3 ms·

Top speed matters a lot in modern air combat, maybe more than ever. With modern fire and forget, datalinked missiles, the shooter aircraft can often immediatel

Top speed matters a lot in modern air combat, maybe more than ever. With modern fire and forget, datalinked missiles, the shooter aircraft can often immediately turn around after firing and run away from the missile coming at him. An F-15 can turn tail and run at Mach 2.5. If the AAM has a speed of Mach 4, the missile closes at Mach 1.5. Against the F-35, it’s closing at Mach 2.4. This means that the enemy’s AAMs have an effective range about 70% higher against the F-35 than the F-15. Now, this is of course dependent on being able to maintain long range tracking of the F-35, but my understanding is that against a high-end opponent, stealth is not a panacea.

Retric 9y ago
You can't turn very quickly at high Mach. So, depending on range and heading it can make things worse. Remember, aircraft don't turn by hitting reverse if you are going east a Mach 2 (686 m/s) you can't just subtract 98 m/s in a 10g you need to go through a curve in the air taking a lot longer than 7 seconds to stop going east. Start combat at lower speeds and it's going to take even longer to hit high Mach. Which is not to say it's useless, just not as useful relative to other tradeoffs.
notyourday 9y ago
F-35 as a plane is mediocre compared to say Su-57. I'm willing to grant that if Su-57 is to challenge F-35, F-35 loses. The thing is F-35 carried through wont be challenged by Su-57 as F-35 is a basically a flying platform. Where Su-57 is optimized for single unit operation ( and Soviets and Russians absolutely excel in that ), F-35 is optimized to be able to operate in a diverse group. What it sees, C&C sees. Until Russia or China get there, F-35 will be massively superior to anything else. For F-35 all fighting is supposed to be BVR.
- gandhium 9y ago
  > F-35 as a plane is mediocre compared to say Su-57 Su-57 is still in infancy stage and judging from Russian problems, there's high chance it won't be around soon.

Retric 9y ago

You can't turn very quickly at high Mach. So, depending on range and heading it can make things worse. Remember, aircraft don't turn by hitting reverse if you are going east a Mach 2 (686 m/s) you can't just subtract 98 m/s in a 10g you need to go through a curve in the air taking a lot longer than 7 seconds to stop going east. Start combat at lower speeds and it's going to take even longer to hit high Mach. Which is not to say it's useless, just not as useful relative to other tradeoffs.

notyourday 9y ago

F-35 as a plane is mediocre compared to say Su-57. I'm willing to grant that if Su-57 is to challenge F-35, F-35 loses. The thing is F-35 carried through wont be challenged by Su-57 as F-35 is a basically a flying platform. Where Su-57 is optimized for single unit operation ( and Soviets and Russians absolutely excel in that ), F-35 is optimized to be able to operate in a diverse group. What it sees, C&C sees. Until Russia or China get there, F-35 will be massively superior to anything else. For F-35 all fighting is supposed to be BVR.

gandhium 9y ago
> F-35 as a plane is mediocre compared to say Su-57 Su-57 is still in infancy stage and judging from Russian problems, there's high chance it won't be around soon.