It was a flawed and dangerous assumption that got scores of American aviators shot down over Vietnam. But 49 years later, the Air Force is assuming the same thing … with regards to its new F-35 stealth fighter.
In January 2015, the flying branch pitted a radar-evading F-35A against a 25-year-old F-16D in mock air combat. The F-35 proved too slow and sluggish to defeat the F-16 in a turning fight, according to the official test report that War Is Boring obtained.
I admit that this history led me to worry about the F-35's ability to avoid dogfighting:
I'm nowhere near close enough of an expert on airplanes to really judge this claim, but 40 years ago, we thought dogfighting was obsolete with air-to-air missiles in our arsenal until cheap enemy fighters over the skies of North Vietnam disabused us of that notion. Forty years is a long time, of course, and times change. Perhaps no enemy can get close to us again to shoot us down with old-fashioned cannons or shorter-range missiles.
But it does seem to be different now. The F-35 failure against the F-16 was due to artificial limits placed on the F-35 in the exercise. Those limits are lifted now:
Early in its combat testing, a test pilot's damning report leaked to the press and exposed the world's most expensive weapons system, the F-35, as a bad dogfighter that the F-16 routinely trounced in mock battles.
But new videos leaked from the US Air Force's F-35 demo or stunt flying team show the jet making head-spinning turns that older jets could never hit. ...
Since [the early 2015 exercise], the F-35 has mopped up in simulated dogfights with a 15-1 kill ratio. According to retired Lt. Col. David Berke, who commanded a squadron of F-35s and flew an F-22 — the US's most agile, best dogfighter — the jet has undergone somewhat of a revolution. ...
But despite the F-35's impressive moves and ability to win dogfights, Berke said he'd stay on mission and try to score kills that take better advantage of the jet's stealth.
The F-35 is expensive. We don't want to let an enemy get within visual range and give it a chance to shoot at the stealth plane. So the intention isn't to dogfight. But the plane is maneuverable enough to dogfight if it needs to.
And pilots love it. But although I'm no longer worried about the dogfighting issue or the planned use of the plane, I do worry about a completely different threat to the plane--can it be hacked?
And honestly, the 2019 article linked at the top was originally published in 2015. It's concerns have been superseded by new information. So why publish it without an update? I certainly changed my mind on the plane based on new information. Why recycle incomplete information?
