Posted on 12/06/2017 7:30:02 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
Bfl
There is a reason countries are lining up to buy the F-35 and foregoing thinking about lower cost, less advanced planes like the F-18 or Gripen, and the Israeli assessment laid it out.
The plane is not without faults, of those it has plenty. But the upside is very high.
I heard someone say once (and I paraphrase) “If you get into a dogfight with an F-35, you have already squandered all the things that give it advantages.”
Notice Israel refers to it as a “strategic asset”.
I’ll look for the link, but it was reported the IR sensors on the F-35 once detected an AA missile test launch from Vandenberg...from 740 miles away.
And tracked it.
IR only.
Of course from that distance it had to flying high.
It can detect other aircraft and target them via IR only. No radar needed. While just about everyone has some IR detection now, this system is reportedly 3-4x more sensitive. And precise.
Moreover, it has a huge database of IR signatures on board so that it can identify what it detects and present only “threats” to the pilot.
This aircraft rarely uses its radar. When it does it’s usually to build the data network to link all other aircraft together as a single entity with a single view of the battle space. Even to control UACVs.
Imagine 4 UACVs attached to every F-35. Stealth units of course.
It’s revolutionary.
I found that a fascinating choice of words, and see that I wasn’t the only one.
Israel apparently sees the britches that the F-35 can wear as being much larger than many of our countrymen do.
But then again...the Israelis are known for taking a weapons platform and wringing every last ounce of capability out of it, which means by nature they don’t just take a tool and use it the way its predecessors were used. They are going to find out what it does well and plumb that to its depth, playing to its strengths, and minimizing its weaknesses.
Then introducing their own twists, customized electronics and ECM packages, customized native weapons systems, tactics to take advantage of them, etc. they improve the platform.
I tend to trust the Israelis on this kind of thing, they have a good track record. I hope we take the opportunity to learn from them.
I was lead navigator on the Ault when my enlistment was up and I almost extended for 6-months to go on a Med cruise, but I had plans for going back to college.
I loved the Ault...great proud ship and crew, always spotless clean and I came very close to hanging around.
You may have read James Hornfischer’s excellent book, “The Last of the Tin Can Sailors”. Absolutely wonderful book detailing the Battle off Samar, the last ship to ship battle that took place in the U.S. Navy’s history.
Hornfischer is an outstanding military writer and this book reads like a novel.
Remember Pearl Harbor tomorrow...I’m sure I don’t have to mention it to you.
I agree. If we want to use it like a rifle with iron sights, we are going to have a very expensive rifle that uses iron sights when alternatives 1/10th the cost will do that just fine.
I know it seems insane to have a helmet that costs $1.5 million dollars, but what that helmet brings is remarkable. The ability to “see” through the plane, and bring all the sensors into play...IR, radar, visible light, target emissions...and display them in a way for one pilot to understand and see, never mind pooling all those resources to all elements scattered over hundreds or thousands of square miles.
It is revolutionary, I agree. Because it is only marginally better or marginally worse in a visual turning dogfight than an F-16 is missing the point entirely.
I could see things like stealth powered gliders with foldable deployable wings carried internally on an F-35, maybe four to a bay, that only require the slightest push to keep them aloft, each equipped with a package to allow them to communicate visual/IR/emission data, and the F-35 flies in undetected and deploys them on a path like a minelayer.
Four of them cover an interlocking air corridor of a thousand miles distance. An airborne picket so to speak. And they just cruise silently in long rectangles for days at a time sending all manner of data, including airborne and ground traffic, communications, emissions, etc back to a single F-35, to an AWACS, or land stations or even individual commanders, squads, or soldiers on the ground.
And so on.
Yes! I read “The Last Stand of The Tin Can Sailors” and that set me off on a six month stretch where I was reading and watching everything I could about The Battle of Leyte Gulf, because it was so compelling.
The scale of the battle was huge. The stakes were high. The sub-plots were astounding.
Halsey, itching for a fight, taking the bait, and through a common clerical error which threw gasoline on the fire, ends up to his dying days fighting what he viewed as slander by people who questioned his actions, all under the shadow of the words “The world wonders”.
On the other side, almost simultaneously, the Davids of the US Navy in Taffy3 against the Goliaths of the Imperial Japanese Navy and their battleships, darting in, really, the unbelievable parallel to “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by complete coincidence aligning with the erroneously un-scrubbed padding from the message to Halsey.
The destroyers of Taffy 3 with bones in their teeth sailed directly at the Japanese battlewagons, their five inch guns like the sabres of the Light Brigade being flashed in the air, they “Volley’d and thunder’d” like hooves, as the superstructures of the battleships flashed with impacts. They sailed under full steam to what many of them, like the calvary in Tennyson’s poem, assumed was going to be their certain death...”Someone had blunder’d”.
Halsey, in full pursuit to the north, gets the communication from his boss who is trying to discreetly ask what Halsey was up to without ruffling his feathers, ending with Halsey losing it on the bridge of the New Jersey and throwing his hat to the floor in white hot anger and shame as “All the world wonder’d” in Hawaii what was going on.
You could not make this up.
And then, Typhoon Cobra just a month or two later.
With the way they could use computer graphics to recreate that, with the real, unadulterated story line from history, that would be quite the production.
“The Battle of Leyte Gulf”.
If you haven't read that one, it is even more compelling...and horrible. The carnage and confusion in those battles is nearly impossible to believe.
Most people don't know that there were four times as many sailors killed in the battles for the conquest of Guadalcanal than soldiers who fought on land.
And yes. Pearl Harbor. We should remember 9/11 the same way, but it doesn’t seem that we do.
After I sent you the post I went to Wikipedia and read the brief account of the Taffy 3 engagement; I had forgotten that the Hoel and Johnston were key players.
Truly amazing, and Halsey SHOULD be remembered for his blunder.
Well, I am more forgiving of the blunders of leaders in war, because...humans are fallible. People make mistakes.
And many of our seagoing leaders in WWII were old men. Not by today’s standards, of course, but back then, they were considered old men. Halsey was 60 years old when the war was in the balance in 1942. Now that is young, but back then...that was very old.
We found out early on in WWII that many of our commanders who were older could not bear up under the rigors and stress of command, and there was a concerted push to get younger, more vigorous men into positions of command.
Back to the original point...I cut our commanders some slack even when needless lives are lost, or blunders are made, because...that is war. Granted, if I am one of the needless lives lost or my relatives are, I feel differently.
I guess it is a matter of scale.
I forget who said it, he said something like “I forgave Halsey the first typhoon...it was the second one I held against him.” I kind of agree with that. Admiral McCain fell on his sword for that to protect Halsey.
Well said!
Love talking to old Navy guys on FR...:)
‘I heard someone say once (and I paraphrase) “If you get into a dogfight with an F-35, you have already squandered all the things that give it advantages.”’
The concept of “dogfight” is changing drastically with the advent of high off-boresight missiles, and even rear-firing missiles (SU aircraft). F-35 pilots will be able to cue AIM-9X (Sidewinder) IR missiles using their helmets, similar to Apache pilots/gunners aiming their 30mm cannons by looking at the target. The F-35 is the first fighter since the ‘70s to not have a heads up display (HUD). The helmet fills that role.
It is very possible that F-35s will be sighted either by IR or during daylight hours. In those cases, they may engage at shorter ranges than usual. I expect they will do just fine, and fight more effectively than any Gen 4 fighter - due to the shorter OODA loop more than anything. Only the F-22 is a superior air dominance fighter - and it could really benefit from some of the F-35’s capabilities.
>The concept of “dogfight” is changing drastically with the advent of high off-boresight missiles, and even rear-firing missiles (SU aircraft). F-35 pilots will be able to cue AIM-9X (Sidewinder) IR missiles using their helmets, similar to Apache pilots/gunners aiming their 30mm cannons by looking at the target. The F-35 is the first fighter since the ‘70s to not have a heads up display (HUD). The helmet fills that role.
I still wonder if jamming or flairs will play a role here. All those fancy missiles and guidance systems won’t count for anything if the missiles can’t lock on to their targets due to jamming or flairs.
“I still wonder if jamming or flairs will play a role here. All those fancy missiles and guidance systems won’t count for anything if the missiles can’t lock on to their targets due to jamming or flairs.”
Sure they will. As a matter of fact, I understand that during the recent SU-22 shootdown in Syria the F-18 pilot initially fired an AIM-9X, which was decoyed by a flare (this was reported on an open site). An AMRAAM (radar guided missile) successfully destroyed the SU shortly after. The failure of the AIM-9X to disregard the flare(s) was disappointing, and concerning. A lot of effort has gone into decoy rejection over the years.
Lasers are rapidly coming into the mix to blind IR guided missiles as well. Jamming radar guided missiles isn’t trivial these days as the radars are frequency agile. BTW, that’s a major reason the stealthy F-35 can use its radar with relative impunity. The radar only takes a short time to paint its environment, and it’s hopping frequencies constantly. Then it goes off again for an extended time.
All that said, the F-35 and F-22 enjoy a great deal of immunity to radar-guided missiles, particularly at longer ranges and head-on. That is a game changer for sure.
Agreed. There is so much to learn tactically about how to use this platform...
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