Dogfight : F35 vs F16

[GScholz]

Lol North Koreans?

[Squire]

North Vietnam i'm sure was similarly derided in the early days of the war.

...and after that Red Flag came into being as I recall.

Learn the lessons or repeat them.

[GScholz]

Most of the NK air force consists of MiG-17s. They have like 30-40 modern fighters. And I use the word "modern" quite wrongly. 

[Squire]

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/graphics/graphic-north-koreas-conventional-arms
 

[PR3D4TOR]

Look at all those targets! Some lucky USAF or ROKAF pilots are going to make ace in a day. Many of them in fact. 35 MiG-29s of 1980's vintage: The only potential threat to a F-22 or F-35. And by "potential" I mean "almost negligible". All the rest is 1950's and 1960's Soviet and Chinese crap.

[Zimme83]

South Korea  on the other hand has 458 fighters,
158 F-5
60 F-15E
71 F-4
169 F-16.

So they have roughly an equal number of fighters, and they are better.

But North Korea is not an argument for having F-35, the legacy fighters will do the job and it would be much more about quantity and ground attack capability. North Korean air force will be whiped out within a few days but major cities like Seoul is within artillery range and North Korea has artillery - a LOT. So most important would be a large number of aircrafts capable of bombing those artillery positions.

[Gman]

Anyone remember the post Eagl made about his time in the ROK?

SA trumps kinetics unless you have a mission to accomplish and the only way through the door is to kick it down.  Then the guy with the biggest stick (or most sticks) may not "win" but you're still gonna gonna suffer losses getting thru the door.  Or keeping the other guy from coming in YOUR door.  Guess what used to keep me up at night when I was responsible for a certain what-if scenario...  1000 cannon-equipped and obsolete fighters streaming south from North Korea.  We'd run out of missiles and bullets before we got half of them, even if we could individually track and engage each one with optimum efficiency.  Then you can have all the SA in the world, but the survivors are gonna strafe your O-Club and your chow hall when you run out of the kinetics you pass off as unnecessary.  Buying a lot of new fighters with half the missile loadout of the ones we have isn't the way to win that fight.

Pred is right, others too, IF the DPRK played our game, they would get slaughtered in the air.  However, what if they initiated a massive surprise arty attack vs Seoul, the DMZ, etc, and at the same time attacked the very, VERY few bases where the ROK/USAF fighters are based with huge, huge special forces attacks, and co-ordinated THAT with a selective nuke strike or two.  Unlikely, yes, but it COULD happen, especially the first part.  Then those ancient cannon/dumb bomb armed fighters aren't so useless any longer.  Remember a few months ago when the DPRK sortied nearly all their subs?  The South/NATO lost them, nearly all of them, for days.  They COULD infiltrate in huge numbers of SF troops, they have the largest SF units in the world for a reason.  100+ of them hitting Kunsan, Osan, and others - which are all near the sea - isn't impossible. 

Regarding the F35 specifically, that USMC General and his "velociraptor" comment has been the soundbite of the year for the F35, and I think he'll be proved either a PR master/loose with facts, or PR master/right all along, after this Red Flag going on right now.  Not a lot of F35s are involved, and just the "B" model,  and will be going up against a pile of higher end legacy fighters, like F16/F15Cs doing red air in some exercises apparently.  Then we'll see how good this version of the F35 is right now.  So, IMO, in the next few weeks, we'll have a better idea, as much as they'll tell us anyway, of how it did.  If it gets slaughtered A2A, I think due to the nature of things, it'll be hard to keep it a secret, just like the F16w/tanks vs F35 thing was.  Same if it dominates, and mows everything like the F22s do.

IF, IF, the F35B model works as well as this USMC General claimed they did in the last Ex at Red Flag, it'll be a pretty big media story.  The USMC is standing up more squads of them now, they have a couple, and more coming, and will this time next year have 24+ of them forward deployed in Japan.  The advantage the F35B gives over the Harrier is something, IF it works as advertised, but sure isn't cheap.  We'll see on the A and C models I guess later on.

[Zimme83]

When I read the comments about the F-35 participation in Red Flag I see it as a confirmation that the F-35 isnt ready for any real action, If they had confidence that it could meet other American and European fighters they would not have limited its role in the exercise. It's not very surprising tough, we will probably not see a truly combat ready f-35 squad for another 2-3 years. And only then its true capabilities can be determine.

[PR3D4TOR]

Anyone remember the post Eagl made about his time in the ROK?

Pred is right, others too, IF the DPRK played our game, they would get slaughtered in the air.  However, what if they initiated a massive surprise arty attack vs Seoul, the DMZ, etc, and at the same time attacked the very, VERY few bases where the ROK/USAF fighters are based with huge, huge special forces attacks, and co-ordinated THAT with a selective nuke strike or two.  Unlikely, yes, but it COULD happen, especially the first part.  Then those ancient cannon/dumb bomb armed fighters aren't so useless any longer.  Remember a few months ago when the DPRK sortied nearly all their subs?  The South/NATO lost them, nearly all of them, for days.  They COULD infiltrate in huge numbers of SF troops, they have the largest SF units in the world for a reason.  100+ of them hitting Kunsan, Osan, and others - which are all near the sea - isn't impossible.

Sure the DPRK has a huge army, and a human wave is still a human wave. If the North invades, South Korea would suffer enormous casualties and destruction of property, mostly civilian. Personally I don't think the DPRK would win in the end, but it would still be a disaster on an unprecedented scale for the South.

Eagl's point about "buying a lot of new fighters with half the missile loadout of the ones we have isn't the way to win that fight" I cannot agree with however. Mainly because the F-35 does not have "half the missile loadout". In a fight against an enemy like the DPRK where half the air force doesn't even have radar, the F-35's stealth can be sacrificed for a greater missile loadout.

In such a scenario the F-35 can carry twice the missile loadout of an F-16, not half. Each F-35 effectively destroying a squadron's worth of DPRK aircraft. And in a pinch, let's say a MiG-29 shows up, those external hardpoints can be jettisoned restoring the F-35 stealth.

[FLOOB]

See Rule #4

[GScholz]

See Rule #4

Yay it's me! 

In other news:

"The Air Force will declare initial operational capability of the F-35A as early as Monday, meeting a goal set three years ago. "

http://www.airforcemag.com/DRArchive/Pages/2016/July%202016/July%2028%202016/F-35-IOC-Imminent.aspx

[Squire]

Each F-35 effectively destroying a squadron's worth of DPRK aircraft

If only real life was anything like the shiny brochures.

[GScholz]

If only real life was anything like the shiny brochures.

Then how many Mig-17s and Mig-19s do you think a 14-missiles armed F-35 can destroy?

[GScholz]

 

"The second drill, though, did not go as planned – in the best possible way, Davis said. The planes were to fly a close-air support mission through clouds at 1,000 feet, with the planes in the 3F configuration that allows for pylons to externally carry 18,000 pounds of bombs.

“I’m out there, the commandant of the Marine Corps is out there, I want to impress the commandant,” Davis said.
“This first scenario was awesome, and then right before the second scenario I said, are we ready to go? And this young major comes up … he goes, ‘we’re not going to do exactly what you want us to do.’ I’m like [eyes grow wide]. “Because we didn’t think the tasking was challenging enough. So we’ve got two that are slick and two that are loaded up as bomb trucks. We can do the job sir, don’t worry.’”

So two planes forfeited their external carry capacity in exchange for stealth, and “it was a work of art,” Davis said. The planes hit all their targets in five and a half minutes, with the four planes passing images through the clouds and successfully taking out the missile threat early on.

“I just watched, I’m like, that’s not how my brain works, but that is the way their brains are working,” he said.
“Gen.(Charles) Krulak, who I used to work for, said ‘you don’t man the equipment, you equip the man,’ so we’re equipping these young Marines, this generation that doesn’t know any bounds for latitude for technology, and they’re leveraging this technology and doing great things.”

https://news.usni.org/2016/07/29/f-35b-tactics-evolving

[Vraciu]

Then how many Mig-17s and Mig-19s do you think a 14-missiles armed F-35 can destroy?

With the AMRAAM's anemic PK, maybe two.