Oh look, X is awash with a story about the F-35 again.
(media.scored.co)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (56)
sorted by:
Counterpoint, the f35 is in a weird spot with how combat is evolving. We're looking for longer kill chains with longer range missiles (which means missile trucks), vs dedicated fighter/bombers which are still vulnerable in contested airspace.
The f35 being multirole isn't the problem, the problem is multirole close in fighters are the weak point, they can't carry bigger weapons (especially without hypersonics, which are going to be more and more important as time goes on), and a lot of the 'stealth' weapons we have are just low obs, not truly stealthy, which means they can get shot down by advanced tech.
In a war against China, for example, I'd rather have a ton of AIM 174s/hypersonic missiles on missile trucks with a few f35s than a ton of f35s with sidewinders and amraams and few missile trucks.
Also the f35b sucks balls and never needed to get made.
I'd rather have just kept making/updating f22s in the fighter role for airspace control, and skipped the 35 as a fighter/bomber and just made a more dedicated ground attack aircraft with some a2a ability, if we're hellbent on spending money.
Well the F-35 isn't replacing literally every fighter aircraft. That's why they're keeping on with things like the F-15EX. The F-35 is in a bit of a 'weird spot', because it's fitting in to a slot that's current occupied by F-16s, and F-16s have also been in a 'weird spot'. F-16s aren't great. They can do a lot, but they get flexed on hard by the F-15E in most capacities. Which is why I think it's funny when people go 'MUH MULTIROLE' when the main reason the F-16 is still around is specifically because it's a swiss army knife of an aircraft.
TBH I have no idea what you mean. In military terms "stealth" doesn't exist. It's literally all LO. Though you are right, except for only a couple weapons they're all as stealthy as bricks which ruin the profile when put on external racks.
Probably true. The lift fan required so much volume taken out of the fuel tank that its range (which is incredibly impressive on the A and C) is ridiculously short. It is super cool though.
Like a non-stealth ground attack aircraft?
Those weapons platforms are going obsolete. Against a modern peer, helicopters are too vulnerable. In Ukraine, Russia is terrified of losing their helicopters so they just lob unguided rockets from 15 miles away and hope they land. Platforms like the A-10 or SU-25 are utterly useless, they're downed by pretty much anything that wants them dead.
I can't comment on the AIM-174. But the entire point of stealth is to basically 'shrink' the effective range of radar systems. Every stealth aircraft can obviously be seen with radar if its gets close enough, the point is that an overlapping air defense network suddenly has lots of holes in it when you effectively reduce the range the S-400 can see from 200 to 100, and it requires the enemy to over-commit air defense assets to fill in the gap.
The biggest problem with the AIM-54 is that the little tiny radar dish in it couldn't see anything (this is a problem on all radar-guided missiles) so the F-14 had to paint the target to steer it in the correct direction. The enemy knew the entire time they were being attacked, and could take action. The AIM-54 was old as fuck, though, before modern battery tech, so I'm sure the 174 is not nearly as blatant, but my point is that weapons systems like the -174, I'm going to bet, are designed to give non-stealth aircraft a fighting chance that stealth aircraft are less vulnerable to... so the Air Force/Navy won't really care if it doesn't fit inside an F-35 because it doesn't need to.