There's been so much nonsense spoken about the F35, both in the past, based on the development aircraft that didn't even have the final software, to the rubbish regurgitated today. So nice to have a reality check.

Recent Red Flag exercise the aircraft achieved a kill ratio of 20 to 1. 

F35 squadron commander who recently participated in the Northern Lightning  exercise said, "its like fighting somebody with their hands tied behind their backs. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 10, 20215 yr by martin-w

I wish I were young again! 🙂

You are as young as the women you feel. 😼

Still unproven but my money is on mass production junk always wins the war compared to slow produced high tech. World War 2 is the best example of that. U-Boats was the F35 of that day, the most high tech piece of equipment that  had the capability of hiding, the cheap and nasty Corvettes produced in high numbers beat them, the German Tanks were far superior but the Sherman Tank beat them simply by outnumbering them even though they were no where near as good. 

Why would you bother going after the F35 directly when you could outproduce it with drones in a number like 1000 to 1 when you look at the costs to produce it? An F35 won't beat drones when it is outnumbered on that scale. Unfortunately the USA has adopted the German philosophy from WW2 that  high tech is better when it was proven that  high tech lost the war, low tech and mass  production will always win.

China is currently the best in the world at low tech mass production therefore the F35 is just another U-Boat or Panther Tank, high tech and low numbers, not enough to make a difference. Cheap Drones in High Production will find their  weakness and take them out. 

The equipment used at a start of a war always becomes obsolete, the equipment developed during a war is what inevitably wins the war. The F35 will become obsolete within 6 months of the next war, it is a very expensive target for the enemy to outthink by a simple and cheap solution making it obsolete. 

Edited February 10, 20215 yr by Matthew Kane

My money would always be on ten bad guys with nothing more sophisticated than a baseball bat kicking Bruce Lee's word not allowed, because unlike in the movies, they wouldn't all wait their turn to attack, they'd mob him all at once and batter the living crud out of him.

You make some good points, but you do have to be careful with a lot of those historical comparisons. The statistics often don't really tell the whole story.

For example, it's something of a myth concerning the unstoppable brilliance of the WW2 U-Boat. There's no denying it had some successes, but it was more about the lack of a suitable detection and engagement method against them in the early war years which contributed to that, which the Germans were able to exploit. The main U-Boat the Germans used in WW2 was the Type VII (various marks), but it was essentially a coastal boat, not really suited to the long-range Atlantic operations which were forced upon it and so as noted, it was really the inadequacy of anti-submarine defences combined with the perseverance, skill and bravery of the Kriegsmarine crews and Doenitz's wolfpack tactics in the early war years which enabled its success in spite of those technological disadvantages. Even then, its endurance and firepower was limited by range and capacity. More importantly, the cracking of Enigma and the development of Asdic, airborne radar, powerful searchlights, hedgehog, aerial depth charges etc eventually spelled its doom. And since it was a U-Boat rather than a true submarine, forced to travel on the surface most of the time, being limited in speed and underwater duration and forced into the deeper waters away from the UK coastline for operations, much of what it did was reactive in nature rather than a choice. In other words, far from being technologically advanced, it was beaten by inevitable technological developments combined with experience and evolving tactics which dealt with the brilliance of its own innovative tactical usage.

A better maritime example would be the German U-Boats of WW1, which really were a threat about which very little could be done for the entire duration of the war, with only the Q-Ships really having any measure of success against them and gaining an unenviable reputation of shady practices whilst doing so. These U-Boats too were submersible boats rather than true submarines, without long underwater endurance and broadly similar in capabilities to the Type VIIs which were derived from them. They mostly engaged merchant shipping with their deck guns rather than torpedoes, but with little in the way of defences against them and surfaced speeds and endurance which allowed them to range far and wide, they were pretty much able to sink any merchant shipping they liked if it was not escorted by warships. So they remained a pretty much undefeated weapon throughout WW1 since the technology necessary to detect and engage them was yet to emerge in the following world war.

It's not really true about German tanks either. Yes there were some technically impressive German tanks, but they were also problematic in a number of ways, notably with reliability and weight, not helped by the fact that they were often built using slave labour, which is hardly a way to ensure a workforce committed to quality. Adolf liked his BIG tanks, and much of that led to developers pandering to this to end up making tanks which were massively heavy, which led to strain on their transmissions and frequent bogging down in open terrain, reducing their mobility. The Tiger is a good example of this, it required different wider tracks to be fitted for delivery and transport than the ones used for combat operation, and those wider tracks caused problems for rail transport. The Panther was a response to that issue, but even that was quite problematic in many ways.

It's often quoted that it took four or five M4 Shermans to take out a Tiger or Panther tank, but this is a misleading stat, often perpetuated in movies and poorly-researched books. It is largely born of the fact that this number was the smallest size of a unit of M4 Shermans in most Allied armies, and so if the advancing Allied infantry reported there was a Tiger dug in up the road and some Allied tanks were sent forward to deal with it, the Allies would send the typically-sized M4 Unit to deal with it, which was of course five Shermans and one of these would probably be a firefly variant which could outgun a Panther or Tiger and frequently did so. That's where that numerical statistic for the most part comes from. It's not a five to one kill ratio for the Tiger, it's just how many were there shooting at one another.

In reality, the Sherman was an eminently practical tank, it had frontal armor which actually wasn't significantly thinner than that of a Panther and it had a much better ballistic slope that the armor on a Tiger, yet it was small enough to be able to be easily transported by rail, and with good tactical maintenance capability. This ensured it was always on the battlefield and easily serviced or repaired between engagements.

Contrary to popular belief, the M4 was a quite survivable tank too once it employed better ammunition stowage in its evolved form. In short, it's less about its numbers and more about its availability and the fact that it was the right weapon for the situation. This is really why the Allies defeated tanks which whilst looking good on a Top Trumps stat card, spent more time in maintenance sheds than they did in combat, and even when they could move, were slow and severely hampered by how much fuel they used owing to their massive weight. The best and most successful German AFV was in fact the much cheaper and simpler Stug, so that's probably a better example of cheaper and more numerical being a better way to go in a long war than the M4 is.

The F-35 is indeed impressive on paper too, but an exercise is very different from a real shooting war. We only have to look at the response to the 9/11 attacks to see what confusion can do to the ability to respond militarily to a situation which unlike a planned practice engagement, is a confused and scary business where you often have no idea what you're up against at all. But, even when you do know this, that fancy technology can and will let you down on occasion, and always at the wrong time. Take for example the F-14 and its AIM-54 Phoenix missiles...

The range of the AIM-54 is classified, but we do know that it is at least 120 miles and that it can be 'lobbed' out to extend this. In theory, this missile meant that just one F-14 carrying four of these missiles was able to engage a flight of four incoming strike fighters and shoot all of them down beyond visual range with its four AIM-54s. But when this was actually tried, using four QF drones, the F-14 managed to hit two of these and destroy them, then it hit another but only damaged it, and then it missed the last one. This meant it was out of missiles and if that had been a combat situation, it was then facing at least one, and possibly two enemy aeroplanes, which still had all their BVR missiles and a bad attitude from just having seen their comrades get taken out.

Now of course the F-14 and the AIM-54 are now older technology, but at the time this invincibility was the PR which was bandied about, and this is no different from what they are doing in claiming the F-35 is some kind of unstoppable solution. The reality of warfare is always very different and as we know from history, the worst thing you can do is to underestimate an enemy and think you've got it in the bag.

 

Edited February 10, 20215 yr by Chock

Martin - the thumbnail for that F-35 video:

It shows the plane with... UNDERWING PYLONS and LOTS OF EXTERNAL STORES.. (bombs and a couple of Sidewinders).

I would wager it has now generated a fat enough radar return to be seen and dealt with. Perhaps even become prey to modernised 3rd/4th Gen aircraft such as the Turkish F-4E Terminators with AMRAAMS??  

If the pilot can jettison all external stores AND the pylons then perhaps they will regain a stealth advantage ... not to mention added performance.. 

2 hours ago, Chock said:

The reality of warfare is always very different and as we know from history, the worst thing you can do is to underestimate an enemy and think you've got it in the bag.

Very much so. While the F-35 may prove difficult to kill in the air at the start of a fight, what about after a couple weeks of intense fighting? Scratched paint and other damage is going to reduce the stealthiness and I wouldn't be surprised if other maintenance issues crop up too. And what about on the ground? Almost everyone has cruise and ballistic missiles these days, not to mention special forces. A couple small teams with mortars could do some pretty good damage to a squadron on the ground.

https://theaviationist.com/2012/09/16/vma-211/

If we were to find ourselves in a protracted conventional war with a peer level adversary these days, I suspect our Western militaries would be in for some hard lessons early on.

Edited February 10, 20215 yr by goates
Speeling...

My prediction for the next Global Conflict is the USA won't be in the crosshairs anyway, Australia followed by New Zealand will be. You can't land an Army in the USA they would sink the flotilla way before they even got to Hawaii. Australia shares a maritime border with Asia and a very short crossing, that is the strategy and Pacific Expansion, a repeat of WW2 in the Pacific with a multinational Asian offensive, this time very little the USA and Allies would be able to do and stop it. I live in New Zealand therefore I live in the crosshairs and they are already digging in.

F35's are great muscle flex but won't do much to stop a massive war machine when it does come. Hopefully we are decades away from that though as I have kids to raise still

Edited February 11, 20215 yr by Matthew Kane

"More importantly, the cracking of Enigma and the development of Asdic, airborne radar, powerful searchlights, hedgehog, aerial depth charges etc eventually spelled its doom. "

 

I think deciphering Enigma won the war. The British knew exactly the target area of every German attack during most of (the latter part) of the Battle of Britain airwar. Indeed the Brits had to deliberately not send all their planes to the target area so as not to tip off they had broken the code. They pulled their punches, but still thanks to the information they won that Battle.

Romel's resupply fuel tankers were all sunk at sea, except for a few the Brits deliberately let land at port in order to keep their secret. Thanks to the decoders the war in Africa was won.

The long range missions of the U-Boots was scuttled, their resupply depots destroyed thanks to the decoders. It took a very long time for the U-Boots to get there and then find there was no fuel to continue. So more months wasted again as they were forced back on the long voyage home. Another battle lost thanks to  Enigma being intercepted.

 

1 hour ago, Matthew Kane said:

My prediction for the next Global Conflict

Not too difficult to disagree 100% with every point in a post in danger of sounding like xenophobic paranoia … 😊
Nobody digging in around Auckland, that I have noticed.

Sure the next conventional confrontation looks likely to be in the South China Sea. The US and many other Western and Asian countries are likely to get involved.

High-tech aircraft will be needed for the First Day of War: F-22 and F-35.
Floods of F-15 and F-16 will follow up once Stealth is a diminishing return.
After that logistics and resources will determine the outcomes.  
It’s the way of war.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, the real war will not be as easy as that: it will be unconventional and involve a great deal of electronic trickery.
Some say the Third World War is already underway.

 

1 hour ago, WingZ said:

Of course, as mentioned earlier, the real war will not be as easy as that: it will be unconventional and involve a great deal of electronic trickery.
Some say the Third World War is already underway.

Yep, going to be lots of electronic trickery, and social engineering too, if it isn't already happening. One target will almost certainly be the F-35's ODIN, formerly ALIS, system for maintenance. Take it out or, better yet, mess with the data. See how well F-35 units operate when they get a thousand shoulder straps instead of the critical engine parts they requested. 😈

Quote

High-tech aircraft will be needed for the First Day of War: F-22 and F-35.
Floods of F-15 and F-16 will follow up once Stealth is a diminishing return.
After that logistics and resources will determine the outcomes.  
It’s the way of war.

That's definitely the main idea with the stealth aircraft, but will it actually play out that way? As the examples with U-boats in WWII show, people will find a way to track those stealth aircraft and negate their advantage, whether it's actual sensors of some kind, or cracking communication systems so you know where they are and when they're coming. There are already ideas like quantum radar being explored, and I'm sure plenty more that aren't public yet. Having all your supposedly stealth aircraft shot down on the first day because someone solved the problem would be a rude (and expensive) awakening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_radar

And I agree, I'm not sure anyone is going to be directly invading Australia or New Zealand any time soon. Far better to politically isolate and cut them off rather than waste time occupying, which seems to be what China is going for.

Edited February 11, 20215 yr by goates

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

"I think deciphering Enigma won the war. The British knew exactly the target area of every German attack during most of (the latter part) of the Battle of Britain airwar. Indeed the Brits had to deliberately not send all their planes to the target area so as not to tip off they had broken the code. They pulled their punches, but still thanks to the information they won that Battle.

Actually the British often knew where Luftwaffe bombers were going to attack several hours before most raids occurred even before Enigma was tackled, because of the Knickbein radio system which the Luftwaffe used in WW2 for navigation in darkness.

Knickbein used two widely separated directional radio beams from mobile installations based on the European mainland, both of which would be aimed at a target city in the UK. The Luftwaffe's bombers would fly down one of those beams toward the target and when they detected that they had crossed the other beam on a DF loop, they'd know they were over the target and could release their bombs. The release mechanism was linked to a clockwork timer which triggered off the other radio beam's signal being detected. Thus the bombing of cities even during a blackout was pretty accurate, or at least accurate enough to allow the Luftwaffe to hit a large enough industrial area of a major city, although it was mostly coastal towns or towns on a prominent river which copped it the most, since navigation to these places was possible even with Britain attempting to jam Knickbein signals. This is why London, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester etc were the places which tended to get hit a lot, since these are easy to locate from the air at night owing to the reflections off water.

The Luftwaffe would use their Knickbein system at night so that bombers were basically immune to fighter interception; airborne radar was still under development at that point in the war, but since the Germans had to set the Knickbein radio beams up and test them to make sure they were working alright on the day of a raid, which they would do earlier in the day, the British frequently detected the test signals and so knew where a raid was coming, although they kept this quiet from the populace since it would not be good for morale to know for sure that you were in for it in a few hours, especially since there wasn't much you could do about it.

Nevertheless, this allowed the army to ready their anti-aircraft artillery, and told the Air Force where to put up night fighters on screening patrols, but without radar in the night fighters, they achieved very few interceptions and it was mostly flak and barrage balloons which were the threats to German bombers up until around 1944.

Later in the war, when airborne intercepting radar was available, the detection of Knickbein signals would tell the British where they were likely to expect V1s - which by then were carried slung under the wings of He-111s - to be targeting that evening, but since the V-1 was not especially accurate, this wasn't much use in shooting down V-1s; however, the ability to track German bombers at night did mean the Germans had to release their V-1s well out over the North Sea to avoid being intercepted by night fighters.

Honestly,

It's really hard to judge what a country's military may do without knowing their war doctrine and tactics. To this day,some information and tactics used during past wars are classified. Though innovation and technology are key to successful engagements, information and tactics are equally key. Information during a war is just as critical as the tactics utilized. The one with key information takes the advantage always. I say key information because there will also be a disinformation campaign going on as well. From a big picture view down to a BVR fight, the one who sees the enemy first takes the advantage. Once you have critical information, your technology, tactics and doctrine become the major factors. Also, one of the benefits of fighting wars is lessons learned and innovation. These in turn drive technology, doctrine and tactics. It's a continuous cycle. Look back at the MiG 15 and 17s. They were kicking tail and the 15 had superior performance to the 86. Once some information was gained on those jets, success was gained against them. I even recall a defection that delivered a MiG to the US. After flying and studying it, tactics changed immediately. Even the MiG 21 led to development and upgrades on the iron sled F4 and tactics.  

We can look further back in the Pacific region during the war when the zeros were deadly(I think it was the zeros). They were lightly built which made them super performers. But, on the other hand, they were structurally weaker and could not endure a lot of stress and could break up with a lot of loading. They didn't fair too well with ammunition and would easily flame up with a couple of incendiary rounds. Someone mentioned the F14. It's AWG 9 RADAR is still classified. It could carry a large payload, track and target multiple aircraft and had the ability to accept external RADAR sources which could be used to track and target aircraft. That technology along with a two man crew can make you deadly. One guy targets and shoots weapons while the other flies, both working together increasing SA and brain power.

Now, in today's world, information happens quickly in real time. The days of having scouts identify targets for someone to go after hours or days later are over. We are more into information warfare that transcends air, ground and sea elements. You can imagine that when any conflict occur now days, someone is watching and collecting data. Even during peace time, someone is watching and collecting data. You can imagine that if the world can detect underground nuclear detonation tests, the world can detect everything else. It's not the stealthy innovation of an aircraft that makes it deadly, it's the information it has and it's tactics employed. A good documentary to watch is one about the F22 development. 2 F22s were put against 8 F15s. All of the F15s were taken out and they never seen the 22s. Again, this goes back to the information it has. I remember when I was flying C141Bs, we lost a jet and crew off the coast of Africa. They ended up converging onto the same place in the big sky with a German aircraft. The collision was captured on satellite. That was back in 1997, imagine capabilities gained since then.

On today's battle ground, it's all information based. There's misinformation where you intentionally mislead, there's information gathering where you collect data and there's information protection where you protect your own information. Back in the day, weapons systems, doctrine and tactics were developed using perceived emerging threats. Now days they are developed base on known threats and capabilities. There is no more dog fighting and fighter jets are obsolete. Aircraft today are multi role systems and spend more time doing close air support and interdiction. When was the last air war? Even for the US, the last air kill was a F18 taking out a SU22 in 2017. Before that, a F16 took out a MiG 29 in 1999. The warfare we are seeing today is cyber and asymmetrical based. Back in the day, air superiority delivered the battlefield to you. Now days, standoff aircraft and ships hit key targets to allow CAS and interdiction. The forces that keep up with the ever changing world and evolves their technology, doctrine and tactics stay relevant. Forces that maintain old mindsets tend to lose advantage over time. You can have all the money and technology in the world, but you still need information to be effective.     

Rick

7 hours ago, WingZ said:

Not too difficult to disagree 100% with every point in a post in danger of sounding like xenophobic paranoia … 😊
Nobody digging in around Auckland, that I have noticed.

Nope no one is digging in around Auckland, they are digging in South China Sea and Arafura Sea. Wars are fought over natural resources and moving forward the most valuable natural resource is the Water Economy, remember 'an Army Marches On Its Stomach'. When it comes to a Water Economy New Zealand is the equivalent to the Saudi Arabia Oil Economy. Oil is in the past. Water Economy is the future. NZ is sitting out there in the open and for the taking...Not paranoid just realistic. Not going to happen soon but eventually it will

Edited February 11, 20215 yr by Matthew Kane

10 hours ago, HighBypass said:

Martin - the thumbnail for that F-35 video:

It shows the plane with... UNDERWING PYLONS and LOTS OF EXTERNAL STORES.. (bombs and a couple of Sidewinders).

I would wager it has now generated a fat enough radar return to be seen and dealt with. Perhaps even become prey to modernised 3rd/4th Gen aircraft such as the Turkish F-4E Terminators with AMRAAMS??  

If the pilot can jettison all external stores AND the pylons then perhaps they will regain a stealth advantage ... not to mention added performance.. 

 

 

Yep, weapons are stored in the internal bays when stealth is required. When stealth is no longer required, external stores can be carried. Internal stores avoid parasitic drag too.