Opinions on the F-35
- Phoenix
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Opinions on the F-35
The F-35's flight characteristics are not great for a fighter, but the technology is great.
How good will this be as a fighter?
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
- halberdier25
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
Let me restate that. In the case that, as unlikely as it will seem, an adversary that is capable of detecting the F-35 appears, or if stealth is comprimised either by technological failure or by a part of the airframe disrupting the stealthy design, Im sure the F-35 will be able to deal with such a problem even if it is, however unlikely it may be, forced into a turning fight, and emerge victorious more often than not. Besides that it probably will not dogfight as AMRAAMs will be the main weapon of choice by then.halberdier25 wrote:The F-35 will not be dogfighting.
- halberdier25
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
Missiles are the main weapon of choice.
In a turning fight the F-35 will be just as capable as any other similarly sized and equipped aircraft with a similarly capable pilot.
Re: Opnions on the F-35
As a precaution, anyone who posts in this thread should make sure they think before they post.
- halberdier25
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- Taskforce 58
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
This topic contains armchair aerospace engineering talk!
does not contain actual educated material nor professional opinion!
- Gunny
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
I am afraid as a VMFA this thing is a disaster waiting to happen as a carrier based A/C its VTOL was a selling point to the Navy.Unfortunately its VTOL characteristics are such that it cant vertically take off due to its vary high VTOL temperature ratings IE it melts thru the deck and also asphalt so now it takes off and lands just like an F/A-18 no gain here.
Also the main mission of any Marine Corps air wing is to protect its ground forces from all threats seaborne airborne or ground assaults.
And I think this gets to the point of the matter it was designed to do one thing well and that is to deliver its missile payload on target and GTFO.
It was never designed to loiter for any length of time on station to protect its ground assets.I ask you what kind of Marine Corps airplane is that?
A ground pounders night mare is calling in air support that cant even see you when you are directing his fire they will have to stay to high and to fast.
I mean it like they never learned anything from the F-4 Phantoms mistakes a missile only platform oh I forgot they gave it guns BFD they cant get down in the dirt and use what few rounds they have they may need them to fight there way home oh I also forgot we are theoretical suppose to have air superiority everywhere we fight until we don't of course.
Ok I am going to stop now getting far to PO-ed for this.
- halberdier25
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
What the hell gave you that idea?Phoenix wrote:This is no good for air supperiorty then. Oh dear me.
- Phoenix
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
- halberdier25
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
- SvenPhantom
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
If God had wanted the army to fly, he would have made the sky brown.
If God meant man to fly, He'd have given us bigger wallets.
If God had meant for men to fly he would have made their bones hollow and not their heads.
- halberdier25
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
1 - Me-262, F-86, Gloster Meteor
2 - EE Lightning, Mirage III, MiG-21
3 - F-4, SEPECAT Jaguar, Saab Viggen
4 - Tornado, Mirage 2000, Su-27, F-16
4.5 - F-18, EF-2000, Su-30
5 - F-22, F-35, PAK FA
- Dragon029
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
Anyway, here's my opinion.
The F-35 will be a good plane; not incredibly fast, not incredibly agile, not incredibly whatever, but rather quite the jack-of-all-trades.
Dogfighting:
The most controversial topic, even though air combat is somewhat of a special occasion these days:
1. APG-81, HMD & 60G+ missiles will allow the F-35 to fire at enemies first, at any angle in just about any condition. Is the enemy on your tail? Fire a missile anyway and kill them. Is the enemy doing J-turns and Kulbits on you? Fire a missile and watch them do the blow up and burn maneuver.
Yes, there such things as flares, chaff and ECM, but the F-35's modern and unrivalled software / avionics should be able to defeat these. Additionally, the APG-81 can blind enemy radars anyway, so if you were an enemy pilot in something like a PAK-FA, you might suddenly find your radar going haywire; you drop flares, chaff and then try and change your vector towards where you expect such an opponent may be coming from. From your 2'o'clock, you notice something unnaturally fast, you go to reach for the button for your countermeasures, but before that happens you get struck with a few thousand kJ.
2. Stealth - alright, I find this one annoying because it's such an unknown and classified subject; yes the F-35 is stealthy, more so than the B-2 and F-117, that said, the big topics are to do with the shaping that they've done between the X-35 and the production model and L-Band radars.
L-band is apparently the weakness of stealth aircraft due to the decameter wavelength that manages to reflect off the whole of the aircraft or something (armchair physics here).
The PAK-FA, newer Sukhoi upgrades and quite a few ground radar vehicles are currently have L-band radars placed into them as aids to the X-bands in the nose.
If they're powerful enough to detect the newer fighters, the result of the combat will be up in the air as countermeasures are deployed and energy weapons utilised.
3. Range - it has a higher combat radius on internal fuel than most aircraft, including the F/A-18C, F-22 and EF Typhoon. With external tanks its RCS is increased (I'm not sure if there are already, but I'm positive the F-35 will get stealthy droptanks sometime soon) but its range remains competitive.
4. Weapons load - it has 4 internal hardpoints, 6 external. External weapons increase RCS, but stealthy conform pods could be used if a mission demanded them, even then RCS increases, but at least it's more controlled. Regardless of the RCS is higher, it will still be lower than most other aircraft, keeping a competitive edge.
5. Speed - I'll admit, the F-35's kinda crap when it comes to speed. At the moment, the F-135 engine hasn't been pushed to max thrust yet in flight due to acoustic problems, but once those are fixed I'm sure that the current M1.6+ figure may be refined, hopefully more around 1.8+ if they're lucky.
And that's all I can think that needs being covered.
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- VNAF ONE
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Re: Opnions on the F-35
The problem that most people have is not with the plane itself but with what the program is going to do to the USAF. It's a lot like Terminator except without all the self-aware crap. We are afraid of one piece of technology coming in to replace everything else we have. Especially when everything else we have has done so well protecting us and getting the good job done for so long.
My opinion is, I don't trust that the new programs should replace any existing until they've proven themselves in some sort of combat scenario other that flight testing at Edwards or Eglin. They need to send these new birds to Red Flag, which has already been done with the Raptor, and so that they can get a real taste of what real pilots will do and not some scientist thought up, computer enhanced, simulated bullcrap. I like the military now because it's versatile and has a wide range of aircraft to get a wide range of missions done. Using one or two is like the enemy's watching reruns over and over and eventually they'll catch on and start expecting what comes next.
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