.
Truly.
Granted, there are lots of existing and nearly-practical technologies out there that make developing a new fighter/bomber fraught with uncertainty: high energy lasers that fit into a pickup truck bed, UAV, missile tech, ELINT, etc. etc.
But political considerations such as politician-imposed ID/LOS ROEs are not really an "unknown." It queered our execution of air operations in viet nam, iraq, and a-stan.
And yet again, we see the folly of multi-role/multi-service aircraft development. It is a compromise design that does nothing well and costs more than separately-developed platforms. Oh, we learned THAT lesson, too, decades ago:
F-111
F-4
The real lesson is that even when the Defense Department sets up a program designed to save money and be efficient by using the same basic aircraft for three services… it won't. Instead it produced a very expensive "joint" program in which only one of the participants — the Air Force — seems truly pleased with the result. And if it did produce the perfect plane for the Marines, the nature of the competition also meant that DoD couldn't buy it.
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Wasn't the F-15 Eagle designed to perform multi roles very well? I thought that it was considered a very successful aircraft ...... ???
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Meh...
I take all the F-35 bashing with a grain of salt.
Stuff like trying to claim it can replace the A-10 in CAS is idiocy, but cherry-picking certain aspects of the the F-16's flight envelope and saying the F-35 is "flawed" when it was never designed to meet them, and can do other things massively better, like total range, combat radius with weight/missiles onboard etc. is far superior.
You can claim the F-18 is "crap" with arguments like this too. Hell, same for an F-15's turn radius as compared to an F-16.
And the touchy-feely PC ROE forced onto fighter craft, like visual identification to be 100% sure an aircraft is a fighter from Derpistan and not a jet-liner... and that might force you into a guns-dogfight seems like it's not a good rationale for aircraft specifications... ever. :P
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And recall this non-duffleblog article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3144873/U-S-air-force-s-sophisticated-stealth-jet-beaten-dogfight-plane-1970s-despite-expensive-weapon-history.html
The dogfight, which was staged in January near Edwards Air Force Base, California, was designed to test the F-35’s ability in close-range combat at 10,000 to 30,000 feet.
Both the F-35 pilot and the F-16 pilot were attempting to ‘shoot down’ the other.
But, according to the F-35 pilot’s report, which has only recently been made public, the jet performed so appallingly that he deemed it completely inappropriate for fighting other aircraft within visual range.
He reported that the F-35 – designed by Lockheed Martin – was at a ‘distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement’ despite the F-16 being weighed down by two drop tanks for extra fuel.
Granted, not every aircraft need be a dogfighter. The old A-6 was a fine attack aircraft, for instance. But it was not a compromised design, either. Our acquisitions folk need to understand that political considerations will overrule their concepts of operations when it comes time to put steel on target.
Wasn't the F-15 Eagle designed to perform multi roles very well? I thought that it was considered a very successful aircraft ...... ???
1. F-15 was not multiservice, just Air Force, with no design compromises for Navy, USMC, or foreigners.
2. F-15 was first an air-dominance fighter and always did that very well. A later version, the F-15E, was designed to do ground attack.
Forgive me for quoting wikipedia:
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle had been introduced by the United States Air Force (USAF) as a replacement for its fleet of McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs. However, unlike the F-4, the F-15 was strictly designed for the air-superiority mission with little consideration for a ground-attack role; the F-15 Special Project Office opposed the idea of F-15s performing the interdiction mission, giving rise to the phrase "Not a pound for air to ground."[5] In service, the F-15 was a very successful fighter, with over 100 aerial combat victories and no losses in air-to-air combat
F-15E was a replacement for the F-111 and last of the F-4s used in deep strike roles that (potentially) would have little support form other fighters. Personally, I the the AF wanted to replace the lackluster F-111 with a platform that had turned out particularly well (F-15). I bet the F15E is not as nimble as the earlier air superiority variants, though. Quick & dirty specs on wiki suggest this.
Meh...
I take all the F-35 bashing with a grain of salt.
Stuff like trying to claim it can replace the A-10 in CAS is idiocy, but cherry-picking certain aspects of the the F-16's flight envelope and saying the F-35 is "flawed" when it was never designed to meet them, and can do other things massively better, like total range, combat radius with weight/missiles onboard etc. is far superior.
You can claim the F-18 is "crap" with arguments like this too. Hell, same for an F-15's turn radius as compared to an F-16.
And the touchy-feely PC ROE forced onto fighter craft, like visual identification to be 100% sure an aircraft is a fighter from Derpistan and not a jet-liner... and that might force you into a guns-dogfight seems like it's not a good rationale for aircraft specifications... ever. :P
Agree with a lot here, but the military ought to take into account that political considerations will many times trump military considerations. Aircraft specs ought to be influenced heavily by the reality of how we fight, not just the hope of how we may fight.
The lessons learned from Viet Nam brought us some great aircraft:
F15 air superiority fighter
F15E
F16 lightweight fighter
F18 light fighter/attack aircraft
F18 Superhornet similar to F15E in capability
B1 & B2 for long range strike
A10 for CAS
F16 & F18 were/are good lighter aircraft that can do the LOS fight very well. The F15 and F18 Super Hornet are spectacular air superiority fighters almost as good as their lighter cousins up close & personal.
The F35 is a turd of an inter-service and international compromise design.
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Why can't we just tune our radar systems to pick up on canvas reflections?
Seems logical to me.
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The grain of salt I'm going to toss in is that it's not an apples to apples dogfight. Compare the in airframe hours of the pilots. There's a reason the top gun guys kick people's asses in A4's.
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The F-35 is this generation's F-111, for all the same reasons. An aircraft designed to perform many different roles for all three of the services will do none of them well.
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The F35 is a turd of an inter-service and international compromise design.
Brings to mind the adage that "A camel is a horse that was designed by a committee."
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_eTG560eg
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Interesting and not completely relevant article about fighters. Can't remember if this was already posted here or if I read this somewhere else.
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/how-to-win-in-a-dogfight-stories-from-a-pilot-who-flew-1682723379
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Brings to mind the adage that "A camel is a horse that was designed by a committee."
I thought the adage was "An elephant is a mouse designed by a committee" . . .
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I thought the adage was "An elephant is a mouse designed by a committee" . . .
So, the committee forgot what it was supposed to accomplish. Same difference.