Dogfight : F35 vs F16

[save]

One thing that most people don't know, it's going to be MUCH harder to use radar at enemy territory in the future, given they are high-tech enough to degrade your radar with mobile or semi-mobile stations like the next generations of the Krasuha-series.

All comms are basically gone- radio, radar, GPS etc within a large radius from those units, drones for example, cannot rely on any input from outside, only do basic missions, if even that.

[GScholz]

Brazil has ordered the NG, that has very little in common with the Gripen C. Dont fall into the trap of comparing the two.

Brazil has ordered the Gripen E, which I wrote in my previous post.

[GScholz]

So the Lockheed brochures say, ya. But I remind you that the F-35 is NOT a dedicated air superiority fighter.

I think everyone knows that. It is still a better air superiority fighter than any 4.5 gen or below.

...There is also the common theme here that the F-35 is just going to be fighting other planes in some antiseptic Battle of Britain style fight. It's tasked for strike and CAS as well. Tasks that by their very nature put aircraft at high risk. Interceptors, SAMS, AAA, all that crap.

Perhaps you need to read up on how modern air warfare is conducted. You do not run CAS or strike missions before eliminating the opposition air force. Then you go after the SAMs and AAA, then you go to CAS and general strike missions.

[shift8]

Perhaps you need to read up on how modern air warfare is conducted. You do not run CAS or strike missions before eliminating the opposition air force. Then you go after the SAMs and AAA, then you go to CAS and general strike missions.

THIS: I agree totally.

Many people seem to forget the the FIRST and PRIMARY mission of any air-force is to kill other air forces. Everything else follows.

[artik]

Perhaps you need to read up on how modern air warfare is conducted. You do not run CAS or strike missions before eliminating the opposition air force. Then you go after the SAMs and AAA, then you go to CAS and general strike missions.

Seriously - the engagement will indeed always goes by this scenario...

See if your air force has unlimited resources and can win total air superiority than it is cool... But sometimes you need to provide CAS when you don't have total or even partial air superiority and take huge risks and continue to do missions that under "normal" situation you should never be done, because guys on the ground may pay huge price if you don't...

I suggest read about IAF during Yom Kippur War - and it isn't about technology - but rather about assumptions what should be done by the book and what actually happens.

[shift8]

Seriously - the engagement will indeed always goes by this scenario...

See if your air force has unlimited resources and can win total air superiority than it is cool... But sometimes you need to provide CAS when you don't have total or even partial air superiority and take huge risks and continue to do missions that under "normal" situation you should never be done, because guys on the ground may pay huge price if you don't...

I suggest read about IAF during Yom Kippur War - and it isn't about technology - but rather about assumptions what should be done by the book and what actually happens.

If you lose your Air Force it wont matter what happens on the ground. For the ground war to win you have to either completely own the skies or contest their control so greatly that they are not a major problem. Without either of those conditions there has not been as successful offensive since during or since ww2.

Historically CAS has not been all that effective compared to the other types of ground support. Air power has had a much greater role in interdiction and logistical missions, or even strategic targets. Today ground attack will start with SEAD, and progress to strategic, logistical, and interdiction type missions. ISR of course must operate before and during all of this.

Against a peer opponent with a good IADS,  you wont be able to conduct CAS. It is interesting that you mention the Israelis, because it was the assumption that they would control the skies that lead to problems in the 1973. The Egyptians compensated for their inability to compete with aircraft and tanks with large numbers of SAM's and ATGM's. The SAM umbrella prevented CAS and other types of strikes from occurring because Israel wasnt oriented enough towards SEAD. They did however control the skies in a Air to Air sense. IF they had been properly equipped to tackle the SAM problem, they would have needed to control the skies so that they could actually attack the SAM's. However they were not, and they were not able to perform CAS until the Egyptians made the rather stupid mistake of advancing past the coverage of their SAM umbrella. If anything the 1973 example makes the point in favor of the F-35, not against it. It shows that if you dont have the ability to penetrate the defenses, you wont be able to support the troops. And it absolutely was about technology. It was technology that prevented the Israeli's from leveraging air power early on. And it was a lack of technology the prevented them from fixing the problem. The only time you win against a technically superior opponent is when you have something of offset that shortfall. So you either need numbers or terrain etc. OR in the case of the Egyptians, a enemy who is so dumb they fail to fully exploit the advantage they have.....

Throwing your strikers at a contested airspace is a gross waste of resources. IF cant fight and win, then you hold off until you can. You do the ground troops no favors by sacrificing your strikers on suicide missions. You are just wasting resources.

[Zimme83]

F-35 is  still far from being capable of doing SEAD missions and cannot fly with the agm-88 internally. So unless only using jdam it will loose its stealth abilities during SEAD missions.

Brazil has ordered the Gripen E, which I wrote in my previous post.

Then why are you using arguments that makes it sounds like they have bought the C?

[Toad]

No I dont have information from SCIF.....

Right. Exactly. What you have is what you have been able to glean from the Internet. You know, the place where every government posts the true capabilities of their military equipment.

I suspect even your 3 F-16 gurus have never been in anything other than a generic briefing on the F-35. I doubt they've been in an SCIF while learning about it which puts them not far above the Internet as a source. Maybe they've talked to a few F-35 drivers who are not going to spill TS info to their old UPT buddy but instead will talk generically about the aircraft.

My original point still stands. You cannot argue from a vacuum where everything the govt says is a lie, so that it can suit your POV.

Here's what stands: the things you "know" about the F-35 are the things the government has told you. I suspect you realize this.

They tell you what they want known. That doesn't necessarily mean it's all a lie. It means you only know what they allow you to know.

From that, you extrapolate that you actually know the true capabilities and failings of the aircraft.


Yeah.  Sure.

[Toad]

Seriously - the engagement will indeed always goes by this scenario...

See if your air force has unlimited resources and can win total air superiority than it is cool... But sometimes you need to provide CAS when you don't have total or even partial air superiority and take huge risks and continue to do missions that under "normal" situation you should never be done, because guys on the ground may pay huge price if you don't...

Exactly, Artik.

Apparently, there are some that think every future war will like the two Gulf wars where a very, very weak (non-existent?) enemy air force allows the aggressor air force a month to work targets unopposed before the ground war begins.

It seems that no one discusses a war where the side with the F-35 is under a sudden, massive, simultaneous air and ground assault.

[Zimme83]

If the goal is to win against opponents like Iraq or Serbia I recommend to scrap F-35, there is no need for such plane then, the teen fighters will do the job just as good.

[GScholz]

Shift8 is absolutely right about Yom Kippur. No war since WWII has been won without having at least air superiority, typically total air dominance. As long as the other side has an effective air force you cannot win a war. The Israeli state itself owes its very existence to a handful of guys in their hodgepodge mongrel 109s. A handful of guys in junk airplanes stopped the Arab armies just by contesting Egyptian air power over Israel. Just by existing. Just as the RAF had done in 1940.

[artik]

Neither you @GScholz nor @Shift8 got my point.

But it is probably due to controversy of the topic, there were many reasons why IAF failed to handle the SAMs threat and achieve full air superiority. The standard explanation is that it wasn't properly prepared in terms of operational intelligence and didn't had technological means to handle the threat properly.

However originally planned tactics wasn't fully executed back there.

Nobody knows what would happen _if_ IAF was operating according to original plans when it was first had to deal with SAMs and than with all the rest. IAF was thrown to close the gaps in the defense instead of performing "planned" tasks by the doctrine of destroying SAM threat during the first days the rest is history.

In fact several hours before the was broken the fully armed Phantoms and Skyhaws were ready to take the first bites of the enemy but never took off for reasons unrelated to IAF or doctrine.

Would original anti-SAM missions execution as planned from the beginning would change the situation maybe yes and maybe not - nobody knows, but the reality is that at war it isn't always possible to play by the doctrine.

So talking about performing CAS only when the superiority achieved is talking out of the history or reality context.

[GScholz]

Don't you see how the fact that Syria and Egypt failed to achieve air superiority over the battlefield led to their armies failing in their invasions? Israel achieved local air superiority over the battlefield allowing air to mud operations against the Arab armies. The IAF also attacked Egyptian and Syiran air fields. Some of the most famous air battles of that war was the IAF and Arab air forces trying to knock each other out of the war. Like the battle of Ofira and the battle of Mansoura. But neither managed to do so and thus there was a stalemate.

[GScholz]

Then why are you using arguments that makes it sounds like they have bought the C?

I'm not. Not intending to at least. Please elaborate.

[shift8]

Right. Exactly. What you have is what you have been able to glean from the Internet. You know, the place where every government posts the true capabilities of their military equipment.

I suspect even your 3 F-16 gurus have never been in anything other than a generic briefing on the F-35. I doubt they've been in an SCIF while learning about it which puts them not far above the Internet as a source. Maybe they've talked to a few F-35 drivers who are not going to spill TS info to their old UPT buddy but instead will talk generically about the aircraft.

Here's what stands: the things you "know" about the F-35 are the things the government has told you. I suspect you realize this.

They tell you what they want known. That doesn't necessarily mean it's all a lie. It means you only know what they allow you to know.

From that, you extrapolate that you actually know the true capabilities and failings of the aircraft.


Yeah.  Sure.

Good, I finally got you to admit that everything the USAF says is not a lie.

Second, no all my sources are not from the government, and  some of the government ones where written before the F-35 was big deal. Alot of it has to do with general air combat etc. 90% of what has been discusses here has not be specific F-35 performance but missile and stealth conversation. There is very little technical data about the F-35 aside from general numbers. So your point is moot since at no point in this conversation has anyone been flinging around any claim of having precise details on the planes performance. The only known characteristics of the plane are some known data points on the aircraft's thrust, weight, wing loading, AoA clearance, and simple stuff like that. Alot of inferences can be made about the jet by combining that general info with general scientific knowledge. Unless you are going to accuse them of lying about something like the top speed of the plane. I have books that were published in the 1960's and 1970s that give other aircraft's top speed when they were new, and it miraculously still has the same top speed today.

And lastly, you are awfully negative about the planes future for someone who ALSO doesn't have the data you claim the rest of us don't. It is completely rational to form an opinion based on the information that is available: much of which is known for a fact. It is much better than your nonsensical "since I cant be certain, it must suck. Also the government are just a bunch of liars" conspiracy theory.