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Comment by pqtyw | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe the Typhoon is actually better than the F35 and F22 at dogfighting and general "within visual range" combat. But its unlikely that would really matter in a real war, F35 doesn't need to be good at those things if it just shots you down long before you know its there.

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That's one way to nerf them, force them to fight in situations they would never find themselves in.

In real life, if they can't neutralize the threat in BVR they just turn around and run before getting in range.

Their stealth allows them to get the enemy in range before the enemy has them in range. It's like a boxer with a long reach: jab and move.

The F-35 can self escort to an extent, but the concept of operations is generally to avoid direct air combat. Instead they would try to attack at night, relying on low observability, jamming, and careful route planning to avoid detection or interception and then destroying adversary aircraft on the ground using stand-off weapons. That's basically how the predecessor F-117 operated.

F35 maybee. F22 has never been publically flown within its actual combat envelope. Super maneuverability probably makes it possible to notch the living fuck out of heat seakers, i.e turn past 180 degrees, afterburner out.

The F35 RFQ specification had two bullet points:

0) Spread the pork into as many congressional districts as possible

1) Omae wa mou shindeiru

I’m sorry, but you clearly don’t know anything about the F 35 development program. It is held up as an exemplar case of preventing congressional pork, as every single development and integration contract was competitively won on a best-value basis.

Yes, and it is a matter of pure happenstance that 46 states directly benefit from that program. That's just like how other competitive trillion dollar systems are typically developed.

It is not how any other defense project is managed. Seriously, go read about it.

Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?

Also ignore me, all I know about air combat I learned from top gun and iron eagle.

Well in Ukraine both sides are generally too afraid to get their jets anywhere near the frontline and just use them to launch long range cruise missiles and such from a safe distance.

Air defences are just too effective and modern jets are so expensive that nobody can really afford to risk losing them.

Maybe F-35 could change that, it seemed very efficient in Iran. But AFAIK Iran didn't have anything better than the S-300 so it wasn't exactly a fair fight...

In Iran, did the F35 got deep and low, like an A10 would? Were they used as B2 would, high altitude bombers? Or did they stayed at the border and were used as mobile EW planes to coordinate/acquire targets? Because I've read about 2 and 3, and too much internet almost made be believe 1, so I'm asking here where someone who actually know something might answer.

F35 main advantage is basically being able to target things provided by other assets.

For active homing missiles, the aircraft tells the missile approximately where the plane is, then the missile only activates tracking once its close. Obviously this can be defeated if the plane manages to get out of the scan range of the missile before it switches to homing mode.

Semi active homing is a bit more reliable, as it relies on the launching aircraft to track the target, but obviously aicraft needs to be in closer range to track.

With F35, you can have AWACS or ground radar or whatever else continuously updating information on where the target is, and the active homing missile can reliably navigate and switch to homing.

Without the network, F35 is as good as pretty much any other jet, with the exception that its somewhat stealth. But not against modern heatseekers.

Rules of engagement and the fact that nobody was properly trained on tactics that worked with the missiles. IIRC only the air force added a gun to the F4, the Navy just improved their training regime, and ended the war with better kill ratios than the air force.

Plus the early missiles just had some problems that were fixed over time.

> Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?

Not only ROE limitations, but unreliable missile technology (see the "Red Baron" reports for example) and bad tactics as well. The Navy was better than the USAF in both respects.

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