4 ms·

planes don't dogfight, they lock-in targeting from miles away and fire missiles

kbenson 8y ago
Yes. But does an F-35 have 20-30 missiles? If not, then it's incapable of dealing with a swarm of 20-30 different adversaries. There's then the option to close and attempt to take out more with the built in 25mm guns, or retreat. If attacking, it could definitely circumvent older planes (but newer drones, maybe not so much). If defending against an attacking force, it doesn't seem all that effective.
- uncoder0 8y ago
  It's all about selecting the right tool for the job. You use the F-35's, F-22's and your long range stand off weapons from bombers to clear Surface to air threats and then use your F-15's, F-16's and F-18's which in some configurations can carry up to two dozen AA missles to clean up the low tech adversaries. If you're interested in getting a hang of how to deploy these weapons I recommend the Korean Missle Crisis scenario in Command. http://www.matrixgames.com/products/681/details/Command.Live:.Korean.Missile.Crisis http://www.matrixgames.com/products/681/details/Command.Live... Warning: Command is less of a game and more of a battlefield simulator and has a very steep learning curve if you're not used to the systems and tactics required to deploy modern combat power. I've been 'playing' it for years and without my background I'd have a very tough time. I can still only really play NATO scenarios as I'm not familiar enough with Chinese or Russian systems to use them effectively.
- thunderbird120 8y ago
  F-35s are specifically designed to act as flying sensor and communications nodes. This means that information passed from an F-35 can be used to target missiles fired from another aircraft or even a ship. Small, cheap drones lack a lot of capability and electronic warfare disrupting long range coms is a concern. The solution the airforce wants to use is to have each F-35 control a bunch of these small, low cost drones directly. The XQ-58 Valkyrie is one such example of this type of drone[1]. It can carry 8 weapons (missiles or small bombs) totaling a maximum of 550lbs in a stealthy configuration and costs about the same as a high end cruise missile ($3-4million) so if it gets shot down it's not a big deal. These cheap drones lack expensive hardware such as high powered AESA radars. A drone swarm consisting of exclusively this kind of aircraft without an F-35 would be detected by the F-35s sensors before the F-35s swarm was detected by it. This would probably result in the total destruction of the opposing drone swarm. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQ-58 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQ-58
  - hongseleco 8y ago
    The F-35 is the EA-35
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > This would probably result in the total destruction of the opposing drone swarm. My point is, at $3-4 million each (or $2-3 million as I saw in some sources, which I included in another comment here, that's still 20+ of these drones to to each F-35 in equivalent cost. So: - Can the F-35 actually mount enough long-range weaponry to attack 22 separate targets? - Do the drones even need to have an equivalent sensor suite in every instance? If defending, there may be ground stations with expensive sensor packages to help to coordinate. If attacking, the impetus is on the F-35 to destroy or render all units incapable of carrying our their mission. Destroying most of them and retreating without confrontation is useful only inasmuch as it prevents the attackers mission success, or lessens its impact. That said, given the information you presented above about the F-35 being a drone coordinator, that makes it a much more useful and effective weapon in my eyes. If it can basically act as a force multiplier for the drones by providing a much more effective sensor suite, and coordinate them so it's like one large attack vehicle, then that's providing the benefits of both types while minimizing the downsides of each. For example, I would imagine an F-35 + 20 drones would be much more effective and deadly than either two F-35's or 40 drones. In some ways, it's a lot like how Aircraft carriers worked in the beginning of or just before WWII. Having one in a battle group provided a much larger scouting range, and the ability to harass or incapacitate some types of enemy prior to the battle group arriving (they shifted more into an attack role as the war got under way, is my understanding. Prior to that there wasn't a lot of practical experience in using them in engagements).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
yellowapple 8y ago
Even assuming every single missile destroys its target, you only have so many missiles (this ain't Ace Combat where missiles magically respawn on their pylons). If each of your planes has eight missiles, but there are 10 enemy drones for each of your planes, then you're still stuck with a 2:1 dogfight.
- notfromhere 8y ago
  if said drones can't identify and position the stealth aircraft, then it doesn't really matter?
  - kbenson 8y ago
    In some cases, yes. How much does stealth help you if you're defending, not attacking? Even if you can empty your payload and retreat without them discerning where you are, how many times can you do that before they've reached their target?
- ben7799 8y ago
  No you're not stuck with a 2:1 dogfight. One or both adversaries can escape.. it can happen in seconds with two supersonic aircraft. It's not like a video game where they exist in a modeled world where no one else is around and they both have unlimited fuel and radar works perfectly, etc.. If the two fighters "merge" at 600kts each and keep going they'll be 20 miles apart in 1 minute. If one of them decides to light the afterburners and accelerates to 1000kts and go supersonic to escape the other one has to turn around and try to accelerate to catch up. Not easy. The harder the chaser turns around the more speed they'll bleed off, and the more time it will take to reaccelerate. If they turn a wider circle they'll be further away and have more distance to make up. Meanwhile the plane that has decided to "exit" might have flown into the cover of friend AAA/SAM sites or friendly fighters. If you start talking about swarms of supersonic drones instead of an enemy fighter then suddenly the drones sound awfully expensive.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > One or both adversaries can escape.. it can happen in seconds with two supersonic aircraft. Which is mostly useless if the one escaping is in a defending role. Good job saving the aircraft and pilot. Unfortunately your adversary is now clear to proceed to the actual target. In war, it doesn't just matter which soldier is better. It matters how quickly they can get to where they are going, how many of them you have to field, and whether they are defending or attacking, and whether they can be easily detected while moving. Different attributes have different values in different circumstances, but being able to field an order of magnitude or more covers up a lot of downsides. What's more powerful, 1000 trained soldiers with combat gear and automatic rifles, or 10,000 conscripted citizens with hunting rifles? It depends on the specific circumstances.
mikepurvis 8y ago
The F-35 is the star destroyer in this analogy— it's got six missiles onboard, intended for taking out huge targets from far away. Star destroyers fared really badly against a large number of smaller fighters. So the argument is that a small number of high performance fighters like the F-35 could very well not be a good match for a huge number of drones that individually are a fraction of the price.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  since we're making arguments by analogy to star wars, it's worth pointing out that, in universe, it is mainly just xwings that are surprisingly effective against star destroyers. they are too small to be effectively targeted by the larger ships guns, but the only reason they are actually a threat is because each craft carries a small number of proton torpedoes, basically the equivalent of a low-yield tactical nuke IRL. the primary fighter armament (lasers) is essentially harmless to such a large ship deployed in any reasonable number. the analogy sort of breaks down at this point.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Well, you can take the analogy right back to where it came from, WWII and planes as an effective countermeasure to ships. Small cheap planes could carry armaments still very devastating to larger ships.[1] It's not entirely analogous to the current discussion, because there's not really a commensurate difference in maneuverability of F-35 to the drones, but other similarities persist. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger
smacktoward 8y ago
This was the conventional wisdom in the 1950s as well. Which led to the huge, gun-less American fighters of the 1960s, the epitome of which was the F-4 Phantom II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_...). Which led to embarrassingly bad kill/loss ratios over Vietnam (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II#Aerial_combat_in_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_...), when those big, porky fighters went up against smaller, more nimble, gun-still-included Russian planes like the MiG-17 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-17). Which led to guns being hurriedly added back on to the F-4s, first in an external pod mounted on a hardpoint, and then internally on later production models. Which led to the development of training programs to teach dogfighting skills like the Naval Fighter Weapons School at Miramar (the school immortalized in the 1986 film Top Gun), because it turned out that the conventional wisdom had sunk in so deeply that a whole generation of American fighter pilots didn't know how to fight with a gun, even when they had one. Which led to the Lightweight Fighter Program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Fighter_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Fighter_program), an effort to use the lessons learned in Vietnam to design a maneuverable, gun-included dogfighter affordable enough to produce in volume. Which led to the development of two new fighters, the F-16 Fighting Falcon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting...) and the F/A-18 Hornet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Horne...), both of which have been hugely successful in service and make up the bulk of the US Air Force and Navy's fighter forces to this day. But the people who learned those hard lessons over Vietnam are all retired or dead now, so when people say "planes don't dogfight" nobody challenges it. Which is how the conventional wisdom of the 1950s becomes conventional wisdom all over again.
- kaizendad 8y ago
  Although a significant cause of the kill ratio issue over Vietnam was restrictive rules of engagement, which prohibited beyond visual range engagement with missiles such as Sparrow, which the VPAF had no counters to whatsoever. These rules of engagement effectively required these turning dogfights, but would not have been present in a large-scale shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This does, of course, beg the question: how well would an F-35 do in a conflict with restrictive rules of engagement, such as might be found in future US-Iraq/Afghanistan-style conflicts.

Yes. But does an F-35 have 20-30 missiles? If not, then it's incapable of dealing with a swarm of 20-30 different adversaries. There's then the option to close and attempt to take out more with the built in 25mm guns, or retreat. If attacking, it could definitely circumvent older planes (but newer drones, maybe not so much). If defending against an attacking force, it doesn't seem all that effective.

uncoder0 8y ago
It's all about selecting the right tool for the job. You use the F-35's, F-22's and your long range stand off weapons from bombers to clear Surface to air threats and then use your F-15's, F-16's and F-18's which in some configurations can carry up to two dozen AA missles to clean up the low tech adversaries. If you're interested in getting a hang of how to deploy these weapons I recommend the Korean Missle Crisis scenario in Command. http://www.matrixgames.com/products/681/details/Command.Live:.Korean.Missile.Crisis http://www.matrixgames.com/products/681/details/Command.Live... Warning: Command is less of a game and more of a battlefield simulator and has a very steep learning curve if you're not used to the systems and tactics required to deploy modern combat power. I've been 'playing' it for years and without my background I'd have a very tough time. I can still only really play NATO scenarios as I'm not familiar enough with Chinese or Russian systems to use them effectively.
thunderbird120 8y ago
F-35s are specifically designed to act as flying sensor and communications nodes. This means that information passed from an F-35 can be used to target missiles fired from another aircraft or even a ship. Small, cheap drones lack a lot of capability and electronic warfare disrupting long range coms is a concern. The solution the airforce wants to use is to have each F-35 control a bunch of these small, low cost drones directly. The XQ-58 Valkyrie is one such example of this type of drone[1]. It can carry 8 weapons (missiles or small bombs) totaling a maximum of 550lbs in a stealthy configuration and costs about the same as a high end cruise missile ($3-4million) so if it gets shot down it's not a big deal. These cheap drones lack expensive hardware such as high powered AESA radars. A drone swarm consisting of exclusively this kind of aircraft without an F-35 would be detected by the F-35s sensors before the F-35s swarm was detected by it. This would probably result in the total destruction of the opposing drone swarm. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQ-58 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XQ-58
- hongseleco 8y ago
  The F-35 is the EA-35
- kbenson 8y ago
  > This would probably result in the total destruction of the opposing drone swarm. My point is, at $3-4 million each (or $2-3 million as I saw in some sources, which I included in another comment here, that's still 20+ of these drones to to each F-35 in equivalent cost. So: - Can the F-35 actually mount enough long-range weaponry to attack 22 separate targets? - Do the drones even need to have an equivalent sensor suite in every instance? If defending, there may be ground stations with expensive sensor packages to help to coordinate. If attacking, the impetus is on the F-35 to destroy or render all units incapable of carrying our their mission. Destroying most of them and retreating without confrontation is useful only inasmuch as it prevents the attackers mission success, or lessens its impact. That said, given the information you presented above about the F-35 being a drone coordinator, that makes it a much more useful and effective weapon in my eyes. If it can basically act as a force multiplier for the drones by providing a much more effective sensor suite, and coordinate them so it's like one large attack vehicle, then that's providing the benefits of both types while minimizing the downsides of each. For example, I would imagine an F-35 + 20 drones would be much more effective and deadly than either two F-35's or 40 drones. In some ways, it's a lot like how Aircraft carriers worked in the beginning of or just before WWII. Having one in a battle group provided a much larger scouting range, and the ability to harass or incapacitate some types of enemy prior to the battle group arriving (they shifted more into an attack role as the war got under way, is my understanding. Prior to that there wasn't a lot of practical experience in using them in engagements).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

yellowapple 8y ago

Even assuming every single missile destroys its target, you only have so many missiles (this ain't Ace Combat where missiles magically respawn on their pylons). If each of your planes has eight missiles, but there are 10 enemy drones for each of your planes, then you're still stuck with a 2:1 dogfight.

notfromhere 8y ago
if said drones can't identify and position the stealth aircraft, then it doesn't really matter?
- kbenson 8y ago
  In some cases, yes. How much does stealth help you if you're defending, not attacking? Even if you can empty your payload and retreat without them discerning where you are, how many times can you do that before they've reached their target?
ben7799 8y ago
No you're not stuck with a 2:1 dogfight. One or both adversaries can escape.. it can happen in seconds with two supersonic aircraft. It's not like a video game where they exist in a modeled world where no one else is around and they both have unlimited fuel and radar works perfectly, etc.. If the two fighters "merge" at 600kts each and keep going they'll be 20 miles apart in 1 minute. If one of them decides to light the afterburners and accelerates to 1000kts and go supersonic to escape the other one has to turn around and try to accelerate to catch up. Not easy. The harder the chaser turns around the more speed they'll bleed off, and the more time it will take to reaccelerate. If they turn a wider circle they'll be further away and have more distance to make up. Meanwhile the plane that has decided to "exit" might have flown into the cover of friend AAA/SAM sites or friendly fighters. If you start talking about swarms of supersonic drones instead of an enemy fighter then suddenly the drones sound awfully expensive.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > One or both adversaries can escape.. it can happen in seconds with two supersonic aircraft. Which is mostly useless if the one escaping is in a defending role. Good job saving the aircraft and pilot. Unfortunately your adversary is now clear to proceed to the actual target. In war, it doesn't just matter which soldier is better. It matters how quickly they can get to where they are going, how many of them you have to field, and whether they are defending or attacking, and whether they can be easily detected while moving. Different attributes have different values in different circumstances, but being able to field an order of magnitude or more covers up a lot of downsides. What's more powerful, 1000 trained soldiers with combat gear and automatic rifles, or 10,000 conscripted citizens with hunting rifles? It depends on the specific circumstances.

mikepurvis 8y ago

The F-35 is the star destroyer in this analogy— it's got six missiles onboard, intended for taking out huge targets from far away. Star destroyers fared really badly against a large number of smaller fighters. So the argument is that a small number of high performance fighters like the F-35 could very well not be a good match for a huge number of drones that individually are a fraction of the price.

leetcrew 8y ago
since we're making arguments by analogy to star wars, it's worth pointing out that, in universe, it is mainly just xwings that are surprisingly effective against star destroyers. they are too small to be effectively targeted by the larger ships guns, but the only reason they are actually a threat is because each craft carries a small number of proton torpedoes, basically the equivalent of a low-yield tactical nuke IRL. the primary fighter armament (lasers) is essentially harmless to such a large ship deployed in any reasonable number. the analogy sort of breaks down at this point.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Well, you can take the analogy right back to where it came from, WWII and planes as an effective countermeasure to ships. Small cheap planes could carry armaments still very devastating to larger ships.[1] It's not entirely analogous to the current discussion, because there's not really a commensurate difference in maneuverability of F-35 to the drones, but other similarities persist. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger

smacktoward 8y ago

This was the conventional wisdom in the 1950s as well. Which led to the huge, gun-less American fighters of the 1960s, the epitome of which was the F-4 Phantom II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_...). Which led to embarrassingly bad kill/loss ratios over Vietnam (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II#Aerial_combat_in_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_...), when those big, porky fighters went up against smaller, more nimble, gun-still-included Russian planes like the MiG-17 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-17). Which led to guns being hurriedly added back on to the F-4s, first in an external pod mounted on a hardpoint, and then internally on later production models. Which led to the development of training programs to teach dogfighting skills like the Naval Fighter Weapons School at Miramar (the school immortalized in the 1986 film Top Gun), because it turned out that the conventional wisdom had sunk in so deeply that a whole generation of American fighter pilots didn't know how to fight with a gun, even when they had one. Which led to the Lightweight Fighter Program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Fighter_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Fighter_program), an effort to use the lessons learned in Vietnam to design a maneuverable, gun-included dogfighter affordable enough to produce in volume. Which led to the development of two new fighters, the F-16 Fighting Falcon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting...) and the F/A-18 Hornet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Horne...), both of which have been hugely successful in service and make up the bulk of the US Air Force and Navy's fighter forces to this day. But the people who learned those hard lessons over Vietnam are all retired or dead now, so when people say "planes don't dogfight" nobody challenges it. Which is how the conventional wisdom of the 1950s becomes conventional wisdom all over again.

kaizendad 8y ago
Although a significant cause of the kill ratio issue over Vietnam was restrictive rules of engagement, which prohibited beyond visual range engagement with missiles such as Sparrow, which the VPAF had no counters to whatsoever. These rules of engagement effectively required these turning dogfights, but would not have been present in a large-scale shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This does, of course, beg the question: how well would an F-35 do in a conflict with restrictive rules of engagement, such as might be found in future US-Iraq/Afghanistan-style conflicts.