Boy this thread moves fast!!
Sferrin, come-on, don’t pretend you’re dumb by making non-sensical arguments and comparing apples to oranges. Of course you can eyeball the aerodynamics of a plane. Because a plane’s aerodynamics are solely dependant on the external structure. A barn door as you point out is clearly aerodynamically inferior to a cean aircraft.
Stealth is slightly different. The material composition, which you can’t see, the internal structure, which you can’t see, and even things like panel fit and spacing affect RCS. In effect, an F-35 with a wooden barn door in front of it, will have the exact same RCS as the clean aircraft, while an F-35 with a metal barn door in front of it will have a vastly increased RCS.
Are there any more of your theories you want me to sink??

Incidentally the point I was trying to make is that Lockheed stealth is a known quantity, they have 50 yrs of experience if you include early U-2 tests and the A-12/SR-71, so I’m confident they’ve acheived the RCS called for by the operational requirement. As for PAK-FA, no-one can say for sure unless they know internal composition/layout and structural composition as well as seeing videos of it. So how these so-called ‘experts’ can comment on the PAK-FA’s RCS, I cannot figure out.

Your 50 years of experience matters little, as processing power is the key tool for designing stealth.

usually, you use your EFT’s fuel first, and as your bases usually aren’t that close to the enemy border, chances are you don’t loose all that much

in any case, be it rafale dropping its EFTs or the f35 dumping fuel, they’ll both have to face the threat and then be pretty “short” to continue their initial mission

The F-35 will allso be “fat”

It is difficult to say at this time. We have only seen T-50 in its role as a flying qualities demonstrator. The hard work of integrating all the design details to make it truly stealthy has not been done, yet.

But think about the severity of the threats that PAK-FA and F-35 were designed to counter. Any threat fighter’s fire control radar is severely constrained by tiny size of array, low output power and light weight. After all, it has to fit within the nose of the fighter. A SAM fire control radar is not constrained as severely. Tombstone has a huge array and huge electrical generator capable of substantial output power. Nor is the SAM system constrained by computer processing capability like a tiny fighter radar system.

The bottom line is the huge disparity of the SAM capability versus the fighter radar capability. If you have designed observables features to defeat the SAM’s X-band, then you have far exceeded what is needed to defeat the threat’s meager airborne X-band. But the opposite is not necessarily true.

The only flaw i find in your argument, is that the Pak-Fa is designed only to deal with airborne radars.

IE, that it is flawed by design.

We know to little about it, and its design criteria to have an opinion, in my opinion 🙂

PAK-FA is designed against the most prolific western threat – the airborne X-band fire control radar. It basically ignores threats that American VLO aircraft are designed to evade – SAMs, which use L, S and C-band radars as well as X-band. This is perfectly fine for the Russian Air Force, which doesn’t face a significant NATO SAM threat since NATO put 90+% of its air defense capability into fighters.

But for the Indian Air Force, which wants to use PAK-FA as a deterrent against PLA agression, PAK-FA will have a very difficult time against HQ-9, S-300 and similar SAMs.

Valid argument, but do you think the F-35 will fare better outside the x-band ?

Exactly how is this miracle plane suppose to FIND the F-35?

In short to you; You have no reason in your mind, only fanaticm. You will exist in your own world until the day you die.

Your claim about the F-35 is just bolstered by your guesses. The F-35 as a platform has still sufficient agility for the state of art A2A task.
The higher volume may limit range and endurance, but not as severe as claimed by you, at least when operated in the 20s and above.

Yes, i am deliberately enhancing my presumptions, not especially to **** you off. But as you know, this board has its fair share of fanboys. They really cannot see limitations, as they are given by the design of a platform.

They really base their opinion on state of origin, not design. An example of this. Quite a few members of this board denied any possibility that the Flanker may have had a superior aerodynamic design compared to the F-15. Only after the F-22 was operational they admitted to this. This way they still got to claim US superiority.

To put it across bluntly the T-50 really does look like it is “hand me your ass time” to anything with F-35 written on it.

To deny this even as a possibility is severe faliure of reason.

The F-35 will do deep strike in Iran fine, but stealth Gripen is a better design for point defence, you can still do stand off in the strike role.

What’s the endurance of any of the F-35’s competitors?
What’s the likelihood of any threat nation that has PAK FAs, to enjoy a numerical superiority?
What’s the endurance of the PAK FA that’s flying an offensive mission(that’s already flown several hundred kilometers) vs. a scrambled fighter(or freshly tanked one)?

1. I am specifically calling out the combat endurance of the F-35 as sub par, as it will be easy to drag out of fuel.

2. it is highly likely for Russia to enjoy a numerical superiority VS Norway.

3. Russia has more tankers than Norway last time i looked, and even if the F-35 was freshly refueled, going inn, it matters zero, if it had to dump it to fight. Force it to use the afterburner, and it will have to turn back real soon. This unless it is sitting on top of the tanker, and you want to loose it as well.

So the F-35 is really POS, as a point defence fighter.

Still i am unrefuted.

Do you consider an aircraft that is more agile than an F-16/F-18, to be a straight line only kind of plane?

No, i am questioning its combat endurance. If you look at my post again, you will see that i gave an example.

Against a Pak- Fa, i allso question every part of its performance envelope, untill proven wrong.