Quibbling about build rate aside, it would seem the F-35 numbers are going up at a pretty good rate at this stage in the game. Clearly not what they were meant to be of course but (in my opinion) the numbers are building up quite nicely.

A new market for cooled and encapsulated munitions appears in the horizon.

Perhaps, but even if a munition were to be designed that negates these new-fangled laser based area defence weapons the problem is that all the old munitions (perhaps hundreds of thousands in some nations arsenals) are useless and the expensve process of restocking has to happen if they want to keep that capability.
(I’m not stalking you on the forum BTW, you post was interesting and therefore worth responding to. Not that the other guys in the threads posts weren’t of course, its all good stuff!)

Practicing WVR fight has nothing to do with fun, because that kind of fight was in extreme % reality in real war conditions through history compared to BVR fight and I tend to believe that things are not going to change much.
The thing that pilots you worked with have fear of dog fight has nothing to do with what is going to happen in real A-A combat. To me they sound like MMA fighters that have fear to go to cage. From experience in Kosovo war I can tell you that our pilots wanted nothing but to fight “fur ball”. There are two reasons for that.
They know that they are strong in WVR fight and it is absolutely normal they want to put the fight in their advantage, it is nothing insane about that. And the second thing is something called courage!
When you have equally strong opponents there are great chances you will get in to a dog fight and that is the reason why pilots all over the world practice BFM.

That is correct but if you look at Iraqi Mig-25`s, these planes were able to shot down F-18 and were also able to evade many missiles fired at them and were also able to outrun F-15 using higher speed. And they are generation behind and were operating under unfavorable conditions ( worse situational awareness) 😉
F-35 is going to face planes such as J-20, Su-35S and PAK FA that are kinetically superior, as a matter of fact they are on totally another level compared to F-35 in supersonic arena and for things to get worse, they will probably have comparable electronic suite and superior WVR characteristic.

Hi there. Just a few things to clear up. When I said WVR training is fun I didn’t mean they do it purely for s**ts and giggles, it is as I said a neccessary skillset and you will find most pilots do enjoy it, certainly the ones that I worked with anyway but given the choice in a real war they would always take the BVR option if they can. Why do you think we (the UK) is investing the likes of Meteor missile? It’s cetainly not to go WVR with, rather it’s to kill the enemy before he gets anywhere near you.

Also, when you say “our pilots wanted nothing but to fight “fur ball”, take a moment to think where that midset got them. Sorry to be so blunt but those folks were quite simply plain stupid if they wanted to get into ‘furball’ an the results show it – they didn’t even get to merge with their opponents, not once.

On the Mig-25. A Mig-25 shot down one F-18 yet a total of three Iraqi Mig-25’s were shot down by slower fighters so i’m not sure what you’re trying to prove by bringing that to the table.

We also do not know for sure that the J-20 and T-50 will be kinetically superior to the F-35. The chances are almost certain they will be but to formally declare at this stage in the game that they are superior is a premature assumption without any evidence to back it up.
As for them having “probably have comparable electronic suite”, well sadly that is highly unlikely. One must accept that the Russians and Chinese simply do not have the same level of experience in that field as the US and are playing a game of catch-up. Of course that will be a bitter pill to swallow for many but thats life. I’m sure the Chinese and Russians realize this, not publicly of course they know the reality of the situation. BTW i’m not saying the systems in the J-20 an T-50 will be crap, infact i’m sure they will be very very good but equal to the systems in US aircraft, no, that’s simply not realistic.

If it is of interest to you take a look at post 33 in this thread on another forum and you’ll see that air combat has some suprising twists such as the bit about the A-10.

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/503043-lightning-vs-harrier-1v1-2.html

Cheers.

Do remember folks that when looking at all these wonderful RCS figures they only tell part of the story. head-on RCS figures are very quickly hugely inflated once the veiwing angle of the detecting radar is positioned even a degree or so off the head-on angle, even more so when dealing with conventional non LO designs.

Invalid argument. There is nothing like “those who design this must know much more than we do, that means whatever they do must be right”. Misconceptions, failures and troubles are common considering the people working in aerospace sector do pioneering work in many areas. The failure rate is quite high even with the most brilliant minds involved. There are concepts which don’t work, IR suppresion is one of them. Not because the basic idea is wrong but because IR sensors have gone through tremendous development in last three decades. Do you really want to hide a 1000C hot exhaust nozzle against a -40C cold sky using a drain system that pumps a 20C “cold” fuel through the leading edge? That can’t be done.. It might help reduce the head-on detection range by few miles at higher speeds but the trade-offs in terms of added complexity/cost/weight of such system are too big, especially for a fighter.

BTW, I work in the area of IR sensors, what exactly is your background, Mr.Belethor, who has joined in Dec 2012 and immediately jumped on the F-35 with never before seen posting rate? Should I believe you are indeed new to this forum rather than a 36th cloned identity of some well known F-35 fan who is too much of a coward to admit his past errors ?

It is not, at least not in the way you are presenting it. There are concepts which were deployed, from the most common techniques like application of ceramic layers to some more exotic measures like spraying freons to the exhaust gases on the B-2A but these contribute roughly as much to the IR stealth level like camouflage pattern does to the visual stealth.

Thank you, I know well what DIRCM is. You better save your explanation to those claiming that from now on the IR guided missiles are next to inefficient.

Quite on the contrary, I am certain it would be next to useless for you if PAK-FA had it first.

Yes, i’m sure you do work in the IR field, quite sure… And i’m sure you really do know more than the combined knowledge of the engineering staff of the likes of NG and LM. Add to that your strange and almost paranoid suspicions that i’m the 36th incarnation of some unknown forum poster and, well, I think i’ll leave it at that.

if it tries to escape, not only it won’t be cold but it will be glowing from the rear (there’s a tiny little thingy at the rear end called the engine that produces A LOT of heat 😉 )

besides, while the engagements start at higher subsonic speeds, once you start pulling G’s your speed will inevitably drop fast. All in all, there are too many parameters to just make a short answer, but basically:

– before the fight starts the faster fighter can dictate whether and when to fight,

– once the fight started (chances are there are the missiles will be spent before the merge as none will voluntarily start a dogfight unless he doesn’t have another option), it can turn into a gunfight in which a faster fighter again has the edge (it can disengage and reengage at will while the slowest one can only hope to survive long enough to either kill the other guy or until the other guy is out of fuel).

Now if you have the slower fighter AND your fighter can’t turn as well as the other one, you’re in deep trouble (to stay polite) if you have only your gun left to fight your way out of there. Some may add “it’s a whole system that fights, not just on fighter or one group of fighters”, but the answer is the same, you either fight an opponent that is no significant threat to you in any way (like most (if not all) wars in the last two decades) and the F*35 is just a overpriced toy that could have been replaced easily by current fighters for much less cash spent, or you fight a really potent opponent and in such case, the F-35 better have some good fighters covering it while it goes to drop its load on target.

The fast sleek French designed Mirage vs the short, fat and slow British Harrier… funny how things don’t always turn out how the ‘experts’ imagine they will.

Here is an IR image of B-2
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Oh lord, how many times does that get banded about by people without them understanding it was taken from around a mile away at an airshow. Also, IR cooling works by circulating the fuel around the various hotspots such as the leading edges, who is to say such a circulation system is not able to be turned on an off when required.

Next you’ll be excitedly telling us how ATC radars have picked up a B-2 or F-22 aircraft from great distances without understanding that luneburg lens’s would have been fitted for the very purpose of navigating through civilian airspace and for masking the aircrafts true radar signature.