Is the image correct?

Anyone can simulate an ideal jet. Mine has force fields and mass drivers.

But seriously, we won't know until well after its deployed, since they sure as hell won't release combat stats right away if it sucks.

If it does end up performing as simulated, then that would be pretty cool. It would be interesting to see the other superpower reactions, since I doubt they've been sitting on their hands this whole time.

You can count on American electronics to be far, far ahead of anything from Russia or China. That includes radar.

The American military focuses on developing high-cost weapons, partly because it's profitable for the groups who push it and partly because it's good strategy. You have to expect any technological advantage to be temporary, as your weapons are copied, and new cheap tech can enable your enemies to disrupt your strategy, but if you've got more money and you buy stuff your potential adversaries can't afford, that's an advantage that persists as long as the economic situation does. They want stagnation of affordable technology, and innovation of technology that's prohibitively costly for opponents.

isn't there only like a dozen or so of those russian planes?

6 I think, they can't afford to order anymore and they're only projected to make 150, but the F-35 has thousands of orders so the program (if delivered) has already paid for itself.

The F-35 during Red Flag shot down F-22s.

And the F-22s proving was it shooting down F-15s, so that tells you how superior it really is.

Which as I said in the above ^ Russia can't maintain the costs of 5th gen and even if they could, they can't afford the latest technology.

The PAK-FA is dead in the water as a program, no one allied with Russia can afford it and China is just copying U.S aircraft design.

It's quite an amazing time for the US defense department.

You're a fuckin idiot. You'll get far better answeres there. They are great with planes.

They're not.

I've witnessed the shit posting, I don't feel like drudging through miles of nonsense to find a single good point.

This looks like CMANO, which means they are working with limited information for both aircraft.

>inb4 but PAK-FA maneuverability

Air show maneuvers are a good way to die in real combat, and the F-35 is very maneuverable.

So you haven't actually been in a /k/ F-35 thread.

>The F-35 during Red Flag shot down F-22s.

That never happened, but they did spank F-15E's.

Am I allowed to admit it's been a while?

I can't imagine being able to do fancy flips and shit would really help in any kind of dogfight, unless you'd blown out all your missiles and were in a bad spot I guess.

Fairly sure It was an interview with the test pilot.

I don't know about F-35 vs F-15, that does seem pointless.

>I don't know about F-35 vs F-15, that does seem pointless.

There was a survey of 31 pilots comparing the F-35 to their previous aircraft.

...

Lol, guess all the bitching about the F-35 replacing the A-10 doesn't sit with the pilots.

I guess as infantry you probably need the morale boost of the gun from the A-10 a lot more than you need the target killed.

poor A-10

/k/ is a bunch of jingoistic illiterates.

I imagine the pilots facepalming when asked how they felt about BVR in a fucking A-10.

>Lol, guess all the bitching about the F-35 replacing the A-10 doesn't sit with the pilots.
Those are air-to-air one-on-one matchup preferences, not effectiveness-in-role evaluations. A-10 is a ground-attack plane with only basic or incidental air-to-air capabilities for self-defense purposes.

Of that list, only the F-15C and F-16C are air-to-air fighters. F-15E is essentially a bomber. Furthermore, the F-35 is in its configuration for optimal air-to-air duel performance (F-35A, internal load only), though it's a multirole vehicle and its performance will depend on its variant and loadout.

When people talk about the F-35 being bad, they're not mostly talking about performance compared to older jets, but cost-effectiveness, suitability for all the different roles it's supposed to be taking over, and reliability.

The Air Force has announced its intention to keep the A-10 indefinitely.

????

The F-35 can deliver ordnance much more precisely and with less risk to the pilot than the A-10???

F-35 can also loiter the battle space longer and effectively track new incoming air/ground targets andddd engage them a split second.

The A-10 is way too out classed, I'm willing to bet the Aircraft is used as some kind of Morale boost.

The modern military the US DoD is shooting for is one where enemy and ally fight with software rather than hardware, A-10 is pure hardware that can only react, F-25 is the ELINT, AEW&C, SEAD, EW anddd it can shoot shit.

>the F-35 is in its configuration for optimal air-to-air duel performance (F-35A, internal load only)

??????????????????
>cost-effectiveness

It's replacing ALLLLLL listed above specialized aircraft, simply no need for so many of them.

Old planes = high maintenance costs

The cost of the F-35 now will be repaid in future.

This is an aircraft American/NATO allies are scrambling for.

give an F-35 to kenya and they can suddenly compete with Canada in A2A

What's the russky doing over Britain?

Idk wanted landmass for scale lol.

I can't tell if you're an actual shill or you've just been listening to them. These are the talking points, yes, but no serious informed person could actually believe them.

>It's replacing ALLLLLL listed above specialized aircraft
It will certainly not. F-35 is a high-cost, high-maintenance aircraft. So you spend a lot of money on them, and then they spend most of the time on the ground, costing more money.

Compared to the F-15E, it's also much slower (mach 2.5 vs. mach 1.6), shorter-range, and carries less payload. Compared to A-10, it's too fragile to get down in the action, will rarely fly, and carries much less payload.

F-35 serves little to no purpose in the US military, but it is a stealth jet being offered for export, with reasonable suitability for air-to-air and ground attack roles, like a poor man's F-22 and F-117 rolled into one. This is the only reasonable way for most eligible countries to gain these stealth capabilities. If the US wants to sell it, they also have to use it.

Export jet is for exports. It's a way to strengthen allies with capabilities adversaries lack, while holding them well below the US level.

Are you suggesting the F-22 is better than the F-35?

You know its tech is old rite?

F-22 is more stealthy, faster, higher-flying, dedicated purely to the air superiority role, and contains not-for-export technology.

It is unquestionably the superior air-to-air fighter.

Rarely is one plane simply "better" than another. F-35 has more range, is designed to support ground attack, and it has variants with features for carrier launch and even VTOL.

>its tech is old
The airframe is designed with considerations in mind which are still modern, and the rest is actively updated.

>When people talk about the F-35 being bad, they're not mostly talking about performance compared to older jets, but cost-effectiveness, suitability for all the different roles it's supposed to be taking over, and reliability.

You were believable up to this point.

>The Air Force has announced its intention to keep the A-10 indefinitely

The Air Force announced that they understand arm chair generals in congress will not let them retire the A10.

>We don't know. The majority of the F35 program is Top Secret

All you need do is check out Hillary Clinton's email about her F-35 briefing. It is all there!

>F-22 is more stealthy

The F-35 has a lower RCS and its RAM coating is being retrofitted to the F-22

>faster

yes

>higher-flying

The altitude both aircraft can fly at is classified, and artificial restrictions during testing is irrelevant

>dedicated purely to the air superiority role

The F-22 has alwaysbeen able to drop bombs, and did so in Syria.

>and contains not-for-export technology.

The F-22 was banned for export because at the time Israel was suspected in China acquiring F-16 tech.

Nice stalling

>Old planes = high maintenance costs
>high maintenance costs for a plane built with string and aluminum foil

As a reference, B-52's cost more to fly than B-1's.

The F-35 has a lower RCS and its RAM coating is being retrofitted to the F-22

Except literally not? RAM has very little effect on RCS compared to the actual shape of the aircraft, and the shape of the F-35 is far less geometrically fit to disperse x band than the F-22, the biggest problems are the super sonic intake bumps, and the intake leads not receding into the fuselage on the bottom.

globalsecurity.org/military/world/stealth-aircraft-rcs.htm

I think an Air Force general saying the F-35 is stealthier than an F-22 takes precedent over an arm chair general.

Quoting Globalsecurity isn't helping you.

>B-52's cost more to fly than B-1's.
Are you just here in general to post things that are the opposite of the truth?

B-1s cost twice as much to fly as B-52s, plus they have a lower availability rate and a shorter range.

They're both about the same size, but the B-1 is a supersonic swing-wing jet, while the B-52 is subsonic and airliner-like. The additional complexity increases maintenance costs more than the age difference.

>the F-35 is stealthier than an F-22
What Air Force general says that?

>Doesn't mean anything if the enemy can kill you before you see him.
If.

flightglobal.com/news/articles/f-35a-cost-and-readiness-data-improves-in-2015-as-fl-421499/

IIRC it was Mike Hostage

cost per flight hour =/= maintenance costs. stop moving the goalposts.

I'm not sure I believe this data. Just a few years ago, they were saying the B-1 cost twice as much to fly as the B-52.

There are contradictions, too. They say the fleet-wide average availability of F-35s is 51%, but in the chart they show "mission-capable" over 68%.

There's a lot of dodgy stuff that's been going on to shill the F-35 program, both for congressional support and the export market.

t. /k/uck

Cost per flight hour includes maintenance costs.

Man up and admit you were wrong about which plane costs more to fly.

Not knowing what things mean does not make them dodgy.

It does include maintenance costs, but it is not maintenance costs alone. It also includes fuel and consumables and depot costs. If you wanted to include those other factors then you should have specified that from the start.

Also, note what your own link says:
>The tiny B-2A fleet is the most expensive bomber to maintain ($128,805 per flight hour) followed by the B-1B ($58,488) and B-52H ($67,005) because fixed costs are divided among fewer aircraft.

No, there is a lot of information and false implications favorable to the F-35 spread by people who ought to know better.

They've been pushing very hard to sell it, and haven't been overly honest in their pitch.

I think it's fairly likely that there's a paid shill in this discussion, working for a PR firm under a contract to Lockheed Martin, pushing talking points like, "It's better than the F-22 at air-to-air!", "It can do everything the A-10 does, but better!", and "It'll actually SAVE money!"

It's a $1.5 TRILLION program. A billion dollars is less than 0.1% of the money at stake. There's a practically unlimited budget for bribes and shilling.

You guys better not be selling us a duffer.

F-35, the Duke Nukem Forever of planes.

>bribes and shilling
>1.5 Trillion
Are you one of those retards that got howled out of /k/ and decided to shill other boards that are less informed?

The overwhelming information force in both media and governments has been anti F35, and their talking points are exactly the same as yours.

>The overwhelming information force in both media and governments has been anti F35, and their talking points are exactly the same as yours.
Yeah, that? That's called "the truth".

The truth about the F-35 is that it's an overpriced, oversold, mediocre-performing, operationally troubled plane that's going to age like milk.

Saying that it's better than the Raptor at stealth and air-to-air are lies. Saying it'll be better than the A-10 at close air support is a lie. Saying a mach 1.6 jet is a replacement for a mach 2.5 jet for air superiority (F-15C) or interdiction (F-15E) is a lie. Saying a stealth jet will be affordable to maintain in the long term is a lie.

People are pushing these lies because it's a $1.5 trillion program. Money is always spent into someone's pocket.

>Air Force general
Because they're now technical experts?
Your non existent sourve2isn't helping you.

F-35 > F-22, the technology on the F-35 will overpower any and all hardware.

this is the new state of aerial combat, dogfights are done.

>inb4 but muh F-4

F-35 isn't at all as capable in a stealth role as F-22 whoever said that is a moron, the F-22 is designed as a pure stealth fighter.

The F-35 has anti-radar coating only on certain areas of the aircraft, this saves weight but costs stealth, it can be picked up by ground radar sooner than the F-22.

But..

The compensation is the AN/APG-81 that can detect the enemy, jam the enemy and track the enemy while all the enemy can do is look.

The F-35 has the distinct advantage of being able to take off anywhere (VSTOL version), in a field, forest, carrier, runway doesn't matter, tactically it's quite an advantage, should you lose any front-line airfields.

A lot of the people who hate the F-35 in media are Russian/Chinese media agencies writing slander to try skew public opinion.

Lockheed hasn't flopped on a single project asked of them, from the SR-71, F-111, to the F-22.

People focus way too much on hardware, they're not understanding the future of warfare wont even involve pilots, it's about seeing the enemy first, killing him from further away and being able to go from air-to-air to air-to-ground

prove that the F-22 is more capable aerial fighter than the F-35.

if the F-35 has the option to spot you and leave or spot you and kill you first, what options do you have? hope he misses? hope to get in gun range?

>overpriced
The F35 is multitude of systems that were previously not innate to the the air frame as well as new technology that has never been in air frame. In comparison with other modern aircraft, it completely outclasses everything while being in some cases cheaper.
helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/politics/10310-haglund-advises-against-jas-fighter-acquisition.html
>Although I advocate co-operation with Sweden, we should not acquire Swedish JAS fighters when we could acquire American F-35 stealth fighters for roughly the same price. Performance must take precedence in the investment,” emphasises Haglund.

>oversold
When dealing with this massive misinformation campaign, spearheaded by the equivalent of pop sci culture in military technology and philosophy, the F35 is quite undersold.

> mediocre-performing
Nothing, in existence today can offer the capabilities that the F35 offers.

>Saying that it's better than the Raptor at stealth and air-to-air are lies.
Is this by any chance your comment
>F-35 is far less geometrically fit to disperse x band than the F-22
?

> Saying it'll be better than the A-10 at close air support is a lie.
It's a lie if you are a retard who is infatuate with big guns and think close air support means getting close to your target. The A10 is not the premier CAS aircraft in the US military, the B1 is. An aircraft that has neither a gun, or is capable of getting close to its target. The only thing the A10 could do in today's battlefield is shoot at goat farmers, because it certainly would not survive a modern contested air space. So in fact, as far as role competence goes, it can't go actually do it;'s role, if presented with any sort of resistance.

>Saying a mach 1.6 jet is a replacement for a mach 2.5 jet for air superiority (F-15C) or interdiction (F-15E) is a lie.
No variant, not the silent eagle, not the 2040c is going to take down an F35. Mach means nothing but time on target, in the information war space.

>because it certainly would not survive a modern contested air space

Thissss.

Do people understand the amount of air support it'd take just to get a flight of A-10s to a modern 4th/5th gen battle area?

They would need Growlers, ELINT, Air support from F-16/18s

and even then, it can be fucked by ground fire and big guns.

The A-10 is phenomenal in a sandbox against goat fuckers that are using 1970s russian weapons and unsecured radios.

Russia doesn't work like that, too many people focus on the battlefield of now, the F-35 is for now and tomorrow and the next day, it's designed for a much bigger war than Afghanistan/Iraq

There's a reason NATO countries want to aquire so many, it will take a military from the 80s and bring it to 2017/2020/2030/2040.

General Hostage is a credible source, you are not.

af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Article/104754/general-gilmary-michael-hostage-iii.aspx

What clickbait blog did you get that drivel from?

Lockheed Martin.

direct me to what you think is wrong?

breakingdefense.com/2013/01/why-the-air-force-needs-a-lot-of-f-35s-gen-hostage-on-the-com/

This guy? lol

He seems very pro-F35 and understands the new aerial warfare is alllllllll digital hence "combat cloud"

We're not playing by top gun rules any more, it's going to take a war before American citizens and amateur military analysts understand how things are done now.

it's a tech race, the F-35 is just the bed it's going to be built on, it doesn't need to go mach 383495.2 or turn in 0.2seconds

it just needs to carry the most sophisticated radars and electronics, to deliver the most sophisticated ATA ATG weaponry with 99% accuracy, from 100nm away.

Continued...
>Saying a stealth jet will be affordable to maintain in the long term is a lie.
No stealth is cheap and so are propellers. Stealth is not cheap, it is necessary

>People are pushing these lies because it's a $1.5 trillion program.
The $1.3 trillion number is actually quite remarkable, in that it is unprecedented for a military project budget to be talked about in theoretical life time budget. So here we are, presented unrepresented openness, which has been the general theme of the JSF, were every little problem that has been found, in development of the project, has been shared with the world at larger. After all the, role of GAO is not to the discuss what is good, but what is bad. So in the end you have a common populace influencing military development theory, via political pressure, based on information that will only ever be bad.

Yes, the JSF was a mistake, a mistake about openness. A mistake the military is probably not going to commit again from sometime to come, if judging by the other big developments that have recently started.

>The A-10 is phenomenal in a sandbox against goat fuckers that are using 1970s russian weapons and unsecured radios.
it's pretty convenient then that that describes most of our modern combat scenarios

Yeah except, despite what user said, it is not actually phenomenal at that either.

You're still not getting it

The F-35 is designed to fit in right now and in future.

do you really think the United States should have its entire military orientated toward fighting dune coons efficiently?

Doesn't that make it ridiculously easy to Russia to stroll in with a Gen5 airforce and fuck your shit up?

The U.S is preparing for (as it should) the big one, the big 3, the big PACT V NATO.

and it's done it so well it's blown anything China/Russia have out the water and will continue to.

Russia got to space first with Sputnik, did the U.S just try to launch better satellites, faster and cheaper?
No, they went balls deep and shot for the moon.

that's the F-35, shooting for the moon.

>do you really think the United States should have its entire military orientated toward fighting dune coons efficiently?
i think that keeping a dirt cheap effective solution in operation alongside the state of the art planes is a suitable compromise

it's not needed, it's just extra cost.

The A-10 carries the same type of weapons, sure it can carry more but look at it, it has to get close to the enemy to deliver them, it has to be in harms way, yes its strong it can take damage, but should it?

Would you rather attack a tank column up close or obliterate from afar?

what if there were enemy jets in the area guarding that column, you gonna' enter that bubble in your A-10 alone? no, you'll need cover, so now we have to send F-16s up to make sure you don't get killed.

Meanwhile, I'll just stay here at a cozy 35,000ft deciding which tanks I wanna' kill and which ones my wingman can handle, by the way, I can assign him targets on the fly without even using the radio. not only that, if one of those jets pops up, I can have him handled right after I've delivered my GBU-12s.

all easily done in the space of 5 minutes.

The A-10 just doesn't have that kind of flexibility, it's too vulnerable for a modern battlefield.

Can it REALLY do anything better?

>it's not needed, it's just extra cost.
the military has plenty of money to spare. they're not pinching pennies anywhere else, they can afford it

Holy shit, the F-35 shill called in reinforcements to spam Veeky Forums into submission with essay-length bullshit.

Wait, you're advocating the military continue a money sinkpit when there's a solution right in their hands?
Why?
nostalgia?

All the pro A-10 sentiment comes from troops who had them swoop in, do loud farting gun runs on dunecoons which made them feel safe and protected, it's a powerful feeling, huge morale boost., if I were there I'd want that thing flying around me 24/7.

but from a tactical standpoint.. having that A-10 do that is very risky and dangerous for pilot and aircraft, a risk they want gone.

wish I could be a shill.

Shilling for the best aircraft ever = best,easiest job ever.

...

>The A-10 just doesn't have that kind of flexibility, it's too vulnerable for a modern battlefield.
>Can it REALLY do anything better?
Well, the Air Force has just recently looked at how the F-35 is actually shaping up and declared their intent to keep the A-10 in service indefinitely, so yeah, obviously the experts think it can.

If you need stealth to survive in a contested airspace, then the F-35 can't survive with any external loadout, which means it can only hit a tiny fraction of the targets an A-10 can take out in one sortie... as opposed to the small fraction of the A-10s targets it can take out with a maximum external loadout.

Anyway, if you're doing strikes into contested airspace, you're not really talking about close air support, the A-10's role, but interdiction, the F-15E's role. And you know how fast sound travels? That's approximately how much faster the F-15E can fly than the F-35. That speed means hitting targets sooner when minutes count, and freedom to disengage from, and thereby survive, a bad situation when kitted out for interdiction rather than air-to-air.

The F-35 has stealth, but that's its only trick, and it loses it whenever it takes a normal combat load. It can't fly faster or higher than other planes. Once it's detected, it has to turn and fight, with whatever it has, and that's a losing proposition if it's loaded to hit ground targets.

>Shilling for the best aircraft ever = best,easiest job ever.
Then why are you struggling so hard and telling so many lies?

>F-35 vs PAK-FA
why does this matter? if russia and the us go to war it's over.

>The F-35 has stealth, but that's its only trick, and it loses it whenever it takes a normal combat load

Still.
focusing.
On
Hardware

It's software /radar is the F-35s most lethal weapon

You don't think they had the option to create a bigger, faster aircraft than the F-15?
of course they did, and they could have.

>If you need stealth to survive in a contested airspace

you don't.

If the situation warrants stealth, that's what the F-35 will do.
if the situation requires more ordnance, that's what it will do.

You just have 2 flights.

A sweep flight to clear the airspace.
A ground attack flight to attack ground targets.

Sweep fighters can operate on stealth, not be seen, clear the airspace and allow the non-stealth ground attack flight to come in and do its job.

Do you get it?

A single F-35 is multi-capable
Multiple F-35s are....... an entire air force.
This. is. the. combat cloud.

it doesn't.
it's about what is better in theory.
mental masturbation.

>Still. focusing. On Hardware
>It's software
F-35.
Is.
Hardware.
You.
Chimp.

You can load software and do electronics upgrades on anything. If that was the important thing, there was no reason to build a new jet.

>Sweep fighters can operate on stealth, not be seen, clear the airspace
F-22.

>and allow the non-stealth ground attack flight to come in and do its job.
F-15E, A-10.

Yes, this is how it already works. And it's cheaper and more effective than doing everything with one jack-of-all-trades shitshow.

Replacing it all with F-35s would mean every part of the system works worse. Slower, less stealthy air superiority, slower, less survivable interdiction, less heavily armed, less tough close air support.

>This. is. the. combat cloud.
Do they hire you guys off of like, Mechanical Turk? Or are you all in a callcenter in India?

>Sweep fighters can operate on stealth, not be seen, clear the airspace
>F-22.

Here's how I know you still not getting it
You're still thinking about needing one aircraft for each role in support of each other, rather than one aircraft for all roles supporting each other.

You know the F-22 has less range right?
it can't loiter like an F-35 can.

F-22 wins on stealth, loses at everything else.
bad compromise.

>and allow the non-stealth ground attack flight to come in and do its job.
>F-15E, A-10.

So, 2 aircraft to achieve one goal?
Attack the ground and clear the air?

Why not 1 aircraft that can do both interchangeably?

The F-35 shot down and defeated the F-15 in exercises.
the F-15 can't hit what it can't see, the same is true for the enemy.

They know the F-15 is there, they can therefore kill the F-15.
It doesn't matter how fast or agile it is, missiles will catch it and will kill it.

F-15 will be sold to allies we know we can fuck up if they get cheeky.
the F-35 is exclusive to the most trusted allies, you don't want that level of firepower going to the wrong hands.

Like I said.

an F-35 can make Kenya/Somalia on the same level as Canada or Australia, just imagine a Somalian Cessna pilot shooting down veteran F-18 pilots from Canada or F-15 pilots from the U.S because his aircraft is just that capable.

>F-22 wins on stealth, loses at everything else.
You absolute garbage. How can you take money for such unsubtle lies?

F-22 top speed: mach 2.25 (1.8 without afterburners)
F-35 top speed: mach 1.6 (subsonic without afterburners)

F-22 is a much higher-performance aircraft, with twice the thrust. Higher speed, higher ceiling, higher acceleration, and yes, with its higher thrust-to-weight and two-nozzle thrust vectoring, it can pull off crazier maneuvers. It would be competitive with the F-15 without stealth. F-35 is slow for air-to-air, limited to ambushing planes that fly faster than it and unable to pick its battles.

The F-22 is the most advanced and effective fighter on the planet, which is incidentally capable of some bombing. The F-35 is a light stealth bomber, which is tarted up as a fighter for marketing purposes.

Isn't all this getting a bit ridiculous? I mean if you try and fly a fleet of fancy aircraft into an area smothered in AA missiles they are going to get shot down, same with parking an aircraft carrier too close to the action.

I just am not seeing why the US is still obsessed with piloted aircraft with such a ridiculous price tag and level of complexity , it's far easier to simply refine radar and detection than to hide from it in the end IMO.

I like air shows but it's going to be an epic shit show if the west seriously thinks they can just go anywhere with their fleet and kick ass in the 21st century. Iran, Russia and China and any puppet state they want to supply will spell a disturbingly quick end to any notion of air superiority, of course that could all just escalate to full on nuclear war quickly which is maybe the idea? What do I know tho, I am just a leaf.

>I am getting thoroughly BTFO
>better scream shill so I can pretend to have the moral high ground

>direct me to what you think is wrong?
>The F-35 has anti-radar coating only on certain areas of the aircraft, this saves weight but costs stealth, it can be picked up by ground radar sooner than the F-22.

I do to, here is a more suitable aircraft for that purpose than the A-10.

I think you have no idea what goes on if you think "fly a fleet of fancy aircraft into an area smothered in AA missiles" is an accurate representation.

>Well, the Air Force has just recently looked at how the F-35 is actually shaping up and declared their intent to keep the A-10 in service indefinitely, so yeah, obviously the experts think it can.

Such a hilariously blatant lie.

>The F-22 is the most advanced and effective fighter on the planet,
>The F-22 is the most advanced

The F-22 is 90's tech.

I heard the original Chinese fighter has pretty good specs...

If two modern aircraft both have radar jamming and flares, aren't all missiles useless against each other? Does this bring back good-old cannon v cannon dogfights? Is close range combat the future?

Well I am thinking say US sends a couple aircraft carriers or some battle group floating up the Straits of Hormuz, The North Sea or into the South China Sea and starts flying their fancy stealth planes all over the place and actual hostilities break out. That fleet is going to quickly be smothered in missiles and sink, the planes in the sky shot down all over some silly posturing.

I just think that sort of conventional war is done, it they need to occupy a place its always boots on the ground. They can send 1000 cruise missiles in first or whatever, I am just not seeing the role of air superiority aircraft anymore, dogfights are history except in some little insignificant skirmish. I duno, just looks like a lot of misplaced dick waving to me but that cash, soooo much. The weaponry that could be assembled for that dollar figure should be astounding, not a handful of some bling craft that could disappear before a fight even gets rolling.

No.

Missile tech evolves with aircraft tech.

Good old fashioned maneuverability and radar jamming/flares is generally enough to defeat missiles.

unless you can't see the aircraft about to shoot you.
then you don't have any time to maneuver and the missile is already right behind you by the time your radar detects it.

This is why F-35 > Everything else

Thank you.
so is its previous gen radar, that is why F-35 is superior to it.

>A-10 indefinitely
I don't think so.

How is that false?
the aircrafts design itself is built on stealth..
the aircraft is mostly carbon fiber, with anti-radar coating around the edges and air intake.

I mean if you try and fly a fleet of fancy aircraft into an area smothered in AA missiles they are going to get shot down

No they're not, because you're again underestimating the technological power of the F-35.

Unlike previous aircraft (F-22, F-15) The F-35s radar is so fucking powerful it can completely black out the enemy radar, so the cunt sitting there waiting to launch his SA-N-1/Goa
Wont be able to see dick on his screen, all he'll know is someone if using EW on his shit, he doesn't know where or who, but someone is around fucking him over.

And, in about 3 minutes, he'll have GBU's or cluster munitions falling all over him.

AA can't see the F-35, you need extremely powerful radar to detect it and just because you detected it doesn't mean you can shoot it, the missile systems need radar lock too, you'd be better off just firing RPGs at the general direction, hoping for a hit.

>I just am not seeing why the US is still obsessed with piloted aircraft with such a ridiculous price tag and level of complexity

Pilot of the F-35 doesn't really do anything, the systems are in control of most of it, the pilots just add items to the kill list based on threat priority.

>Pic related
this is a radar image from AN/APG-81 after a single look.
Best.Plane.Ever

>long post is looong

SAM SA-21a Growler radar range: 230nm
F-35 AN/ASQ-239 barracuda (EW) Range: reportedly over 400nm, perhaps more, since it's been modified since being in the F-22.

The meaning of this?

If you're operating an SA-21 and an f-35 comes within 400nm of you, you're blinded before he's even in your firing range.

Thanks for that clarification. But in that case an F-35 is too much of a multirole craft that is mediocre in all fields. Consider a missile carrier aircraft with a beefy radar dome on top like pic related, with help from modern radar technology it would detect an enemy aircraft from twice the distance and eliminate it. It also wouldn't cost 1.5 trillion dollars. This leaves one other option for aircraft that need to get past such an impenetrable mobile defence missile screen: SPEED. The reboot of the YF-23 would be a nice place to start. By not having radar jamming at all and emphasising in stealth, the fast aircraft could avoid having it's large discordant radar footprint being detected and perform strike missions with ease, and it could have a dedicated bomb-bay that doesn't require hardpoints and ruin it's stealth. This is assuming that radar jamming doesn't get rid of your radar footprint but rather overpowers it with noise, which would be the blurry noise spot that an F-35 fires a heat-seeking missile into to shoot down the enemy before the enemy sees him. Please tell me if this assumption is incorrect.

>too much of a multirole craft that is mediocre in all fields.

stopped reading here, you are just throwing mud at the wall hoping something will stick

You can't stealth out of every radar, even the most stealthy aircraft can show up on radar, all it does make the signature as small as possible.

The next step is after making it small, jam it so they can't see anything.

The aircraft you posted has a large dome for ELINT and jamming, it detects thing at large ranges, but only jams them closer up, air craft like that require fighter support.

The F-18 Growler is the navy replacement, it would go up in support of aircraft like you posted.

The F-35 is both of these in 1.

The F-35 is absolutely not mediocre, it's exceptional in all fields.

Here I'll explain.

Normally, when you have a battlespace the first thing the commander would send in

- ELINT aircraft - To scan the general area for threats
- AEW aircraft to jam the threats and keep them suppressed
- SEAD aircraft to eliminate the priority threads
Then
- Ground attack/bombers to bomb the main targets.

F-35 was designed to roll this all into 1.

It can be sent into a hostile area without the pilot knowing at all what's in there or what to expect, the radar will identify 10 threats in 3 seconds 23 in 10 seconds and track them all individually, aerial/ground doesn't matter.

It will then tell the pilot what threats are priority (usually aerial threats) and the pilot can assign them in an order of elimination.

While he's picking a target, the radar focusing all its energy on the biggest/closest radar/SAM/Aircraft jamming it from firing/tracking him.

I really want people to understand just how fucking incredible the technology on the F-35 is.

If you believe aircraft performance in the air is what will matter in the future battlefield or even now, you're so, so wrong.

youtube.com/watch?v=SnqeqEtbvo8
>long post is long

Ignoring the few production faults such as bad tires and suspension that will hopefully be ironed out in a few years, my counter-argument is as follows.

>even the most stealthy aircraft can show up on radar
Like a bird does, funny how using stealth to make a radar signature imitate that of a bird is how stealth aircraft have worked for all these years against powerful land-based radar systems that outperform any mobile radar. Why does the F-35 even have a stealth design in the first place?

>exceptional in all fields
Worse energy fighter than an F-16
warisboring.com/read-for-yourself-the-f-35-s-damning-dogfighting-report-719a4e66f3eb#.r329a09nr

Carrying a significant amount of bombs or missiles prevents vehicle from being stealth, nullifying the point of even having a fighter carry bombs or missiles instead of a dedicated attack vehicle.
Payload capacity of a fighter is significantly less than of a dedicated attack aircraft such as the A-10 which it is set to replace. The VTOL version has reduced range and encourages the fools making aircraft carriers without catapults.

>The aircraft you posted has a large dome for ELINT and jamming, it detects thing at large ranges, but only jams them closer up, air craft like that require fighter support.
I did say "a beefy radar dome like pic related", and was implying that a dedicated modern radar missile carrier would do a better job at the "shooting things before they notice you" battle style.

I agree with your statement that aircraft performance in the air will probably become a thing of the past, but so will multirole fighters. The F-35 is a perfect counter to the conventional fighter today until along comes a mobile radar platform with twice the search range, more missiles, and higher mileage. It doesn't need to be stealth, have fighter capabilities, or carry bombs. That's what the specific role aircraft in formation are for.

The circle-jerking around the F-35 vs PAK-FA is stupid. Russia built it for propaganda purposes only.

Russia's strength is in their surface-to-air missile system. The S-400 can pretty much pick up anything within a 400km range, and they can create a division of these things for cheap.

$400M for eight launch systems, which includes the support vehicles and 112 missiles.
An F-35 costs around $100M, but an S-400 missile costs about $3.6M. I have no doubt in my mind that it could down any aircraft in the USAF within that 400KM range. The EC-130H Compass Call was probably the most advanced jamming aircraft that the airforce had, but they're scrapping them because of "budget reasons". They probably know the details about the aircraft were comprimised.

Speaking of hacking, you can bet your motherfucking ass that Russia hacked the sections of the F-35 program that dealt with combating this threat. The Russians just launched the S-400 system, and they're almost done with the S-500 program.

I'd be more interested in the X-37B's true purpose as an orbital strike vehicle, because that's what it would be used for if another World War broke out. The U.S. wouldn't give a fuck about the Geneva Convention.

>Worse energy fighter than an F-16
>implying again the F-35 has to even dogfight LULZ

>Why does the F-35 even have a stealth design in the first place?
Because 99.99% of aircraft (excluding f-35) don't have the radars to detect stealth aircraft built in.

Nothing in Russian or Chinese airforce can detect stealth aircraft at any meaningful ranges.

That's why it has stealth built in.
Also to fuck over the most prolific ground weapons and radars that the F-35 is most likely to come in contact with.

user is right.

Like you said user, that X-37B is probably part of this new warfare idea of a "combat cloud" if the F-35 comes into contact with someone it can't deal with, you can just obliterate that threat from orbit.

Why does Russia even bother?
if they don't go to war with the U.S soon, they'll be left with their pants down permanently.

>>implying again the F-35 has to even dogfight LULZ
So why did they design an air-to-air missile carrier that looks like a fighter?

>Because 99.99% of aircraft (excluding f-35) don't have the radars to detect stealth aircraft built in.
Once again, you say that the F-35 can destroy any plane (and probably ground targets too) before it's within detection range, so why does it need stealth?