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The truly obsolete weapons platform is the $1.2 trillion manned F-35 program. A multi-role fighter that is too expensive to fly in this new combat space and ca
by pirate787 5y ago
The truly obsolete weapons platform is the $1.2 trillion manned F-35 program. A multi-role fighter that is too expensive to fly in this new combat space and cannot survive the multitude of anti-air missiles. The drone air war is a numbers game and unmanned fighters are both cheaper and have better operational specs.
- zip1234 5y agoF-35 would do exceptionally well in this conflict. It is designed for contested airspace.
- swader999 5y agoLet's hope we don't find out for real.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoYep and useless in the north, where the actual closest borders with Russia are.
- hoseja 5y agoHaha don't tell me it can't fly in the cold or something.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoCan't land on a gravel strip
- zip1234 5y agoThe US has 2 squadrons of F-35s in Alaska.
- juki 5y agoFinland also just recently signed a deal for 64 F35s after several years of research and comparing alternatives. I'm fairly confident that if there was some significant problem, they would have picked something else.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoNo offense but there's a huge difference between tiny Finland and pretty small Alaska and the giant Canadian North. Finland has a large border shared with Russia but it's nothing compared to the massive mostly undefended coastline along the arctic ocean that Canada shares with Russia. An absolutely potentially huge operating theatre.
- hoseja 5y agoExcept for the minor detail that Finland shares a land border.
- yobbo 5y agoIt might need a landing parachute on short or icy runways. The other concerns mentioned is that stealth is compromised with drop tanks which are needed for range. There might be other concerns?
- zip1234 5y agoI thought they fixed that already--software tweak for a sensor.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- WJW 5y agoAre there any air superiority combat drones operational yet? I won't argue that it seems likely that manned dogfights are going to die eventually, but that moment also seems at least a decade away. Until then a F-35 with long range missiles seems to be one of the more lethal things in the air today, even if it is rather expensive. NATO has like 20x the defense budget compared to Russia though, so it's fine not to have the cheapest weapons available.
- formerly_proven 5y agoF-35 unit prices are not high and keep getting lower due to the sheer scale of production. Many 4.5 gen fighters are actually more expensive yet less capable than the F-35. Most anti-F-35 arguments are "informed" by the likes of Pierre Sprey.
- hef19898 5y agoWhich systems are out there that are actually comparable to the JSF? Both the Eurofighter and the Rafale are one gen older (not sure if that actually matters that much so). Which leaves the Russian and Chinese planes, for which cost is hard to come by.
- dghlsakjg 5y agoMaybe the f-22, although that isn’t in production anymore
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- greedo 5y agoChinese FC-31 is close to the F-35 (in design and theory, but who knows about actual performance), but it's not in production yet.
- yobbo 5y agoLooking at pictures, it has two visible round jet nozzles which suggests it has much higher radar cross-section and IR-signature than F-35.
- greedo 5y agoAnd here come the F-35 haters... The F-35 is fine. It's designed to be a replacement to the F-16 with a good level of stealth. NO fighter is 100% immune to SAMs, but the F-35 can survive on the modern battlefield against S300/S400 etc just fine. It would be cleaning up in Ukraine right now as long as the airbases it flew from were protected. And what "unmanned fighters" are out there right now? Some low performance drones? Sure. But unmanned fighters that can engage in A2A combat are non-existent. Most current drones have the performance of a Cessna 172.
- kcb 5y agoThere's some silly idea that it's just a numbers game and 20 Cessna 172s would be able to take out an F-35.
- sofixa 5y agoHow many AA missiles does an F-35 hold, 10? 20 Cessnas would certainly be able to take down a lone F-35 in favourable conditions. Quantity has a quality of it's own.
- greedo 5y agoThis is ridiculous. A Cessna 172 might be able to suicide into a parked F-35, but the idea that 20 would be able to engage it in a dogfight and win just shows a complete lack of aerospace knowledge.
- sofixa 5y agoDogfighting is a thing of the past. 20 Cessnas approaching from different directions, with decently ranged AA missiles ( which is the point of the discussion, OP compared drone performances to a Cessna, and everyone is going in on the allegory, but the real question is if slow drones would be able to tackle an F-35, and the answer is it will depend on their armament, but probably) could overwhelm an F-35.
- 5y ago
- Retric 5y agoThe US wants 2,456 F-35s that’s just a lot of freaking aircraft. It’s actually extremely well designed for this kind of combat. Stealth alone is overrated, but these things get to fight back and they don’t fight alone. Sam sites, manned or unmanned aircraft etc are targets. It’s exactly the same stupid expensive avionics and training programs that make the F-35 so expensive that make it effective. The US can soften things up with cruse missiles and the F-22 or it’s successors, the F-35’s job is to crush what remains and it does that very well. Difficult enough to fight that you need expensive and therefore difficult to replace weapons systems while still being affordable enough to be plentiful.
- throwawayffffas 5y ago> cannot survive the multitude of anti-air missiles Where do you get that from? The whole point of the 1.2 trillion endeavor is survivability.