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Red Flag and the F-35 Kill Ratio Is 15:1
The much maligned F-35 did very well at the February 2017 Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, Nevada. In fact the F-35 dominated the skies. When paired with F-22 the kill ratio may have been as high 17:1.
In the past few months reading through news stories about the F-35 I wondered why the F-35 was denigrated in the US, but Australians and Europeans were so impressed by this aircraft. The F-35 is available for purchase by American allies, the F-22 is not. The Red Flag exercises provided the answers to that question.
In the first day of sorties during Red Flag not a single F-35 was lost to “enemy action”, and not one F-35 was grounded to mechanical or electronic malfunctions. Throughout the exercise the operational ability to keep the F-35 flying was approximately 92%.
What this means to NATO is that the Russians would not be able to support ground troops and it would allow NATO to dominate the sky. The Russian Air Force would not be able to protect Russian armored or infantry units. The Russian Air Force would have to sit on the ground, or risk being destroyed in a very short time, or confined to Russian airspace.
Published in MilitaryRunning from January 23 to February 10, this year’s Red Flag involves more threats to pilots than ever before, including surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), radar jamming equipment, and an increased number of red air, or mock enemy aircraft. Against the ramped-up threats, the F-35A only lost one aircraft for every 15 aggressors killed, according to Aviation Week.
The F-35 Lightning II’s advanced avionics software was the star of the show, as multiple F-35s successfully compiled data into a detailed layout of the battlefield with each individual threat pinpointed. The stealthy aircraft could then slip into weak spots in the defensive layout and take out SAM targets, opening up the space for follow-on forces of legacy fighters. Even when the F-35s ran out of munitions, F-22 and fourth-generation fighter pilots wanted the aircraft to remain in the combat zone, soaking up data and porting target info to the older fighters.
Before where we would have one advanced threat and we would put everything we had—F-16s, F-15s, F-18s, missiles—we would shoot everything we had at that one threat just to take it out, Lt. Col. George Watkins, 34th Fighter Squadron commander, told Aviation Week. Now we are seeing three or four of those threats at a time.
The F-35 and the F-22 Raptor pair up to make a particularly deadly team, according to the pilots. The Raptor uses its advanced air maneuverability to shield the F-35 from airborne threats while the F-35 relays data to the F-22 to paint a clear picture of the battlefield. Once the duo of fifth-generation fighters take out an initial wave of ground and air targets, F-18s, F-16s, and F-15s bring up the rear to provide support, all receiving target data from the F-35s in the field.
Yes, particularly the buggy software. That gives them a speed advantage. We made it worse with the insanity of trying to develop three versions at the same time.
This is really incendiary. Maybe you didn’t mean it the way it reads. “Deliberately sabotaged” implies some kind of evil intent or subterfuge. Maybe you mean compromised? Even then I would like to see more support for these statements.
Are you advocating this? More crashes, more pilot fatalities, more loss of airframes, more malfunctions, traded to save schedule slip?
Not a chance. One huge issue is the exhaust nozzle.
Here’s where things get complex.
You also have to consider the choice to go with one engine vs. two. The single engine was dictated by the lift fan. That caused aero packaging issues.
In order to have the wide landing gear of the B (to accommodate the thrust vectoring) and C (for carrier landings), they broadened the rear fuselage (contrast with the gear of the F-16).
You conveniently took out the second part of my statement made both times I discussed this. The insanity of the three-model development was inconsistent with the decision not to take such risks. It basically squared the time delay.
I didn’t “conveniently” remove it. I just don’t dispute it. But as an argument it seems to thrust in the opposite direction doesn’t it? It introduced greater risk in cost, schedule, and technical. You argued the Chinese are willing to take greater risks and therefore speed up their programs. However in this case the US took on cost and schedule risks and is incurring additional schedule risk by refusing to fly with certain technical risks. Do you mean instead that the Chinese are willing to take greater technical and safety risks in order to buy down schedule and cost risks?
“Sabotage?” Your choice of that word betrays your lack of objectiveness. Design criteria are chosen for certain reasons. They may be reasons you don’t agree with, but those reasons do not constitute sabotage.
It’s as though you might think there is an ideal aircraft design that should be built in a vacuum.
I think this plane is a monument to the air force and its history of bloated budgets.
What in this source says the nozzle is a huge issue? The first sentence says:
The source I read only cited the frontal RCS, which is agrees with the source. It does say the F-22 is smaller from other aspects.
It goes on to cite significant advances in stealth technology used in the F-35:
I would say it’s hard to tell from this source to what extent the stealth was “compromised” or simply designed to a specific target requirement and cost.
There are many other reasons to potentially choose a single engine. Considering it’s the most powerful fighter engine ever built, they might not have needed the thrust of two. It’s one of single most expensive subsystems. Maintenance on engines is some of the most expensive maintenance. The reliability of modern engines is very high, so redundancy doesn’t necessarily increase safety. One stat I saw shows that twin engine jets suffer more Class A mishaps due to a doubled probability of human error.
Not that these are conclusive but it’s simplistic to say “it was all the lift fan’s fault”. The X-32 was also a STOVL design with no lift fan and a single engine, designed to the same spec as the X-35.
Can you cite figures to show that the F-35 has a particularly wide rear fuselage, and that this is detrimental in some way? Is it wider than the F-22, YF-23, or J-20?
I’d be very skeptical of both the ROE and the assumptions of what constitutes a kill in that exercise.
Fair, but unless they changed the rules over the years, it would still be valid to compare it against other aircraft in the same exercise wouldn’t it?
The Red Flag Exercises came about in the 70’s because the highest US pilot loss in Vietnam came before the completion of 10 missions. The F-5 was chosen as the aggressor aircraft because it was the closest aircraft that the US had to the Mig-21. The F-5 pilots were experienced and aggressive flyers. The idea was to give pilots the as much combat experience as possible in a training environment to get them past that 10 mission point.
In the present time aggressor aircraft are F-16’s, F-15’s.
The original Red Flag (perhaps not as much as Top Gun) was intended to teach skills that pilots would currently need to basically restart the Vietnam War under restricted rules of engagement (e.g., need for visual identification).
Its relevance falls apart when you say its a showcase for new equipment using rules that are biased in the opposite direction.
Look at a photo. The F-35 has a much greater cross-section fraction not occupied by engine or wing.
Please stop deliberately mischaracterizing what people say to make yourself strawman arguments. I did not say say “it was all the lift fan’s fault”.
The X-32’s lift nozzle plumbing broadened its cross-section.
Twin engines have a number of aerodynamic and packaging advantages: fuselage lift; reduced need to increase cross-section to accommodate landing gear and mounting points for a twin vertical tail; more room for centerline weapons stations or bays; 6 o’clock visibility. But it’s a trade off mostly with maintenance costs as you discussed.
There are tradeoffs/compromises and there is sabotage. The express decision that the F-22 was too stealthy for export caused sabotage. A tradeoff/compromise would be trading coating maintenance cost savings for reduced stealth.
There is considerable data on counter stealth out there. Here is one public story:
Israeli efforts are reported here:
Given that the F-35 is already well-known to be detectable by VHF, I would not be certain at all that the aircraft is actually stealthy against a technologically-savvy opponent?
I do not believe any of the claims about the Chinese successfully copying advanced technologies. It is really quite tricky to do, and there is no hard data that they have succeeded in even making a reasonable commercial jet (despite decades and many billions invested), let alone a state-of-the-art fighter.
All of this said, I continue to believe that well-networked UAV fleets are the future of air superiority. The F-35 is the last manned fighter America will ever build.
It astonishes me that this debate feels a lot like a political one: people will defend their “team” regardless of any contrary facts.
There is no competing nation in the world that is anywhere close to touching the US when it comes to fighter jets. But the US is, IMMHO, stuck in an old mentality, fighting the last war.
Flying is, in its way, much simpler for a computer to do than is driving. There are not nearly as many things to process and consider in air as compared to the very dynamic road situation on the ground. And UAVs do not have to be designed with pilot environment and survivability in mind. Aircraft can be much more maneuverable without the extra weight and limited G-forces needed by a pilot. And UAVs do not have to worry about human fatigue.
If Google or Apple were offering “defense services for sale”, their solutions would be networked self-driving UAVs. Networked radar (like telescopes) can see with far more acuity than any single radar source. It becomes a simple computational problem. Any “stealth” aircraft would be defeated by that much-cheaper UAV network.
I know Israel is doing this already (and using the F-35s they have coming for airborne C&C for UAVs). Japan is going in this direction. And so should anyone who wants to win on a budget.
The United States is pouring money down a rabbit hole with the F-35.
Too bad the Obama admin cancelled the F22 and made sure it stayed dead by getting rid of the tooling.
Are you willing to bet everything on the inability of China, Russia, Iran, the NorKs… to hack or jam that network?
I think that is only the F35B variant. The Brits have two carriers being built for the F35b. Unfortunately the design is only for the F35B which means only slow speed landings. Also the fact that there isn’t a catapult means that all the energy required to get the plane airborne has to be born by the F35B. This limits its operational range.I would have much preferred arresting cables and catapults but politics and economics intervened.
Where it gets interesting is the decision to go with STOVL vs. STOBAR. Catapults are expensive and hard to maintain for a former first world country like the UK, but arresting cables are cheap. Even the Ruskies can get them to work most of the time. Could the Brits have gone with the F-35C on STOBAR variants of their carriers? Would an F-35C using a ramp have had dramatically less takeoff payload than an F-35B? Or does the F-35C just not have enough thrust?
It is probably difficult to get an accurate assessment of the actual capabilities of the Chinese version of the F-35, or their version of an F-22. If someone knows of a Chinese version of Ricochet where the merits and liabilities of that aircraft is being discussed let me know. One stat that was published in China Daily is interesting. The Chinese version of the stealth fighter has a range of about 777 miles which is about half the range that the F-35 has.
A jammed UAV network will have a similar effect as a jammed F-35. You end up with a standalone platform, reliant on whatever default programming or instructions are in place. Not great for either one.
Current rules of engagement and treaty interpretations prevent us from from having an autonomous combat mode for a UCAV.
I think for everything but air to air uavs are the way to go including stationary air defense. You can actaully program ground targets fairly easily comparitly speaking. I still think for air superiority your still going to need pilots in the air for a long time. Hower I think its best to say that this test is a performance is against 4th generation fights with no ground defense support. That is what f22 were really designed for to find and take out air to ground plateform and survive it. I am not worried about Russian tech. We actually have decent real life info on their performances and they have nothing in the pipline that can come close to anything we have. They Just don’t have the money for it l. They are spending it all on minor upgrades and more units of existing tech. The Chinese are the only ones we need to worry about on the 5th generation side. However iwe could be right, it might be overblown. We reaaly won’t have a good idea as the public untill we see these planes in some real life action
Easy with the accusations. You’re very quick to assign ill intent — you used the term “deliberately sabotaged” three times in a previous comment. I thought what I wrote was a fair paraphrase of this direct quote: “The single engine was dictated by the lift fan.” If you disagree just say so. If your objection is to the use of quotation marks I can see that; in this instance they are more like scare quotes and should have been preceded by the words “in effect”. If you want I’ll reword it.
Accepting that as true, I think they would be even further behind schedule with more technical shortcomings than the F-35. That technology is not mature enough.