Originally Posted by Danno
Originally Posted by Virtus_Probi
There are already a lot of troubling signs that the F35 is not going to be a good dogfighter, which may not be crucial depending upon its exact role...but, sad to hear as it is supposed to do "everything" well.
Meh on the importance of the dog fighting role when 99.999% of any air battle is way beyond line of sight.
Who ever sees the enemy first kills the enemy first and the US has the best technology with on board sensors, AWACs, satellites, and whatever else is used that we do not know about.
An AIM-120 anti-air can hit targets beyond 97nm (180kms)
Example - In a US carrier group, picket ships and AWACs operate 200 nm (370kms) out from the carrier group. With other multilayer detection in from there.
In addition to that, the F-35 DOES do dogfighting well.
People complain because they think it can't hang with the absolute best dogfighters in the world. That's true to some extent. But it's like calling someone a bad runner because they can't beat Usain Bolt in a 100m dash. And as Danno said, dogfighting ain't exactly the most important thing these days. It's like knife fighting for soldiers. Do you want your guys to be able to do it well? Absolutely. But if your adversaries have a few guys who are better at it, and if your guys are better at literally everything else, how much sleep are you really going to lose?