F-16 Vs. F-35 In A Dogfight: JPO, Air Force Weigh In On Who’s Best

Fearless Tower said:
I think there is a lot of truth to that. The idea of a common airframe ruined the other variants, but was likely the only way that the Marines could get funding for a new STOVL aircraft.
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We're not really that far apart then.

I was just trying come up with ideas to make the F-35 more Marine-compatible, but it's certainly better to go with another airplane.

Surely for $150M per airframe they could find something.
 
I think we have heard this song before. Everybody cries about boondoggle, failure and a terrible plane, but they continue on. Then they tweak it, learn to fly it and accept it. Then it goes to war and performs better than expected, becomes the hero of the war and everyone forgets about the cost over runs, it becomes an air show favorite and paintings of it in action proudly hang in people's homes.

Give it a chance. Clearly the military is mismanaged and with seemingly blank check on America's tax payer dollars, can screw up mightily and nobody is ever personally held accountable. They just throw more money at it to solve the problem. Eisenhower warned us, but we still want believe we are fighting the Nazis all around the world and WWII never ended.

I really wish we would rethink our country's "defense" strategy. It needs to be a little more actual defense of our country and less defense of everyone else. There is also way too much offense in our supposed defense. Imagine what we could do with all this money, or imagine all the extra money in your pocket if we weren't constantly fighting the "Nazis" all over the world.
 
"The Pentagon Wars." Outstanding book. Perfectly highlights the Military Industrial Complex.
 
Dav8or said:
So... why doesn't the AF just turn their A-10s over to the Army and let them operate them with the Army's budget?? :confused::dunno:
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The late and not-so-missed USAF Chief of Staff General McPeak (he of the white USAF uniform, complete with Navy style white clown shoes) offered to trade the A-10 to the Army for the Army's Patriot missiles.

The Army turned him down.
 
JimNtexas said:
The jury is still out on the F-35, but saying and F-16 is better because it won a knife fight in a phone booth fight is silly. Nobody beats the F-16 inside a phone booth.
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True. When we (31st TFW, Homestead AFB ) first started replacing our F-4Ds with F-16As, we'd put them together doing DACT and the F-4s were slaughtering the F-16s with their wimpy radar. The F-4s even ran some down and did gun kills. But this certainly didn't make the F-4 the superior dog fighter.
 
The F35B makes sense to me. The other variants don't. Mostly I like the application with the WASP carriers. With the F35B, we have now doubled the amount of carriers that we can use to huck supersonic fighter/bomber aircraft into the sky.
 
JohnAJohnson said:
True. When we (31st TFW, Homestead AFB ) first started replacing our F-4Ds with F-16As, we'd put them together doing DACT and the F-4s were slaughtering the F-16s with their wimpy radar. The F-4s even ran some down and did gun kills. But this certainly didn't make the F-4 the superior dog fighter.
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Excuse me, but let me say this as politely as I can. I don't believe that "F-4s were slaughtering the F-16s with their wimpy radar", unless by 'slaughtering' you mean claiming that a long range AIM-7E shot 'slaughtered' the F-16. Given the track record of the AIM-7E I kind of doubt that would be a good bet in reality.

And you're correct, compared to the F-16A the F-4's APQ-120 radar was indeed wimpy. It's true that the F-16A's radar didn't have the best look down radar, it was still a solid two generations ahead of what the F-4D had.

If your F-4 got a gun kill on an F-16 then that was pure luck, period.
 
JimNtexas said:
Excuse me, but let me say this as politely as I can. I don't believe that "F-4s were slaughtering the F-16s with their wimpy radar", unless by 'slaughtering' you mean claiming that a long range AIM-7E shot 'slaughtered' the F-16. Given the track record of the AIM-7E I kind of doubt that would be a good bet in reality.

And you're correct, compared to the F-16A the F-4's APQ-120 radar was indeed wimpy. It's true that the F-16A's radar didn't have the best look down radar, it was still a solid two generations ahead of what the F-4D had.

If your F-4 got a gun kill on an F-16 then that was pure luck, period.
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(if I understand the post #48 correctly) Remember that he was talking about when the F-16s were being first deployed replacing the F-4s. Think about what it's like to have old hands with a fighter going up against new pilots not completely familar with the F-16.
 
This is an old article that is missing tons of context that later was revealed over the summer.

When this happened many of the F-35's abilities weren't even enabled in the code and it's envelope was very restricted to what it will be. The F-35 is also not an air-superiority fighter nor meant to be one. It's primary role will be Ground attack and SEAD.

The Vietnam-F4 comparisons sound good, but they have little basis in today. Yes, when AA missiles were in their infancy the F4 struggled without a gun. But we are never going back to close in gun fights and we haven't had them in decades (maybe one outlier or so?). They just do not happen in modern warfare.

In an actual combat environment, the F-16s would be dispatched before they ever saw the F-35.

If it were just about maneuverability, the Russians would have us licked. But it's not.
 
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JimNtexas said:
Excuse me, but let me say this as politely as I can. I don't believe that "F-4s were slaughtering the F-16s with their wimpy radar", unless by 'slaughtering' you mean claiming that a long range AIM-7E shot 'slaughtered' the F-16. Given the track record of the AIM-7E I kind of doubt that would be a good bet in reality.

And you're correct, compared to the F-16A the F-4's APQ-120 radar was indeed wimpy. It's true that the F-16A's radar didn't have the best look down radar, it was still a solid two generations ahead of what the F-4D had.

If your F-4 got a gun kill on an F-16 then that was pure luck, period.
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Perhaps slaughtered was an bit of an exaggeration :)

Sitting in the ACMI room and monitoring the action, the F-4s were picking up the F-16s well out of the range of the F-16As radar (and AIM 9s) and the 16s didn't even realize the threat till 10-12 miles out. By then, the growling was done and AIM 7s had done their work. The two gun kills I saw were real and while luck was probably a factor, pilot skill/familiarity was probably a much bigger factor.
 
Bonchie said:
This is an old article that is missing tons of context that later was revealed over the summer.

When this happened many of the F-35's abilities weren't even enabled in the code and it's envelope was very restricted to what it will be. The F-35 is also not an air-superiority fighter nor meant to be one. It's primary role will be Ground attack and SEAD.

The Vietnam-F4 comparisons sound good, but they have little basis in today. Yes, when AA missiles were in their infancy the F4 struggled without a gun. But we are never going back to close in gun fights and we haven't had them in decades (maybe one outlier or so?). They just do not happen in modern warfare.

In an actual combat environment, the F-16s would be dispatched before they ever saw the F-35.

If it were just about maneuverability, the Russians would have us licked. But it's not.
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There are a lot of unknowns that are stated as fact here. Nobody in *fact* knows how well the stealth of the F-35 will work under real world conditions. Will it remain invisible under real world conditions? From all angles? Can the plane be tracked anyway by its own emissions (sensor data links, etc)? Nobody knows.

And even if it's all true and the F-35 is a perfect radar-evading airplane, that presupposes that it NEVER has to get in visual range of the enemy, where it is just as easy to see as any other airplane. That's a tall order, especially if it's going to be doing CAS missions. You can't do that job well from 20,000ft, you have to get close enough for every hillbilly with a rifle to take a shot at you.

The fact is at some point in a real war the F-35 will have to maneuver to survive. The original spec was for a 9g+ airframe, like the F-16...great! But there have been two downgrades since then, and the plane is now a 7.5g max and 4.6g sustained turn performer. Not great:

Sustained-Turn-F-35-vs-The-Rest.jpg


Just saying "but nobody will ever even see it!" is pretty simplistic and naive, IMO.
 
bullwinkle said:
There are a lot of unknowns that are stated as fact here. Nobody in *fact* knows how well the stealth of the F-35 will work under real world conditions. Will it remain invisible under real world conditions? From all angles? Can the plane be tracked anyway by its own emissions (sensor data links, etc)? Nobody knows.

And even if it's all true and the F-35 is a perfect radar-evading airplane, that presupposes that it NEVER has to get in visual range of the enemy, where it is just as easy to see as any other airplane. That's a tall order, especially if it's going to be doing CAS missions. You can't do that job well from 20,000ft, you have to get close enough for every hillbilly with a rifle to take a shot at you.

The fact is at some point in a real war the F-35 will have to maneuver to survive. The original spec was for a 9g+ airframe, like the F-16...great! But there have been two downgrades since then, and the plane is now a 7.5g max and 4.6g sustained turn performer. Not great:

Sustained-Turn-F-35-vs-The-Rest.jpg


Just saying "but nobody will ever even see it!" is pretty simplistic and naive, IMO.
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You are pretending the F-35 is a dog in maneuverability. It's not.

And if you think when it's all done and fully online that it won't out turn an F-4 you are nuts.

Quick, name the last guns kill by the USAF.
 
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Bonchie said:
Quick, name the last guns kill by the USAF.
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I believe that an A-10 got an air-to-air gun kill in Desert Storm...

(ok, it was only a copter, but still...)
 
Oh, and BTW...neither the F-35B nor F-35C have a gun...just like the F-4 Phantom. Only the Air Force F-35A kept the internal gun.

The F-4 didn't need a gun because, you know, missile! The F-35 doesn't need one because, you know, stealth!
 
Bob Noel said:
I believe that an A-10 got an air-to-air gun kill in Desert Storm...

(ok, it was only a copter, but still...)
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Yep. And you have to go back to Vietnam to find an actual dogfight guns kill.

F-35s, whether they are invisible or lit up like Christmas on radar, whatever...they will not be put in a position to merge to visual with enemy fighters.

If that ever has to happen, the F-22s will be the tip of the spear in intercepting and even they will likely never get into a turning battle in actual combat.

An F-16 would out turn an F-18 and F-15 as well. It's not that relevant.
 
Bonchie said:
You are pretending the F-35 is a dog in maneuverability. It's not.

And if you think when it's all done and fully online that it won't out turn an F-4 you are nuts.

Quick, name the last guns kill by the USAF.
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I did not say that. But if you listen to the responses from the brass about these criticisms, they are of the "well, it will never have to do that because of stealth". You don't hear them saying "it has world class maneuverability."

My only point, again, is that they put all their eggs in the stealth basket. If it doesn't work out, then we have a problem in ALL of our armed services.
 
Bonchie said:
Yep. And you have to go back to Vietnam to find an actual dogfight guns kill.

F-35s, whether they are invisible or lit up like Christmas on radar, whatever...they will not be put in a position to merge to visual with enemy fighters.

If that ever has to happen, the F-22s will be the tip of the spear in intercepting and even they will likely never get into a turning battle in actual combat.

An F-16 would out turn an F-18 and F-15 as well. It's not that relevant.
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That all assumes that the wars we fight will be similar to the ones we've fought since Viet Nam. Might be true, might not. But don't make the mistake of trying to re-fight the last war.

What if instead of fighting crappy little third world countries we end up head to head with China or Russia, with massive numbers of Flankers and Fulcrums launched against our planes? I bet the equation would change significantly.
 
bullwinkle said:
I did not say that. But if you listen to the responses from the brass about these criticisms, they are of the "well, it will never have to do that because of stealth". You don't hear them saying "it has world class maneuverability."

My only point, again, is that they put all their eggs in the stealth basket. If it doesn't work out, then we have a problem in ALL of our armed services.
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When the F-35 is done and they've squeezed every bit of performance out of it (something that's yet to be completed with it's FBW systems), it's going to be a decent dog fighter even though it'll never have to do it.

More importantly, it's radar and weapons suite will be tops.
 
bullwinkle said:
Oh, and BTW...neither the F-35B nor F-35C have a gun...just like the F-4 Phantom. Only the Air Force F-35A kept the internal gun.

The F-4 didn't need a gun because, you know, missile! The F-35 doesn't need one because, you know, stealth!
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That's because the Marines don't do air-superiority. The F-35B is replacing Harriers.

The Navy doesn't really do air superiority anymore either. That's the Air Forces digs. It's why the Navy has been content with the F-18 for so long even though it's a dog compared to the F-16 in a dog fight.
 
Bonchie said:
When the F-35 is done and they've squeezed every bit of performance out of it (something that's yet to be completed with it's FBW systems), it's going to be a decent dog fighter even though it'll never have to do it.
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It's that assumption from most people that is driving me nuts.
 
I suspect the missiles begin fired these days are just a hair more reliable than the ones begin fired 50 years ago.

The F35 will still be a dog, though. The Marines ruined it with their idiotic ducted fan for their nonexistent mission. Still, it will probably do just fine anyway because of its superior avionics and radars and stuff.
 
Bonchie said:
That's because the Marines don't do air-superiority. The F-35B is replacing Harriers.

The Navy doesn't really do air superiority anymore either. That's the Air Forces digs. It's why the Navy has been content with the F-18 for so long even though it's a dog compared to the F-16 in a dog fight.
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Again, I think the military is getting complacent. The Navy may re-think that stance if some nation launches a hundred airplanes against a carrier battle group.

If I was Saddam Hussein that's what I would have done in the first gulf war. I would have sent recon planes out over the gulf, found a carrier group, and then launched every plane I had at it.
 
steingar said:
I suspect the missiles begin fired these days are just a hair more reliable than the ones begin fired 50 years ago.

The F35 will still be a dog, though. The Marines ruined it with their idiotic ducted fan for their nonexistent mission. Still, it will probably do just fine anyway because of its superior avionics and radars and stuff.
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I think that's true, as long as they are sent against the kind of third rate powers we've been fighting the last 30 years. If they have to fight the Russians or Chinese I think some eyes will be opened.

It's easy to claim you are the heavyweight champ when you don't fight other boxers that are actual threats and only fight old out of shape drunks.
 
bullwinkle said:
I thought that was an A-10 using a Paveway II laser guided bomb. I could be wrong about that.
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I dunno. We started bombing with our A-10s in my squadron in Osan, Korea (which were recently moved from Suwon, Korea) around the time of Desert Storm, and the results were surprisingly good if I remember right, but I don't know anything about the technology or airplane. During that tour, I wasn't working on the flightline - my loss.
 
Bonchie said:
Yep. And you have to go back to Vietnam to find an actual dogfight guns kill.

F-35s, whether they are invisible or lit up like Christmas on radar, whatever...they will not be put in a position to merge to visual with enemy fighters.

If that ever has to happen, the F-22s will be the tip of the spear in intercepting and even they will likely never get into a turning battle in actual combat.

An F-16 would out turn an F-18 and F-15 as well. It's not that relevant.
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Israelis have scored a guns A-A kill during their 7 day war
 
Jaybird180 said:
Israelis have scored a guns A-A kill during their 7 day war
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My post was about the USAF.

The Israelis have some philosophical differences when it comes to air combat or at least they used to. I remember hearing an IAF F-15 driver say their rules of engagement dictated no BVR. That was in the late 90s, though.

Israel is going to get F-35s.
 
BTW, missiles are incredibly powerful, sophisticated, and reliable these days, I don't think fighters need guns anymore.
 
bullwinkle said:
I think that's true, as long as they are sent against the kind of third rate powers we've been fighting the last 30 years. If they have to fight the Russians or Chinese I think some eyes will be opened.

It's easy to claim you are the heavyweight champ when you don't fight other boxers that are actual threats and only fight old out of shape drunks.
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If Russia, or China attack us with lots of their more conventional aircraft like you envision, there will be WWIII and a nuclear exchange coming in a very short time. Nobody will give a **** about airplanes and dog fights then. If it escalates to that level, airplanes will be largely irrelevant.

You keep saying we shouldn't be planning to fight yesterday's wars and then go on about WWII style dog fights. I'm confused? Do we plan for the old ways or not?

It seems to me that if we were confronted with 100 enemy airplanes of conventional design with excellent dog fighting capability, we should counter with a composite attack group. Send the F-35s first to knock out as many as possible with missiles, they then go to the rear and the F-22 goes in to duke it out and if they fail, send in the third wave or F-18s, or F16s to go against what's left.

My only concerns are, did we build enough F-22s and does the F-35 really need a pilot in the cockpit?
 
F-22 has a passive sensor system that can take data feeds from other participants like AWACS and use BVR missiles to take them out.

I just don't see any advantage the F-35 provides especially considering the Raptor when built in large numbers could be cost competitive.

Send the Raptor then send Strike Eagles and Vipers with an appropriate number of Growlers to blind the adversary and all that would be left is David and his slingshot.

This assumes that everything works as advertised.
 
Bob Noel said:
(if I understand the post #48 correctly) Remember that he was talking about when the F-16s were being first deployed replacing the F-4s. Think about what it's like to have old hands with a fighter going up against new pilots not completely familar with the F-16.
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If you read what my F-4D friend wrote in his answer, they were doing exactly what I predicted. Flying low and shooting an AIM-7E up at an approaching F-16.

That was in fact the only shot you could get on an F-16 in those days, anything else was luck.

Keep in mind that the AIM-7E was a craptastic missile, and that as soon as the F-4 locked on the F-16 knew the bearing of the F-4 from his radar warning receiver.

If the F-16 had a jamming pod (which they often did not, because there's really not a good place to hang a jammer on a USAF F-16) then the AIM-7E was pretty certain to miss. But then again, it was pretty certain to miss anyway.

And of course with so much power the F-16 had a reasonable chance of dodging an AIM-7E.

And today here is what would happen to an F-4 that tried that.

Now to be fair, at Red Flags is was not uncommon for even an F-111 to occasionally get a good shot on an F-16 or F-15, just because the F-111 would be scooting along the ground when a fighter just rolls out in front of the 'Vark. Because that fighter was just unlucky.
 
Bonchie said:
But we are never going back to close in gun fights and we haven't had them in decades (maybe one outlier or so?). They just do not happen in modern warfare
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JimNtexas said:
BTW, missiles are incredibly powerful, sophisticated, and reliable these days, I don't think fighters need guns anymore.
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What about intercept? A bomber fleet comes across the pole with ECM to beat the band and you can't touch them with a missile. Our bombers used to have tail guns just to keep the fighters out of gun range, and the bomber's ECM gear would negate the fighter's missiles. Is there still a role for a gun to fall back on when your enemy is electronically neutering you?


JimNtexas said:
If the F-16 had a jamming pod (which they often did not, because there's really not a good place to hang a jammer on a USAF F-16)
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Every one of our F-16As, and later when we upgraded to Cs carried an ECM Pod (131) on the #6 station. Didn't matter if the mission was air to air or mud. Matter of fact, for the big XC to Abu Dhabi, the config was three bags, the pod, and a full complement of AIM 9s. Not sure what you mean by not a good place to hang a pod, but our day-to-day mission was the Florida Straights and we had no problem flying pods.
 
JohnAJohnson said:
Every one of our F-16As, and later when we upgraded to Cs carried an ECM Pod (131) on the #6 station. Didn't matter if the mission was air to air or mud. Matter of fact, for the big XC to Abu Dhabi, the config was three bags, the pod, and a full complement of AIM 9s. Not sure what you mean by not a good place to hang a pod, but our day-to-day mission was the Florida Straights and we had no problem flying pods.
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It's kind of sad the USAF is still using the 131, that's really old technology.

Is there still a problem with arresting cables snagging the ecm pod?
 
warthog1984 said:
On a land based -16??? I sure hope not.
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I'm pretty sure all USAF fighter bases have arresting cables. When the F-16 was new carrying that large ALQ-131 was a problem, because it had so little ground clearance they sometimes damaged the pods if they taxied over a cable. IIRC the F-16 had to carry ecm pods on the centerline for pretty much all conventional loads.

The thing that makes me kind mad is why are our F-16s still flying with pods that were close to obsolete when I retired in 1994?! I hope the guts of the pods have been updated to at least a flip-phone technology level.

I think almost all the export models have an internal ECM system.

The F-16 basic design is 40 some-odd years old, yet it is still one of the most capable and amazing airplanes flying!
 
JimNtexas said:
I'm pretty sure all USAF fighter bases have arresting cables. When the F-16 was new carrying that large ALQ-131 was a problem, because it had so little ground clearance they sometimes damaged the pods if they taxied over a cable. IIRC the F-16 had to carry ecm pods on the centerline for pretty much all conventional loads.

The thing that makes me kind mad is why are our F-16s still flying with pods that were close to obsolete when I retired in 1994?! I hope the guts of the pods have been updated to at least a flip-phone technology level.

I think almost all the export models have an internal ECM system.

The F-16 basic design is 40 some-odd years old, yet it is still one of the most capable and amazing airplanes flying!
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And to think, if I'm not mistaken, that the original prototype F16 only cost $22M to build.
 
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