Report: F-35 Inferior to Older US, Foreign Fighters

The report should be taken with skepticism in that it is from a "progressive think tank" that opposes the development of new weapons systems. And to fairly evaluate the merits of the F-35, one should look past the currents issues as to the cost, delay, and mismanagement of the development process. The core argument then becomes the relative importance of dogfighting versus beyond visual range missile engagement and of getting the first shot or missile salvo off before the enemy does.

Notably, the F-35 is designed not for classic dogfighting but to win through stealth, weapons carriage ability, long range missiles, superior radar and other sensors, and a new communications, information display, and battle management systems. Testing and simulations in the design phase demonstrated that the F-35's new capabilities would in combination reliably prevail against conventional dogfighters.

Indeed, for all the romance of fighter versus fighter dog-fights, they are relatively rare. In modern air combat, the fighter that sees its opponent first and shoots first almost always wins the engagement. And that is what the F-35 is designed to do.

When the fully developed F-35 is deployed in combat, opposing fighters may know that it is present, somewhere, but will suffer incoming missile fire before they get enough information to make an attack. The last thoughts of such opponents will then be bafflement as to where the missile that took them down came from. Enemy ground targets will then be destroyed with impunity as their radar and air defenses are stripped away.

this is of limited value, with air-to-air missiles using heat-seeking capabilities being of much greater utility than mounted cannon

How many times since WW2 has the gun been declared obsolete as an air to air weapon, only to be resurrected?

With today's hyper-legalistic rules of engagement, do you think fighter pilots are ever going to be given a general OK to shoot beyond visual range?

sure glad we scrapped the F-22 Raptor program so we could buy MRAPs.

About a third of those MRAPs were left in Iraq and are now in the hands of ISIS and ISIS is just another name for the al Qaeda insurgents we were fighting in Iraq.

We cancelled the F-22, the backbone of our countries air defense, to make MRAPs that Obama’s has given to the enemy

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