What others have said: those older designs seem to have served us well enough in recent years. Just make new copies of those with updated computer/electronics guts.
Or, if Russia and China are truly in danger of “lapping” us, design and build specialized planes instead of going the jack of all trades route.
vyshka
5103
John Boyd knew his shit. It is a shame he isn’t still around to keep things in line.
Quaro
5104
The sunk cost makes it impossible to stop the F-35 at this point. Got a make a ton to get your money’s worth now!
vyshka
5105
There were also prototypes incorporating supermaneuver tech on both the F-15 and F-16. Both airframes could be updated to deal with any threats out there.
Like the Osprey, the F35 is looking like a giant boon doogle.
CraigM
5107
Now one important thing I do want to point out in the F-35’s favor: modern craft should not be engaging at dogfight range.
While it certainly makes a splashy headline F-35’s are not meant to engage in that manner. It’d be like commanders in WWI using the tactics of the Civil War and Crimean War to fight that war. Which they did, and which ended very poorly for them.
The F-35 is a boondoggle, but that it is not able to beat the best dogfighter planes built in their type of battle is not the reason.
vyshka
5108
They thought the same thing in the 60s with the F-4 and didn’t stick guns on it. That turned out real well in the skies over Vietnam.
That makes no sense. It’s still a multi-role fighter. If things like dogfighting capability didn’t matter, then it should have simply been a stand-off weapons platform and not been designed, at all, to be a fighter.
If your position is that fighters are obsolete, okay. But that’s different than saying a fighter shouldn’t need to do fighter-y things.
Clearly the answer is to scrap the F-35 and use that money to improve upon and build more A-10s. Clearly.
CraigM
5111
My position is simply that they are designing it to engage at a range where they are unable to be engaged back. Which, as a philosophy, is nice. I do not know if this would work in practice, but to me the position is not an unreasonable one. It is not designed to be, as far as I can tell, a plane that engages at visual range.
In that context evaluating it as a dogfighter is the wrong test. The test should be: can it engage and destroy an enemy before the enemy plane is within range to engage it.
This. Although, no, it’s not 1965 any more, pretty much every time jet fighters clash dogfighting becomes important. For a lot of different reasons, the ability to use those WWI-era skills still seem pretty important for a fighter aircraft. You may not want to engage at cannon range–the USAF sure as hell didn’t want to in Vietnam–but the enemy might not be so accommodating. And there are always a lot more cannon shells than high-end missiles laying around.
At what point in a project do you realize it’s garbage and start over? They started over with healthcare.gov.
Anyway, let’s get back on topic. Hillary can’t stop fucking up. I’m not kidding, Maddi. This is all over twitter right now and it’s hilarious.
Quaro
5114
I think that by the time they sort out the F35 the air superiority role will mostly drones. Shoot em down, sure, but you get 10s of them for ever F35 and don’t lose people when they do down.
Being widely mocked isn’ta great way to win elections. I almost feel sorry for Hillary.
Chronic
5116
Christie is officially out.
Good news: The GOP clown car is nearing a manageable level.
Bad news: Donald Trump is still in.
Scuzz
5118
I read that thinking but they did…and then finished the sentence. Exactly. :)
A dang good article from Bill Maher(read it before you write him off):
It’s finally a “Bill Maher election.” And by that I mean it’s a year of new rules — to borrow from Real Time — largely rewritten by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. No one thought a politician could survive, much less stay in the lead for as long as Trump has, based on a campaign of braggadocio and utter contempt for political correctness. But the younger generation is leading a movement to prize authenticity above all. Trump is a petulant child, but at least that’s real, they seem to be saying. Bernie, too, is as real as real gets. (So real he doesn’t even own a comb.)
Bernie tied in Iowa after starting 30 points down; as I write this, it looks like he’s going to win New Hampshire, and that’s not just, or even mainly, because Vermont is a neighbor state. [Sanders and Trump both coasted to easy victories in New Hampshire.] Rather it’s because he is putting on the table something we’ve never seen before: the idea that America could be more like a Western European democracy, quasi-socialist (we’re that already, of course, with Social Security, Medicare and farm subsidies) where you pay more in taxes, but you get more: free health care and free college. I call this his “New Deal,” and we haven’t really had one of those since FDR’s…
…'s funny that both the left and the right could not agree more that the country needs radical change. It’s no longer this endeavor where you have to watch every word you say. Bernie said in early February, “I’m not involved in organized religion.” Not a deal-breaker. “I’m a socialist.” The world didn’t fall apart. Donald Trump, on the other hand, obviously says whatever flies into his head — there are Tourette’s patients with more control — and people like it. Americans have been choking on political correctness and overly careful politicians for the last generation or two and are sick of it. Remember Mitt Romney? He used to say in stump speeches that he loves Michigan because “the trees are the right height.” The trees are the right height?
Hillary Clinton is still playing that kind of politician, the one who never upsets anybody, who always says the thing that no one can quite attack, so she comes off in this new era as inauthentic and just unappetizing to watch. I think all the enthusiasm that people wanted to have for Hillary Clinton — the first woman president! — they’re having trouble mustering because of the way she campaigns and because Bernie is more exciting…
…Which isn’t to say Hillary isn’t extraordinarily capable and accomplished. I don’t think she’d blow up the world, the way probably most of the Republicans would. The Democrats are wonks — and I say that as a compliment. This idea that the Republicans have been playing since Reagan — that government is always the problem, that it only makes things worse — has been so detrimental to America for so long. Republicans hate government, but they want to be in it. Right away, that’s not a good formula for success. It’s one of the reasons I have never become a priest. They love, love, love America — it’s the greatest country in the world and I will kill anyone who dares say different! — except when a Democrat is in office, and then it’s an unlivable shithole.
Timex
5120
Dogfighting can certainly still be an important skill, but a test where you remove a critical advantage of the modern aircraft (i.e. stealth capabilities by starting engagement in visual range) you negate the validity of the test.
An F-35 is going to destroy any non-stealth fighter in the real world, because it’s engagement range is going to be WAY outside of it. It’s never going to get to within visual range.
Dogfighting will only happen between two stealth aircraft.
And this is exactly the reason why such advantages are of immense importance. Because without them, you will lose every engagement. Technology will advance, and two fighters from the same generation will fight against each other using, most likely, many of the same traditional skills… But against older fighters, in realistic situations? Yeah, the old fighters get OBLITERATED.
Hell, we’ve effectively already seen this in prior conflicts, using older fighters. A major reason why Iraq got its ass beat SO BAD was that the US employed engagement tactics beyond visual range. Now, our own aircraft weren’t stealth fighters, so technically our opposition could have used the same types of things, but they did not have the network necessary to feed targeting data to their aircraft… but the end result was essentially the same thing that would happen if a military with old aircraft went up against a military with stealth fighters, even if both had well networked sensor suites. The old aircraft would all be obliterated before they even knew what was happening.
It’s like a knife vs. a gun. If I run a “test” where we compare the effectiveness of each, but in the test the two people start within 2 feet of each other… it’s probably gonna look like the knife is more effective than the gun. But I assure you, that is not the case.
Miramon
5121
The F-35 is better than the Osprey, but that’s not saying a whole hell of a lot. If we didn’t have it at all we’d be better off because the admitted loss of military power would be balanced by the enormous amount of money wasted on it.
