Good point, but the pilot would need to know in time that he is to engage in a dogfight, 6-8 seconds in a dogfight are like centuries.

What threat is going to dogfight the F-35, that the F-35’s going to be unaware of? If the threat is close enough to dogfight, then it’s going to be detected by the DAS, and likely have a missile enroute.

So, what you are saying is that for an A2A mission it would carry more missiles internally, when it is certified for that anyway. Makes sense, but sadly Sens disagrees.

Sens isn’t disagreeing with me. The basic A2G load out for the F-35A and C are 2 AAMs and 2 JDAMS. The A2A load out is 4 AAMs for Blk 3, and 6 for Blk 4 and on.

That’s fine by me, eventhough there is still no solid fact suggesting anything like this, only concepts and speculation. But never mind, let’s assume that it will take 6 AAMs internally some time in the future with some modifications.

This still doesn’t explain (in fact it even contradicts) the “good reasons” Sens mentioned, only to admit later on that actually he has no idea what he’s talking about.

So, if F-35 carries only 2 AAMs, it’s because either they’re more than enough or because there are some “unscpecified unknown good reasons”, and it’s super cool as it is. But if it will eventually carry more than 2, it’s because 2 are not enough and with more it becomes even more bad a$$ mathafacka’ and -again- it’s super cool as such.

F-35.
It’s soooooo cool. :rolleyes:

The only time the F-35 would carry 2 AAMs, is if it is also carry A2G ordinance internally. It’d never have that load out on a CAP/Escort/Intercept/etc… mission.

The F-117A had some more aces in its deck to avoid getting shot down.
It was not retired by the lack of performance. Just outside a real war its single-purpose mission capability is not in need and does not justify the outlays to keep that going. It was even done to bolster the role of the F-22A at a time scale, when there was some hope for some extra F-22A built.

The F-35 has nothing to fear in the air really, because there is no need to “outfly” something, it just render the weapon-systems of the opponent impotent most of the time. The Eurocanards can not confide on that in a similar way and have to look for other tactical solutions too.

I agree with everything you just said.:eek::cool:

Excellent points.

Lack of “stealth” is no issue if you have performance,
the question is if “stealth” will allow for lack of performance,
in the case of F-117, it didn’t.

The F-117 that was lost wasn’t due to performance, or stealth. It was due to complacency, and a lack of situational awareness.

the problem is you can’t always choose where you operate. while modifying assault ships’ decks can be envisioned (costly, heavy, but possible) depending on where they have to go “near the front”, things may be a bit more difficult (or even downright unmanageable, in the worst case scenario)

considering the report of the navy, chances are that during the tests, the F-35B has to perform a certain amount of vertical take offs (and eventually landings) from the same point (possibly a copy of ship’s deck, and maybe a couple of other “less prepared” surfaces) to analyze the impact on the surface and proove its “performance” one way or the other

The F-35s won’t be performing verticle takeoffs, just landings. They’ll be operating in the STO mode for take offs.

As we saw, they kept the radar on 20 sec.
-None, including pilot and planners will know time that well.

They used optics as well. It wasn’t just a matter of knowing to turn the radar on by the launch time.

It’s a lovely Saturday morning, you’re taking a walk in the park and suddenly you see a black triangle in the sky. Quite accidentally you took your SA-18 Grouse with you, so you take it out of your pocket, point at the triangle and bang.. the thing goes down in flames.

What I described is a lucky shot. Everything else, especially involving intelligence, prediction of the flight routes, setting up ambushes or exploiting enemy’s weakness in the planning is called “combat tactics”.

I’m not saying that it was dumb luck. There was certainly contributory negligence involved on the part of the air force planners. Of course anytime one underestimates one’s foe, then short cuts are taken which can prove to be disasterous. The point I’m making though is that when a stealthy aircraft uses good planning, and unpredictable routines, ambushes like this won’t be occurring. That’s not to say that they’re invulnerable, but much more challenging targets. The fact that only 1 F-117 was shot down shows that it’s not quite as easy to do, as some would like to believe.