The problem with the F35 is the squishy organic component in the cockpit.

The concept of a jet fighter is pointless these days and the idea of a "dogfight" doubly so.

The positive reports on mock dogfights I've read are comparing it to F-15s, not comparable 5th gen fighters. Some of the recent "praise" is also dependent on the g-force limiters being removed.

The F-35 was doomed from the start when different branches wanted different things. Vertical takeoff, stealth shielding, etc.

Recent dogfight tests have shown it loses to earlier jets. Too many compromises hurt it's ability to be a great fighter.

Your video, Space Dogfight - Enemy Mine (1986), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, RC Dogfighting/Jousting, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This is 50% of a good video. The first half presents actual facts, which make a strong case that classic dogfighters are being made obsolete by very long range, stealthy aggressors. Simply put, fighters aren't fighting the same fight anymore. Muskets and grenadoes are out: rifles and mortars are in.

The second half, however, is propaganda and promises. Describing the goals of a program isn't itself a good defense of the demonstrated capabilities of a program.

It's true that the F-35 is being built to counter advanced technology opponents (Russia and China and their customers), and it's further true that we will probably (hopefully) never use them. This is not an argument against building the F-35, however: Russia and China are building their versions and the US would be at a strategic disadvantage if we effectively ceded air control of every conflict zone to the Russia-backed side. It's an arms race whether we like it or not.

It does feel like we're spending way too much on a overly compromised aircraft, though.

You said...."1. Nobody can say for certain what the F-35 is capable of or not capable of." then went on to write tomes and tomes about what's it's capable of, most of which has been contradicted by the testing, but you would rather believe what some test pilot said it may be able to do some day in the future if they fix all the problems or what your flight simulator games represented. HA!!!! Good one.

There's a HUGE difference between random vegan's self serving idea of what is and what is not good nutrition and factual historical data about the existence or non-existence of dogfighting since WW1. The cracked.com was simply a follow up entertainment article delineating 5 notable dogfights since WW1.

Smell ya later.

I repeatedly said that it doesn't have to be as good as a dogfighter as the F-16. And I even explain what would happen if it for some odd reason did get into a dog fight.

You've got some very good selective reading. Because when I linked you heaps of peer reviewed scientific articles about nutritional research, you come back with "I don't read internet science".
And then you proceed to link an article from cracked.com which is infotainment when being generous, and the article contains not a single reference.

Good day to you sir.

Yes, you did. You said repeatedly that dogfighting capabilities are not needed at all because this fighter won't ever see dogfighting because it never happens since WW1, and all engagement happens at long range and stealth will protect it 100%.
You must have not read, the articles I linked were about air to air engagements, not bombing, and included up to the gulf war.
Again, the F-15 and F-4 as deployed today is not inferior to Russian planes. Only if you compare the original incarnation of the F-15 with the top of the line Russian planes of today, sometimes it comes out on top, sometimes it's specs are worse.
There's no such thing as a real F-35 pilot, only test pilots have ever flown it, and never in real life situations, only pre conceived situations where it still fails the test designed for it to pass.
The F-35 can't dogfight, and it's not even in the US arsenal. Jesus Christ!
The article I listed before cracked was the one with data, the cracked one was simply to show dogfights using guns have happened repeatedly since WW1, in fact at least up through Vietnam including one completely insane example of using the rotor wash of a helicopter and an AK-47 to take out a pair of fighters (which, agreed, sounded made up it was so insane), contrary to your repeated assertion that it hasn't happened at all and never will again. I notice you don't dispute their facts though.


Oh well. Here I thought perhaps reason and facts had finally permeated the fan boy shell. I guess I was wrong. I give up. If you're going to stick with ridiculous positions like 'there's been no dogfights since WW1', and 'the F-35 will out dogfight the F-4' after being proven wrong time and again with real data and test results, there's no logic or fact that will break the shell, so I quit. Don't feel bad, you're in good company with all of congress (but of course, they all got PAID to hold their positions). Enjoy your $2 trillion fleet of useless planes, since no amount of failure or expense can kill the project.

I have not agreed that my position is wrong on the performance and capability designs of the F-35 and modern air combat. Please read the rest of my post above.... I'm still saying that dogfights have ended with WW1. I've never said we don't need ANY dog fighting capabilities. I'm saying that it's never the primary design idea of a modern fighter jet. You still have a cannon for back up. Just like soldiers have a side arm and a knife. Just in case you do get caught with your pants down or the main weapon fails at a critical moment.

I have agreed on the waste of money aspect of course. I'll also agree that if test goals are being downsized to accommodate flaws, then that's just terrible. If it's not able to perform to it's design then it's useless.

The F-4 != F-35. I can see why people draw parallels. But that only works if you ignore that absolutely everything on the planes is different, the adversaries are different, and stealth is requirement for survivability. You don't use stealth planes in the way you use an non stealth plane. Have you ever heard of a sniper wearing a ghillie suit run across the open battlefield with a sword or pistol? There were so many tactical mistakes in Vietnam as well. The conditions in which that article talks about are also different. Those planes were flying low and slow for a bombing run. Because they didn't have laser, gps guided bombs, infrared fire and forget air to ground missiles or cruise missiles back in those days. You don't get fog at 40,000 feet. They had to fly that low to get a visual identification of their bombing target. That does not happen anymore either. You scream past at mach 1 above the clouds and the bomb hits where it was programmed to hit. Also the phantoms missiles were unrelaiable. That hasn't been the case since the 80s. And their training was poor. None of that is true these days, and has not been true since the 80s either. That's why every single fighter plane apart from the F-16 (which is made mostly as an export product anyway) has been created to fight at long range primarily. The F-15 which is the main air superiority fighter for the US, is heavy and has a worse maneuverability than any Russian plane. But it's still the most feared plane, with no loses in combat. The article you linked even says that. So it's basically contradicting itself. At the start it says, F-4's lost because they couldn't maneuver, and ends with therefore the US made the F-15 which has worse maneuverability than the Russian planes lol.



Edit: Cracked.com doesn't count as a reputable source for anything, including basic sentences, spelling and punctuation.

Edit2: Here is an article from an actual F-35 pilot that says the F-35 dog fights better than a F-16 since they keep tuning the fly-by-wire parameters. http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

So even if it came to a dogfighting encounter, the F-35 is still the best plane in the US arsenal for dogfighting.

Well there YOU go.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but WW1 ended well over 25 years ago, so your repeated contention that 'dogfights ended in ww1' so we don't need any dogfighting capabilities is clearly 100% wrong. I hope you'll stop repeating it now, as it's ridiculously annoying to have a conversation with someone who agrees that their position is wrong, but continues to stand on that position nevertheless.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2015/07/06/usaf_promised_the_f-4_and_f-35_would_never_dogfight_108180.html
and (the last one mentioned here is INSANE)
http://www.cracked.com/article_19396_5-aerial-battles-that-put-top-gun-to-shame.html

I hope you've also arrived at the position now that, if they have to change the testing parameters/minimum acceptable requirements to turn massive fails into 'success' that it fails miserably and can't possibly ever be prepared for real deployment and has become nothing but a massively expensive, poorly preforming jobs program.

Well there you go, even Wikipedia says dogfights haven't existed for some 25 years So the F-35 doesn't need to have maneuverability as it's primary design feature.

I think I see why we are disagreeing - we have differing definitions of dogfights, if you read the air battle encounters from the gulf war you'll see that it wasn't dogfighting in the traditional sense where planes are doing all sorts of fancy aerobatics to try to use guns on each other like WW1.
(And wikipedia has this defintion problem too because it seems to call all air engagements a dogfight).

It was all BFM at a fairly long ranges in the order of 10 miles. (which is considered close range, since a plane takes several miles to make a turn at high speed).

Not one guns kill in the air. A few close range missile kills, but mostly long range AIM7's. (well techinically it's called medium range, but it's it's still like 20-30miles).
There's a good reason why fighter planes carry one about 7 seconds worth of bullets, and only 2 close range missiles vs 6+ long range missiles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_engagements_of_the_Gulf_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfight

Dogfighting first appeared during World War I, shortly after the invention of the airplane. Until at least 1992, it was a component in every major war, despite beliefs after World War II that increasingly greater speeds and longer range weapons would make dogfighting obsolete.

In the Gulf War of 1990–91, dogfighting once again proved its usefulness when the Coalition Air Force had to face off against the Iraqi Air Force, which at the time was the fifth largest in the world. Many dogfights occurred during the short conflict, often involving many planes. By the end of January, 1991, the term "furball" became a popular word to describe the hectic situation of many dogfights, occurring at the same time within the same relatively small airspace. Oh, fun fact, most of those planes 'dogfighting' in that 'relatively small airspace' were F15's...

But you can ignore that if you want. I mean, ACM schools that teach dogfighting even today probably don't exist...

I linked earlier the marine test that certified the F35 even though it failed the test pretty much completely. http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/not-a-big-suprise-the-marines-f-35-operational-test-wa-1730583428

I've repeatedly discounted your comments, but I simply can't seem to make headway.

The F4E ICE was a modified German version of the F4E. It had much better engines than any other version of the craft, a dedicated WSO, and it still only barely outperformed the F16. The other F4 variants absolutely did not turn better or have a higher rate of climb than the F16.

Dogfighting hasn't been around since WW1? Are you crazy? What would you call the numerous dogfighting techniques developed during WWII? Admittedly there was a drop off in dogfighting during the Korean War, but that was because we were shifting to jets as our primary fighters and people didn't have the speeds worked out. When we went to Vietnam, we found that many times the planes were so fast they were closing into gun range before they could get a missile solution. Hence the creation of the Fighter Weapons School (aka TopGun).

The Air Force couldn't believe it was a skill issue and decided to go a different way, loading more sensors and different cannon onto the airplanes. They still relied on missiles primarily, assuming that dogfighting was DEAD. Well, after some time passed, Navy kill to loss ratios went from 3.7-1 to 13-1 and (SURPRISE) Air Force kill to loss ratios got even worse.

After this, the Air Force quietly created their own DACT program, unwilling to be vocal about how wrong they were. Now, if you primarily play video games about air sorties, you might get the idea that you get a lock a couple of miles before you even see the enemy, confirm the engagement, click a button, and then fly back home. Actual pilots will be glad to set you straight on that, since you might have to get close to the intruding craft and follow them, waiting. What happens when you get close? Dogfights happen.

As far as the capability of the plane, of course it is going to fail tests. But the problem is that, like in the case of the Marine's test, so much money has been invested in this plane that people are ignoring the failures because they are scared the program is going to get shut down. Realistically, that just is going to increase the time this plane takes to get ready for service, increase the costs, and it isn't going to fix the underlying problems in the design of the craft.

I don't know what else I can say. The plane is going to turn out to be a much more expensive version of the F22 and it will most likely quietly be cancelled later down the line like the F22 was. The bad thing is, the government will immediately jump to the next jack of all trades plane and once again we will find it is a master of none.