I'm not gulf war specialist, but most recent analysis predicts pretty consistently that if you pit decent to great pilots in F35 vs F35 with similar missiles, y

I'm not gulf war specialist, but most recent analysis predicts pretty consistently that if you pit decent to great pilots in F35 vs F35 with similar missiles, you get mutual kill every time. Same goes for any single plane that has BVR radar and missiles and off boresight close range missiles. Most 4th gen planes have these capabilities. I didn't agree with this at first, but they claim that modern missiles are able to differentiate between heat signature of plane body and engine nozzle. Also modern missiles are capable of 50G turns. That G-loading tells nothing about turning circle, but it does tell surprisingly nicely how quickly you can deviate from straight line. Fighter plane loses every time from every angle at every speed. The only problem of air-to-air missile dominance is that they burn through all of their fuel relatively quickly. Once that happens, maneuverability goes down really quick. So the "no escape zone" is crucial and it varies from missile to missile. If you want to stay alive, you need to out-range or surprise the enemy. Either stealth, superior radar or longer range missiles. It looks like fighters have become very expensive and very mobile SAM sites. It beats me why countries without aircraft carriers would ever pick F35. You can get ~50 trucks with Pirate IRST and METEOR missiles with the same price. More area covered at any given time while survivability goes up like hell I don't know what.