2018 - Railgun for US Navy.

[Zlaxer]

Military is obsolete anway because if we made sure that people in third world countries got better access to SAT tutors and canned food they wouldn't wanna fight us.

He's being facetious right? I fucking hope....

[Okeefenokee]

Military is obsolete anway because if we made sure that people in third world countries got better access to SAT tutors and canned food they wouldn't wanna fight us.

He's being facetious right? I fucking hope....

You just hate the poor downtrodden ISIS fighter.

[SuburbanFarmer]

missle tech is close to making both 22 and 35 obsolete.....I know guys who drive both.

Why do you hate America?

[Smitty-48]

How would the F-35 hold up in a dogfight with another fighter plane?

The answer really has more to do with the pilot than the platform, to wit, how would this pilot exploit the relative advantages of the F-35 v. any particular adversary, but all things being equal, experienced US/NATO pilot v. comparable adversary pilot, the F-35 has similar ACM characteristics to the F-16 and F/A-18 it is intended to replace, incorporating qualities of both, the high g loading of the F-16 combined with the high alpha pointing of the F/A-18.

Assuming 50% internal fuel, clean configured at the merge, 6x internal AAM in the air superiority role, at 40,000 lbs, thrust to weight ratio is greater than 1 to 1, wing loading is less than 90 lbs per square foot, essentially identical to a combat loaded F/A-18, with the F-35 having a significant upgrade in terms of an angle of attack increase to 50 degrees over the F/A-18's 35 degree limit, while pulling 9g instantaneous like an F-16 rather than the F/A-18's 7.5g limit.

In short, it basically flies like an F/A-18 on steroids, like a Hornet, with more alpha, more g, more thrust, and more fuel.

Recent demonstration of the F-35A Block 3i at the Paris Air Show, wherein the jet is basically run through a classic F/A-18 Hornet routine, with particular emphasis on high alpha and cornering.



That all being said, it's important to understand that the USAF does not employ the F-22 and F-35 in the same way it employs the F-15 and F-16, choosing instead to exploit the stealth and sensor advantages, all reports from Red Flag indicate that the 5 Gens prefer to simply hit and run, appear out of nowhere, shoot, then dissapear back into the weeds, wash rinse repeat, while directing other assets onto targets as they go without having to dogfight at all, since you can't dogfight unless you can see them coming and going, so what they do is extend out of the furball, circle around behind other jets, come back in, pick people off, then extend back out, without turning at the merge at all.

One tactic which they use is to send F-15's and F-16's into the merge with the F-22's and F-35's hanging back in stealth mode, using the 4 Gens as bait, then when the adversary jets turn into the F-15's and F-16's, the F-22's and F-35's pounce on them, picking them off with ease having not been detected by the adversaries prior to.

So while the Russian Irkut-Sukhoi Su-35, for example, is a supremely agile fighter, against the F-35 it's at a similar disadvantage as a surface ship against a submarine, the Su-35 may have an idea that there are F-35's out there somewhere, but he can't see where, while the F-35's can all see him, so if the F-35 pilot is exploiting his advantages, he is sneaking around and getting into the saddle on the Su-35, engaging in a hit and run ambush without even bothering to get into a dogfight, since there's no actual need to, when you can see him but he can't see you.

Thing is, this is not actually new, this is in fact the old way of air combat, because whether it was WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam, fighter pilots did not actually become aces by engaging dogfights, the way you became an ace, was to hang back out of the furball and pick the stragglers off, hit and run, but what happened was, radar reached the point where it became very difficult to sneak up on other pilots like this, they could see you coming from a long ways off, so you basically couldn't get close enough to dogfight with them even if you wanted to, instead everybody would just be lobbing radar guided missiles at each other and then trying to dodge each other's missiles.

What F-22 and F-35 do, is bring the old way of A2A back, by negating the radar, allowing you to sneak around and pick people off hit and run dogfighting only in extremis if you absolutely have to, which, again, was very rare back in the day, pilots who got into dogfights didn't actually live very long, the aces were the ones who preyed on the stragglers, avoiding any turning fight whatsoever.

Frankly, dogfights are more of a romantic notion, in an actual shooting war, they're really not much of a factor, they happen, but so rarely, that they're not in any way decisive, the vast majority of A2A kills; never saw it coming, never even knew you were there, and never actaully had a chance to turn before you picked them off with a blindside shot, and doing that, wash rinse repeat, avoiding dogfights altogether, is how one became an ace.

Thus, whenever it is that pilots flying the supremely agile Russian Sukhoi's eventually meet the F-35 in combat, I wouldn't expect any dogfights at all, the F-35 will more likely stand off, beyond detection range, let the Sukhois go by, slip in behind them, shoot them in the back, then fly away, without even pulling any g's in the process, more of an assasination than a fight. The Sukhoi Flanker, was a very impressive piece of kit, in the 1980's, but since it's not stealth, and it cannot reliably detect and track stealth beyond very short ranges, it's pretty much obsolete now, good for air shows, but not much else; won't see the F-35's coming, so won't be able to dogfight with them; before it gets shot down from the blindside.

One of the things which makes a stealth fighter so deadly A2A, is that they can use the stealth to sneak into positions where their A2A missiles are at maximum effectiveness, A2A missiles are more effective the closer you can get, si while you can shoot an AMRAAM at 30 or 40 miles, the odds of hitting the target from there aren't great, the other plane has time to detect and evade the missiles, the missile is coasting near the end and so doesn't have much energy, but with stealth, you can get in close, and shoot frm just beyond visual range, this is often refered to as the "no escape zone", because the missile is at maximum thrust and energy, and the other pilot has no time to react.

With F-22 and F-35, they can close without being detected, so don't need to shoot until they have you dead to rights, again, making any dogfight a very unlikely occurence, they don't use high g manuevers to get into position to take the shot, they use the stealth, the dogfight never happens, because the whole point of a dogfight is to get into that shooting position behind the adversary, which is no longer a turning contest, the contest now is all radar evasion and electronic warfare.

Bear in mind, as manueverable as the F-22 is, it has been beaten in simulated dogfights, but in order to do that, it basically has to be placed at an artificial disadvantage, the stealth advantage has to be taken away, the sensor fusion has to be negated, so in order to do that, they have to start the dogfight off with the agressor already in the catbird seat above and behind the F-22, then the F-22 has to try to fly its way out of the jam, but in a real world shooting war, they're not going to give the enemy that sort of opportunity, so would be extremely difficult to ever get into such a position.

It's even more the case with F-35, which has hemespheric IRST, which means it's almost impossible to sneak up on him, so doesn't really matter if the F-35 is not as manueverable as the F-22, because under combat conditions. the F-22 doesn't even need all that manueverability, F-22's spend most of their time just going in big circles around the outside of the fight, picking the unsuspecting off, while they direct traffic with their data links.

F-35 could be used this way as well, but since they are focused on strike, what they would do is fly into enemy territory where it would be high risk for non stealth fighters to go, finding targets on the ground, then directing weapons on to those targets, most of the time the F-35's won't even drop the bombs themselves, instead, they'll pass the targets off, to a B-1 bomber for example.

That's a favourite USAF tactic at Red Flag these days, the B-1's loiter outside the enemy air defense zone, as bomb trucks, the the F-35's sneak in and find shit to bomb for them, then the B-1's come in and drop the bombs from high altitude at supersonic speed, the bombs glide to the targets from outside of SAM range, in military parlance, the F-35 acting as a "force multiplier".

Ergo, both F-22 and F-35 spend more time doing reconnaissance than they do actually shooting and/or bombing things, with the F-22 scouting for air targets and watching everbody's backs from above, while the F-35's scout for ground targets for everybody else to bomb, the 4th and 5th generation platforms operating in; combined arms; with the stealth fighters being used for their stealth more than anything, as force multipliers, so; one on one F-35 v. another fighter; not going to get much of that, if any at all, in an actual shooting war, combined arms.

If the US gets into an air campaign in the near future, that's pretty much how it's going to go, the F-22's and F-35's will be flying ahead of the main force as scouts for the F-15's, F-16's, F/A-18's and B-1's, there won't be any dogfights, the stealth fighters will be operating with impunity, the non stealth fighters will be the missile and bomb trucks for them.

It's already happened, just the other day, the Syrians were dropping bombs close to American proxies, they were warned to knock it off, they didn't take the warning, when they came back, there was an F-22 circling above them, the Russians were providing the Syrians with GCI early warning with the latest Russian air defense radars, the ones that internet naysayers claim can track stealth fighters, but they didn't even detect that the F-22 was there at all, never mind actually track it, the Syrians flew right into the kill zone as sitting ducks, but the F-22 didn't even take the shot, because the Air Force doesn't want to give the Russians any ELINT regarding the F-22's AN/APG-77 radar, so the F-22 just tracked the target passively, then a Navy F/A-18 was called in to actually shoot the missile. Suffice to say, the Syrian didn't even know what hit him, and no dogfighting was involved.

The reality is, since there really isn't going to be much dogfighting happening in actual combat, and since it's now mostly about stealth and sensors, and thus manueverability is not really that important anymore, the F-35 is actually better than the F-22, just with the EODAS IRST alone, the EODAS Auto Geolocating Hemispeheric IRST on the F-35 is the new news, it's the all seeing eye in the sky, staring in all directions at once, detecting everything around it, even BVR, and then passing all that information to everbody else in the force.

This is how the enemy is going to get killed most of the time now, while the F-35 just flies in racetrack circles on autopilot, the pilot spending most of his time just designating targets, hands off the stick, like he's using an iPad, the odds of getting into any dogifhgts; practically nil for all intents and purposes.

With stealth and EODAS, it's really not even feasible to get a dogfight going with the F-35, you can't sneak up on him, the EODAS sees your plane long before you get into a poistion to shoot at the F-35, and in order to get a fight going, he'd have to allow the merge to happen, but he doesn't have to, he doesn't need to merge with you, he'll just move away from you until you can't see him anymore, while another F-35 comes around behind you and shoots you down from the blindside, you never having seen him coming neither, so it's almost impossible to have a dogfight now, the whole purpose of a dogfight has basically been rendered obsolete by the F-35, that's just not how you fight the jet, it's more of a flying assassin, going around killing things, without even bothering to fight with them.

Why did they bother to design it to fly like an "F/A-18 on steroids"? Answer; 99% recreational; basically just to make it fun for the pilot to fly, but they're never really going to bother with any of that sort of thing in an actual shooting war anymore, that's just for air shows to entertain the public, and to give the pilots something to do other than fly on autopilot, which, in war, is how it would really be most of the time.

Actually taking the F-35 to war is going to be more like sitting in the back of the E-3 AWACS, because mostly the pilot is going to be looking at the sensor returns to try to gather intel and then passing that intel on to others, while the plane just flies itself, the F-35 is going to make air combat super boring for the pilots, because it's basically going to turn them into glorified sensor operators.

The plane can see in all directions, and it can shoot anything it sees, without even having to turn, never mind get into a high g manuevering engagement to get behind another plane in order to bring weapons to bear, to wit, a dogfight, doesn't need to do it, so it's not going to happen, the only way to get a fight going, would be for the pilot to ignore the sensors and go chase after something, then let that something see him, then let that something get behind him, but since that's never going to be a requirement, you can rest assured that the chain of command is not going to let them do it, no dogfighting, no divebombing, ever, it's going to be all circling on autopilot and just using the touchscreen to designate targets, and if something looks like a threat, just flying away from it until it can't see you anymore, then coming back from another direction, basically forget dogfights and all that sort of thing, and think of it more like a submarine; it's like a flying submarine, sneaking in to shoot flying torpedoes, and then just sneaking away.

There's already grumbling from the F-22 community that they're "not being allowed to do anything" in Syria, but the Air Force is like "too bad so sad, turns out, we don't need you to dogfight, welcome to the real stealth fighter job; 99% recon, 1% target designation; enjoy". The F-22 pilots thought that they were going to be hotshot jet jockeys dogfighting with MiG's or whatever, but turns out the F-22's actual utility is just getting close to things, in order to confirm that it is the enemy, without the enemy knowing that they are being watched, but then if that enemy needs to be shot, the F-22 doesn't do it, because that would let the enemy know that it's there, so instead, somebody else is called in to actually shoot a missile, while the F-22 just watches and confirms the missile has hit the target, and that's all they do. It's going to be even more like that for the F-35, just the bombing ground targets version of.

First ever air to air engagement for an F-22, and he doesn't even get the kill, the Navy gets to take the shot, the F/A-18 gets the kill, because they don't want the F-22 coming out of stealth mode... ever. lol, turns out, stealth sucks, if you wanted to get into a dogfight, cause it's never gonna happen, for the guy flying the stealth fighter.

It's kind of like smart phones vs cellular phones, saying that this fighter is more manuevrable than that fighter, is like saying this Motorola flip phone is smaller and lighter than that Apple iPhone, when the F-22 was designed, manueverability was important, but in the intervening 20 years, it has ceased to matter, F-22 is Flip Phone, F-35 is iPhone, nobody cares about the flip anymore, since you can flip around all over the place, but the other guy can just shoot you down with a tap of a touchscreen, no flipping required, rendering you whole super duper flipping thing a pointless exercise.

Used to be, you had to get behind the other guy to shoot him down, first with guns, and then later with missiles which couldn't make tight turns, the fight to get behind the other guy so you could shoot him while he tried to prevent that, was called a dogfight, I say "was called" because "dogfight" is now an anachronism, because the missiles are now supermanueverable, and you can shoot them at planes in any direction, including those which are behind you, without having to turn, you don't even have to push a button, you can literallly use voice control, just tell the F-35 to shoot the plane behind you, and it will take care of the rest, making the whole getting behind the other guy fight, the dogfight, about as relevant as a Motorola Flip Phone.

[Smitty-48]

Here's some more video where somebody has edited a compilation of the F-35 executing high alpha, which is the bread and butter of a close in dogfight, again, it's like F/A-18, mixed with F-22, noise points like a Hornet, but with even more alpha, and smoother, like an F-22, the F-22 origins of its flight control system come across, it's slipperly like the F-22, just without the post stall thrust vector.



I think Lockmart made a mistake in trying to market the F-35 as being "F-16 like", they obviously didn't want to sell it to the Air Force by telling them that it flew like the Navy jet, but that's really more the case, it's more of a high alpha cornering dogfighter, like F/A-18, than it is a high g turning dogfighter like the F-16, although bear in mind, most pilots actually prefer F/A-18, because it's easier to fly, the F-16 is cool n' all, but it's actually a pain in the neck, literally, you're practically lying down in the ejection seat, pulling 9g's, it's hard to get your head around in the F-16, whereas in the F/A-18, you're more upright and the nose comes around easier with more alpha at less g, which allows you to look around without having to work so hard. Pilots can only fly the F-16 for so many years, before they've wrecked their necks and backs, it's literally painful to fly.

F-16 and F/A-18 do the same job A2A, but they do it differently, in the F-16, you exploit g, you go hard around the long way, in a high g turn, but low alpha, trying to make the other guy fall off as you come around, because he can't hang with you with that much loading, in the F/A-18, you exploit alpha, you corner tightly and bring the nose around on him quickly, turning inside of him by rapid pointing rather than taking the long way around, F-22 can do both, but F-35 seems to be more to the F/A-18 side of that F-22 envelope.

The F-16 is like a Ferrari, the F/A-18 is more like a Cadillac, they get you to the same place, but in the Cadilac, you don't have to work so hard to get there, so most pilots say; for pure fun, going hard and fast, the F-16 is better, but for actually going to war, where the work load of the pilot becomes central, the F/A-18 is better.

Now bear in mind, the F/A-18 can actually pull 9g's, but the Navy limited it to 7.5g with the computers, for two reasons, one, the airframes last longer, 9g wears the plane out faster, but also, the Navy figured out that pilots actually don't perform very well at 9g, it's too much g, the g becomes dimishing returns, so they went for a 7.5 g limit, with very high alpha instead, because most air combat is going to come down to pilot work load and who got their nose around first, rather than who can hang on at 9g for the longest.

All three versions of the F-35 could pull 9g, but the Navy and Marine Corps versions are still being limited to 7.5g, for the same reason the F/A-18 was limited, the thing is, the Air Force has a hard on for 9g, but that's actually just a macho thing, they're ostensibly "tough guys" cause they pull 9g, but it doesn't actually make the plane a better dogfighter in a shooting war.

In the Air Force culture, there's kind of an "astronaut" mentality, they pride themselves on being pushed to the limits of human endurance, but in the Navy and Marine Corps, there's more of a "warfighter" mentality, "we're just here to kill people, if we don't have to be pushed to the limits of human endurance to kill them, all the better, no reason to waste the jets doing things you don't need to do to get the job done..."

[heydaralon]

How would the F-35 hold up in a dogfight with another fighter plane?

The answer really has more to do with the pilot than the platform, to wit, how would this pilot exploit the relative advantages of the F-35 v. any particular adversary, but all things being equal, experienced US/NATO pilot v. comparable adversary pilot, the F-35 has similar ACM characteristics to the F-16 and F/A-18 it is intended to replace, incorporating qualities of both, the high g loading of the F-16 combined with the high alpha pointing of the F/A-18.

Assuming 50% internal fuel, clean configured at the merge, 6x internal AAM in the air superiority role, at 40,000 lbs, thrust to weight ratio is greater than 1 to 1, wing loading is less than 90 lbs per square foot, essentially identical to a combat loaded F/A-18, with the F-35 having a significant upgrade in terms of an angle of attack increase to 50 degrees over the F/A-18's 35 degree limit, while pulling 9g instantaneous like an F-16 rather than the F/A-18's 7.5g limit.

In short, it basically flies like an F/A-18 on steroids, like a Hornet, with more alpha, more g, more thrust, and more fuel.

Recent demonstration of the F-35A Block 3i at the Paris Air Show, wherein the jet is basically run through a classic F/A-18 Hornet routine, with particular emphasis on high alpha and cornering.



That all being said, it's important to understand that the USAF does not employ the F-22 and F-35 in the same way it employs the F-15 and F-16, choosing instead to exploit the stealth and sensor advantages, all reports from Red Flag indicate that the 5 Gens prefer to simply hit and run, appear out of nowhere, shoot, then dissapear back into the weeds, wash rinse repeat, while directing other assets onto targets as they go without having to dogfight at all, since you can't dogfight unless you can see them coming and going, so what they do is extend out of the furball, circle around behind other jets, come back in, pick people off, then extend back out, without turning at the merge at all.

One tactic which they use is to send F-15's and F-16's into the merge with the F-22's and F-35's hanging back in stealth mode, using the 4 Gens as bait, then when the adversary jets turn into the F-15's and F-16's, the F-22's and F-35's pounce on them, picking them off with ease having not been detected by the adversaries prior to.

So while the Russian Irkut-Sukhoi Su-35, for example, is a supremely agile fighter, against the F-35 it's at a similar disadvantage as a surface ship against a submarine, the Su-35 may have an idea that there are F-35's out there somewhere, but he can't see where, while the F-35's can all see him, so if the F-35 pilot is exploiting his advantages, he is sneaking around and getting into the saddle on the Su-35, engaging in a hit and run ambush without even bothering to get into a dogfight, since there's no actual need to, when you can see him but he can't see you.

Thing is, this is not actually new, this is in fact the old way of air combat, because whether it was WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam, fighter pilots did not actually become aces by engaging dogfights, the way you became an ace, was to hang back out of the furball and pick the stragglers off, hit and run, but what happened was, radar reached the point where it became very difficult to sneak up on other pilots like this, they could see you coming from a long ways off, so you basically couldn't get close enough to dogfight with them even if you wanted to, instead everybody would just be lobbing radar guided missiles at each other and then trying to dodge each other's missiles.

What F-22 and F-35 do, is bring the old way of A2A back, by negating the radar, allowing you to sneak around and pick people off hit and run dogfighting only in extremis if you absolutely have to, which, again, was very rare back in the day, pilots who got into dogfights didn't actually live very long, the aces were the ones who preyed on the stragglers, avoiding any turning fight whatsoever.

Frankly, dogfights are more of a romantic notion, in an actual shooting war, they're really not much of a factor, they happen, but so rarely, that they're not in any way decisive, the vast majority of A2A kills; never saw it coming, never even knew you were there, and never actaully had a chance to turn before you picked them off with a blindside shot, and doing that, wash rinse repeat, avoiding dogfights altogether, is how one became an ace.

Thus, whenever it is that pilots flying the supremely agile Russian Sukhoi's eventually meet the F-35 in combat, I wouldn't expect any dogfights at all, the F-35 will more likely stand off, beyond detection range, let the Sukhois go by, slip in behind them, shoot them in the back, then fly away, without even pulling any g's in the process, more of an assasination than a fight. The Sukhoi Flanker, was a very impressive piece of kit, in the 1980's, but since it's not stealth, and it cannot reliably detect and track stealth beyond very short ranges, it's pretty much obsolete now, good for air shows, but not much else; won't see the F-35's coming, so won't be able to dogfight with them; before it gets shot down from the blindside.

One of the things which makes a stealth fighter so deadly A2A, is that they can use the stealth to sneak into positions where their A2A missiles are at maximum effectiveness, A2A missiles are more effective the closer you can get, si while you can shoot an AMRAAM at 30 or 40 miles, the odds of hitting the target from there aren't great, the other plane has time to detect and evade the missiles, the missile is coasting near the end and so doesn't have much energy, but with stealth, you can get in close, and shoot frm just beyond visual range, this is often refered to as the "no escape zone", because the missile is at maximum thrust and energy, and the other pilot has no time to react.

With F-22 and F-35, they can close without being detected, so don't need to shoot until they have you dead to rights, again, making any dogfight a very unlikely occurence, they don't use high g manuevers to get into position to take the shot, they use the stealth, the dogfight never happens, because the whole point of a dogfight is to get into that shooting position behind the adversary, which is no longer a turning contest, the contest now is all radar evasion and electronic warfare.

Bear in mind, as manueverable as the F-22 is, it has been beaten in simulated dogfights, but in order to do that, it basically has to be placed at an artificial disadvantage, the stealth advantage has to be taken away, the sensor fusion has to be negated, so in order to do that, they have to start the dogfight off with the agressor already in the catbird seat above and behind the F-22, then the F-22 has to try to fly its way out of the jam, but in a real world shooting war, they're not going to give the enemy that sort of opportunity, so would be extremely difficult to ever get into such a position.

It's even more the case with F-35, which has hemespheric IRST, which means it's almost impossible to sneak up on him, so doesn't really matter if the F-35 is not as manueverable as the F-22, because under combat conditions. the F-22 doesn't even need all that manueverability, F-22's spend most of their time just going in big circles around the outside of the fight, picking the unsuspecting off, while they direct traffic with their data links.

F-35 could be used this way as well, but since they are focused on strike, what they would do is fly into enemy territory where it would be high risk for non stealth fighters to go, finding targets on the ground, then directing weapons on to those targets, most of the time the F-35's won't even drop the bombs themselves, instead, they'll pass the targets off, to a B-1 bomber for example.

That's a favourite USAF tactic at Red Flag these days, the B-1's loiter outside the enemy air defense zone, as bomb trucks, the the F-35's sneak in and find shit to bomb for them, then the B-1's come in and drop the bombs from high altitude at supersonic speed, the bombs glide to the targets from outside of SAM range, in military parlance, the F-35 acting as a "force multiplier".

Ergo, both F-22 and F-35 spend more time doing reconnaissance than they do actually shooting and/or bombing things, with the F-22 scouting for air targets and watching everbody's backs from above, while the F-35's scout for ground targets for everybody else to bomb, the 4th and 5th generation platforms operating in; combined arms; with the stealth fighters being used for their stealth more than anything, as force multipliers, so; one on one F-35 v. another fighter; not going to get much of that, if any at all, in an actual shooting war, combined arms.

If the US gets into an air campaign in the near future, that's pretty much how it's going to go, the F-22's and F-35's will be flying ahead of the main force as scouts for the F-15's, F-16's, F/A-18's and B-1's, there won't be any dogfights, the stealth fighters will be operating with impunity, the non stealth fighters will be the missile and bomb trucks for them.

It's already happened, just the other day, the Syrians were dropping bombs close to American proxies, they were warned to knock it off, they didn't take the warning, when they came back, there was an F-22 circling above them, the Russians were providing the Syrians with GCI early warning with the latest Russian air defense radars, the ones that internet naysayers claim can track stealth fighters, but they didn't even detect that the F-22 was there at all, never mind actually track it, the Syrians flew right into the kill zone as sitting ducks, but the F-22 didn't even take the shot, because the Air Force doesn't want to give the Russians any ELINT regarding the F-22's AN/APG-77 radar, so the F-22 just tracked the target passively, then a Navy F/A-18 was called in to actually shoot the missile. Suffice to say, the Syrian didn't even know what hit him, and no dogfighting was involved.

The reality is, since there really isn't going to be much dogfighting happening in actual combat, and since it's now mostly about stealth and sensors, and thus manueverability is not really that important anymore, the F-35 is actually better than the F-22, just with the EODAS IRST alone, the EODAS Auto Geolocating Hemispeheric IRST on the F-35 is the new news, it's the all seeing eye in the sky, staring in all directions at once, detecting everything around it, even BVR, and then passing all that information to everbody else in the force.

This is how the enemy is going to get killed most of the time now, while the F-35 just flies in racetrack circles on autopilot, the pilot spending most of his time just designating targets, hands off the stick, like he's using an iPad, the odds of getting into any dogifhgts; practically nil for all intents and purposes.

With stealth and EODAS, it's really not even feasible to get a dogfight going with the F-35, you can't sneak up on him, the EODAS sees your plane long before you get into a poistion to shoot at the F-35, and in order to get a fight going, he'd have to allow the merge to happen, but he doesn't have to, he doesn't need to merge with you, he'll just move away from you until you can't see him anymore, while another F-35 comes around behind you and shoots you down from the blindside, you never having seen him coming neither, so it's almost impossible to have a dogfight now, the whole purpose of a dogfight has basically been rendered obsolete by the F-35, that's just not how you fight the jet, it's more of a flying assassin, going around killing things, without even bothering to fight with them.

Why did they bother to design it to fly like an "F/A-18 on steroids"? Answer; 99% recreational; basically just to make it fun for the pilot to fly, but they're never really going to bother with any of that sort of thing in an actual shooting war anymore, that's just for air shows to entertain the public, and to give the pilots something to do other than fly on autopilot, which, in war, is how it would really be most of the time.

Actually taking the F-35 to war is going to be more like sitting in the back of the E-3 AWACS, because mostly the pilot is going to be looking at the sensor returns to try to gather intel and then passing that intel on to others, while the plane just flies itself, the F-35 is going to make air combat super boring for the pilots, because it's basically going to turn them into glorified sensor operators.

The plane can see in all directions, and it can shoot anything it sees, without even having to turn, never mind get into a high g manuevering engagement to get behind another plane in order to bring weapons to bear, to wit, a dogfight, doesn't need to do it, so it's not going to happen, the only way to get a fight going, would be for the pilot to ignore the sensors and go chase after something, then let that something see him, then let that something get behind him, but since that's never going to be a requirement, you can rest assured that the chain of command is not going to let them do it, no dogfighting, no divebombing, ever, it's going to be all circling on autopilot and just using the touchscreen to designate targets, and if something looks like a threat, just flying away from it until it can't see you anymore, then coming back from another direction, basically forget dogfights and all that sort of thing, and think of it more like a submarine; it's like a flying submarine, sneaking in to shoot flying torpedoes, and then just sneaking away.

There's already grumbling from the F-22 community that they're "not being allowed to do anything" in Syria, but the Air Force is like "too bad so sad, turns out, we don't need you to dogfight, welcome to the real stealth fighter job; 99% recon, 1% target designation; enjoy". The F-22 pilots thought that they were going to be hotshot jet jockeys dogfighting with MiG's or whatever, but turns out the F-22's actual utility is just getting close to things, in order to confirm that it is the enemy, without the enemy knowing that they are being watched, but then if that enemy needs to be shot, the F-22 doesn't do it, because that would let the enemy know that it's there, so instead, somebody else is called in to actually shoot a missile, while the F-22 just watches and confirms the missile has hit the target, and that's all they do. It's going to be even more like that for the F-35, just the bombing ground targets version of.

First ever air to air engagement for an F-22, and he doesn't even get the kill, the Navy gets to take the shot, the F/A-18 gets the kill, because they don't want the F-22 coming out of stealth mode... ever. lol, turns out, stealth sucks, if you wanted to get into a dogfight, cause it's never gonna happen, for the guy flying the stealth fighter.

It's kind of like smart phones vs cellular phones, saying that this fighter is more manuevrable than that fighter, is like saying this Motorola flip phone is smaller and lighter than that Apple iPhone, when the F-22 was designed, manueverability was important, but in the intervening 20 years, it has ceased to matter, F-22 is Flip Phone, F-35 is iPhone, nobody cares about the flip anymore, since you can flip around all over the place, but the other guy can just shoot you down with a tap of a touchscreen, no flipping required, rendering you whole super duper flipping thing a pointless exercise.

Used to be, you had to get behind the other guy to shoot him down, first with guns, and then later with missiles which couldn't make tight turns, the fight to get behind the other guy so you could shoot him while he tried to prevent that, was called a dogfight, I say "was called" because "dogfight" is now an anachronism, because the missiles are now supermanueverable, and you can shoot them at planes in any direction, including those which are behind you, without having to turn, you don't even have to push a button, you can literallly use voice control, just tell the F-35 to shoot the plane behind you, and it will take care of the rest, making the whole getting behind the other guy fight, the dogfight, about as relevant as a Motorola Flip Phone.

Holy shit. Great post man. Enjoy the jetski!

[Smitty-48]

Another analogy I would submit, in order to put the fancy aerobatics of an F-22 or Su-35 in context, airshow environment vs actual air combat, which is mostly about post stall thrust vector; it's kind of like a guy doing a bunch of backflips, cartwheels and breakdancing moves, to show off how good he would be in a streetfight, when in fact the streetfight would actually just consist of waiting around a corner for somebody to walk into an ambush, and then bashing their brains in with a lead pipe, before they even knew what hit them.

So, while the F-35 can execute about 90% of those fancy breakdancing moves, it would never actually use those moves in a fight, there's just no sense falling to the earth like a leaf, doing all sorts of fancy spins and flips and whatnot, when the guy can't see you coming, and you have a lead pipe in hand, just run up behind the guy, smash his brains in, then run away, that's how real air combat goes, no breakdancing moves required.

Even the F-22 pilots say, when asked what is the most important aspect of the F-22; "sensor fusion", information is life; it's the God's Eye View provided by the F-22's sensor fusion engine, which gives them the edge over everybody else, that's how they see what it going on, when everybody else can't see it like that, which allows them to get into the position to kill the other guy before the other guy even knew they were there, F-35 just improves on this, takes it to the next level, beyond even F-22.

Stealth adds another level of advantage, IF; they are pointing a radar at you, but fun fact; a lot of times the F-22 doesn't even use the stealth, because with the sensor fusion, they can see where all the radars are pointing, and then they just sneak into the gaps where they are not covering, coming up behind the other guy, without even having to dodge a radar, but instead just using the God's Eye View, which shows them the approaches where the radar is blind, then they come through that way.

The Sensor Fusion Engine; this God's Eye View, 360 degrees around you, for hundreds of miles in all directions, showing all the targets and their electronic emissions, without having to give away your own position to see it, this is the real game changer, this is what nobody has had before, and this is what allows the F-22 and F-35, to get into positions to kill the other guy, without ever having to dogfight, because in effect, F-22 and F-35 are always hiding around the corner, with lead pipe in hand, seeing everything going on around them, without being seen as they go.

Half of stealth is the plane itself, the low observable plane, but the other half is actually just knowing what the enemy can see and can't see, and then staying out of the areas that he can see, while sneaking up on him through the areas where he is blind. What the Sensor Fusion Engine basically does, is crunch all this data for you, then presents it as a very simple picture, where you can clearly view "he's there, I'm here, he could see me if I went that way, but he wouldn't see me if I came around this way", then you just go where he can't see you, until you are up in the saddle, having never even been painted by a radar along the way.

You don't have to go fast, you don't have to pull g, you just slide around in the blind spots, using the God's Eye View to know where and when to go, picking people off who never saw you coming nor going; kind of hard for them to dogfight with you, when they're already dead. Dogfighting is manuevering to get behind the other guy, but with stealth and sensor fusion, you're behind him the whole time.

It's just a cryin' shame that the American public is so down on the F-35, when it is in fact the most bad ass warplane ever devised, even more bad ass than the F-22, when you look past the not so relevant anymore breakdancing moves that is.