I’ve found this discussion very interesting and decided to make a calculator of my own to work out what the real, estimated NEZ is for the F-35’s head-on shot under different circumstances. There’s a lot of people implying that NEZ is a fixed value, but of course it is a dynamic number dependant on a multitude of factors: Speeds, turn rates (also dependant on altitudes, speeds, drag), accelerations, manoeuvring reaction times…etc etc etc.

But first, the calculation in the Tu22’s post (or assumption) on radar detection range advantage is way off. Based on the real radar range equation, the simplest way to estimate the difference in detection range assuming equal radar capability is (0.1/0.0015)^0.25. So the F-35 would have a roughly 2.86 times detection range advantage. Assuming the Typhoon is being picked up from 92km, the F-35 would be detected on radar at around 32km. Lets not forget the German tiffie pilots picked up the “worst” aspect of the F-22 at 37km.

I assume that the EF, Raffie, Su35, Gripen E etc use IRST primarily vs the F35 (since that would give best range in the example). The Luftwaffe btw only have one ac with Pirate, the rest rely on radar.

Here it is in a chart form.
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But there are too many unknowns to either dismiss or take any number as an absolute truth. Do we have RCS-charts of any of the jets or missiles? Do we have the non existant charts in 3D?

All that is out there is small bits and pieces of information. We also have the information that the F22 has 1/10th the rcs of the F35 (from some angles), If the Eurofighter, with the old ‘non AESA’ radar, could detect the F22 at 37km that should equate to ~70km. But we both know its more complex than that.

The results of my basic sim were interesting because if we consider a scenario where the typhoon flies head-on into the fight blind and at high speed then starts turning a second or two after it notices its being fired at, it’s actually worse off than if it was attacked while at subsonic speed. For my sample, loaded up “Typhoon” I used the turning charts from the F-15 in clean configuration (from the flight manual).
Lot of detail missing in the simulation (not as much as above though), such as deceleration and acceleration for the target when turning (so it assumes sustained turn rate). I’ll add those later. Also no coast time or acceleration stats for the missile so I assume it takes the 12 seconds (burn time) to accelerate to Mach 4 no matter what the launch speed was, then immediately decelerates at an assumed rate (will get more detail for that later).

A comparison of each aircraft’s sensor profile for a typhoon vs F-35 head to head. Red is EM emissions observable by the enemy, blue and beige are the various detection ranges against their adversaries. Left is the typhoon with its spherical EM signature (Comms, Datalinks and Radar) track-able by enemies from 400km+. Middle is an F-35 in search mode acting as the AWACS for the group and Right is the sneaky passive guy who fires the missiles and hands off mid-course updates to someone else sitting back at range using radar. There would probably also be a few guys up forward who use their radars to lock enemies who are in close formation (small beam-width emissions can’t be triangulated this way).

My own conclusion with the basic sim is that with varying ranges, speeds and realistic turns rates, the F-35 should have plenty of opportunity to be able to fire on a typhoon without fear of retaliation. In a very large proportion of those scenario’s the typhoon would not be able to outrun the missiles.

If the F-35 has decent speed up (eg. M1.4) at launch and fires as closely as possible to the point where it is detected (F-35 has the functionality to show the pilot how close they can get to a threat undetected) and the typhoon is flying at high altitude, it won’t even change its heading 90 degrees before it is intercepted. It certainly wouldn’t have time to set up a counter attack and survive as well.

Lastly, in the situations where the typhoon can get away (eg. F-35 fires from too far away), in a theatre scenario where F-35’s will have a huge numbers advantage over any enemy’s air superiority fleet, the Typhoon (and everything else but stealth aircraft) would be constantly forced back to the point where a tanker, strike package or a base will be lost (<- Irony re: Pacific Sunrise, RAND and APA). The F-35 doesn’t even have to fly supersonic to safely threaten a Typhoon and cause it to use afterburner for a long period of time.

If LM or someone else go ahead with loading 12 CUDA-like missiles onto the F-35, it could well succeed its missions simply by creating a moving, impassable blockade for less-stealthy aircraft.

I love that calculation but you have dismissed some of the entry points.

Missile agility after burnout is very poor. Is has very short effective range without propulsion and thus the Pk is very low. If one F35 fires away all 4 carried AAM at the “longer than propelled range” it is very uncertain if that would result in a kill. Statistics speac for themselves. Up to 5nm Pk for a missile is high (usually propelled range), up to 15nm it can be up to half as effective and outside of that it basically is one lucky shot per decade at most.

I also assume early evasive action from the target (both sides) very early in the game target acquisition range, by a large margin is larger than high Pk range of the missiles.

Acceleration and turning rates would be better known once testing is complete and we get something from the auditor or the Flight test Data that would be officially released. As of now the only folks that are going to be pushing the jet are Lockheed test pilots, taking there word for it is not going to be as credible for most people (and i would agree)…Let the front line pilots get that capabiity , and once the envelope expands we’d know precisely what the capability of the F-35 is vis a vis its peers in that regime (Acceleration, sustained and instantaneous turning, High AOA etc)…Right now they have just concluded testing low speed high AOA …The New software versions do open up quite a bit of envelope that has not been previously tested/explored…Expect more on this in the coming months to years as the USAF/USMC/USN pilots get the ability to operate in envelopes where they could share opinions on the performance in that regime.

Acceleration has been tested as well as max thrust. The numbers I give you are the best and latest that the US DoD could produce. With that reservation I will update my assesments when better numbers are made public.

Turning rates, that are effective, are limited by lift/weight ratio + thrust/weight. The F35 is pretty sub par on both. (lift/weight is usually very closely coupled with wing loading). This means it will always have a harder time turning without sacrificing speed.

The RCS values are off by a massive amount, unless of course you you wanted to compare unarmed 4th gen fighters with no external fuel tanks to the (clean) F-35. (Perhaps hoping nobody would notice?)

Gripen C:

I assume that once in actual air combat or once rwr gives warning the 4,5th gen fighter will jettison the tanks, if they even use them at all. The Gripen E has a clean range (just wing tip missiles) of 2500km on internal fuel. Even if it loses half the range due to flight profile (higher thrust etc) with a light load it still is 1250km. In 250m/s that gives 5 hrs in the air.. without external tanks. We also know that missile RCS shrinks by every upgrade and that stealth pods are reaching the market. So in a future engagement when the F35 is operational the 0,1sqm figure for a 4,5th gen fighter is fairly reasonable, or at least it should be because that’s where we are today with yesteryears RAM-coatings.

A 50% Greater Sensor reach is probably not going to happen in reality however if it were the case then you could well imagine what would happen with the type of force the opponent with such an advantage can bring to bear….Its practically like an AWACS supported mission vs an opponent that that has no such support…If such an advantage exists with the Blue force (50 % Sensor edge in detection) then the entire aerial combat is going to be very very difficult to execute irrespective of your kinetic performance, just go ask modern fighter pilots if they are willing to trade 50% sensor reach for a 10-20% better acceleration (just a hypothetical value here) or a better turn rate…

The difference here is ca 150% better kinematic performance (acc in the transonic regime) and up to 100% better turn rate with a trade off that is -45% in detection range (+85% for the F35) assuming the IRST can’t even detect targets outside the acquisition range (this assumption is very very pro F35 and assuming we have the narrow band peak power performance of the APG 81).

AWACS are the big difference here. And all jets have track, detection and acquisition range well outside the NEZ of the missiles vs each other. No matter if the enemy is an F35 or a Rafale.

Just for the sake of adding validity I list all ingoing values below in a “F35 vs 4,5 gen eurocanard” table.
[INDENT]
RCS, frontal:
0,0015sqm vs 0,1sqm
Radar detection range:
85km/45nm vs short range (to get the +85% i assumed 92,5km) http://www.ausairpower.net/XIMG/FA-22A-Radar-2007-DT-1.png
IRST target acquisition range:
50km vs 50km, most likely it is “<50km vs >50km”.
Acceleration mach 0,8-1,2:
68 seconds vs <30 seconds.

I would say all of these numbers are proven to be fairly accurate.[/INDENT]

What kind of a man would I be if I didnt respond with a fancy graphic? 😀

I do not think that the sort of maximum-range “shoot and run’ you are talking about represents a realistic scenario for air combat.

If I were to see an approaching opponent fly such a turnaway manoeuvre at long range, I would assume that either he had decided to decline combat, or that he had launched a BVR weapon at me and was now trying to avoid being engaged by any BVR weapon that I might fire. Under such conditions, the kill probability (KP) of my opponent is low. All I need to do is to manoeuvre to place myself outside the search volume that the enemy seeker will have when activated. I am then free to continue my mission.

The rules of BVR combat are little changed from the Vietnam War era. A pilot has the choice of firing as soon as the target is within the maximum range of his missile, or closing the range until the target is within the no-escape zone of his missile (as defined by the ‘worst case’ target behaviour).

After firing, the pilot will want to disengage as soon as possible, but such a maximum-range “shoot and run’ is unlikely to result in a kill. With a modern BVR weapon, the pilot is constrained by the need to keep watching the target’s behaviour in order to provide his missile with the updates needed to maximise missile KP. The longer the time he does this, the greater his chances of scoring a kill.

It may be unrealistic but it is what the F35 is designed for. That and a fairly old tactic used by Viggen in the late 80s.
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This means you don’t have to worry about the guidance. This is harder to do against stealth aircraft as you are limited to having rear guidance consisting of IRST with a relatively short range. The differnece here is that one side has better kinematics and sensors that are good enough. But this current advantage is depending on missile performance so it may change in favor of the F35. Just like the “first look” advantage for the F35 is based on the enemy not having multistatic radars with high capacity ground-air datalink and staying with current IRST-systems and radars.

Outside the effective killzone there still is a potential to get a kill with a missile, as has been demonstrated in actual combat. It all boils down to the competence of the parties involved and the sensors they bring. By firing the missiles outside the killzone (as has been done in actual war with other jets) the F35s at least move the game to where they have the advantage.

The longer the range of the BVR missile, the greater the amount of capability that is lost if in-flight updating is not available. But there is no simple rule to guide the pilot in when he should end missile updating and start to disengage. It depends on the way that the engagement evolves.

There is very little in the public domain on this problem, but that may change in the next few days following the presentation of a paper on the subject at an unclassified conference. The text of the paper in question is apparently not included in the conference documentation, but my understanding is that Aviation Week had a journalist at the conference, so they may have something to report.

As displayed above. Thats the oldest style of weapon “handover” where one jet guides the missile towards a “virtual target”. Today they simply hand over the control for real and can do so more than once and with more than two jets.

You could illustrate this with a box or wall formation and with ground-air datalinks as well. At least nowadays. The only drawback is that the this style of engagement gives away the position of the general formation of aircrafts so the enemy can prepare.

EDIT: The reason I used the Viggen in this example is just to illustrate how old the tactics are. Viggen had the same advantage as the F35 has today, ie it could do BVR very well thanks to modern technology. But this is an idealised scenario. Not every engagement would look like this, but the option was there. And it opened the potential for having a Viggen (#2) attacking from the side in mach 2,1 while being outside the enemies situational awareness box. (Radar search and track cone)

Baiting, swarming etc are KNOWN tactics that are hardly something that will be something out of the box…Most credible Air forces probably have tactics to deal with such. As far as NUMERICAL advantage for potential adversaries maybe for some European users, but then NATO members and other US allies have the advantage of having a larger structure to support them….

Yes, the tactics are known. Stealth isnt new and when we look at Gripen, Rafale, Eurofighter, Superhorny etc they are all made with “semi stealth” or minimal frontal RCS in mind => similar tactics in AA fighting as the stealth aircrafts. They also have pretty advanced datalinks, again offering the same or similar tactics that stealth ac will use.

To ensure air dominance you need numbers, good kinematics, good sensors and good missiles. F16V with great ground support, IRST and Meteor would probably fair well today and a long time to come.

I have long said that the justification for a lot of nations at acquiring the JSF is questionable at best. Second, not many nations really need an F-22 to ensure Air dominance in a potential conflict. For the USAF opponent the problem is not finding a credible A2A capability vs F-35, but how to deal with a barrage of F-22’s, F-35’s, B-2’s, LRS-B’s and UCAS’s generating an insane amount of Sorties per day…Not to mention the legacy fleets following behind with SO weaponry and non aircraft launched weapons…The F-35 gives you better discriminating ability for ground attack, much much better targeting (More bang for the sortie) and access to A2AD enviroments…So your sorties would be accomplishing more and more per mission…

Everything is based on assumptions.

Assuming the enemy does stay with current systems and doesnt upgrade to multistatic stations you will get better acces with the F35.
Assuming they do upgrade and invest in shorad… well… the radar stations suddenly become bait and your F35s become targets.

I am happy to admit that there are strong points of stealth aircrafts but they only improve existing capabilities. If you optimise against one threat (like monostatic radars) it will improve survivability in that arena but it will likely cost you in other areas. And the problem is that we now have multiband seekers and tracking systems (not very common when the F35 was in the planning phase), high capacity IRST as well as multistatic radars. We even have AA systems that can be fully autonomous, like Pantsir S1.

The Meteor missile has a k-band seeker and not a classic x-band radar. IRIS-T SL is a new addon in the SAM-arena and so on, so you are correct in that the F35 and stealth in general makes a lot of equipment obsolute/less performing..

How would your strike package fair against an equally costly defensive force operating popup shorad (that only pops up when the target is in range btw), multistatic radars as well as over a hundred Pak FAs as well as the mix of Tu22M with long range cruise missiles and maybe some MiG 31 interceptors as well as some Iskander hiding near the front lines? When we compare the costs, and assume equal amount of money spent we see that it gets really complicated to get a good answer.

I ran some cost numbers before. And If you buy Rafale or Gripen instead of F35, and the enemy bases 12 F35 per airfield, then that money can be spent on wasting $2,64 billion per target in just munitions. That is roughly the same as 1800 Tomahawk missiles… per airfield with just 12 F35. So we can stare at details as much as we want and ignore the big picture. Or we can broaden the discussion indefinitely. For every F35 you can afford one Gripen E/Rafale and 20 Pantsir S1 ans still have money for other purchases.
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?122724-F-35-debate-thread&p=2006725#post2006725

Oh, I surely believe bad in the transsonic regime and okayish in the supersonic regime.

It’s possible. The numbers aren’t exactly public.

Against a faster (SC) non stealthy fighter, tactically the F-35 (add any other VLO Jet here) would want to use the detection and REACH advantage derived from its own Low observability and Modern Integrated active/passive sensors to position itself tactically before the opponent has the ability to track it and adjust its own position vis-a-vis the F-35. Point is to put yourself in a position that maximises your chances of getting an upper hand once you come into detecting and targeting range of the opponent. Once detected the F-35 would not be flying in a straight line towards the SC Non stealthy fighter. Depending upon TACTICS and doctrine based on its own performance it would then iniate an effort to get into a position that is advantageous to its weapon launching ability and that is disadvantageous to the opponent’s weapons system ability…It would all come down to detection ranges and how much advantage the F-35 (F-22, pakfa or the J20) would realize compared to 4th and 4.5th gen fighters, basically amounting to the TIME the VLO Fighters have to act FREELY without having to worry about its opponent reacting to its every maneuver (countering) …

Agreed, but adding tactics in a bar chart is pretty difficult. 🙂

However in the ~minute or so that both jets can see each other (with passive systems) I would say both will have pretty similar possibilities to get in position. Considering that the F35 will be around 0,6 mach slower than the average SC target it will be pretty difficult to flank them in an efficient manner. Especially when assuming that the enemy will be flying in a spread out formation…

Some of the jets would likely use baiting techniques as well by doing sweeps ahead of the main formation if they believe stealth aircraft are present. They may also become more defensive and rely more on systems like silent guard in order to silently track the stealth aircrafts via ground-air datalinks (that have been in existance for quite a while). So stealth does not guarantee the element of surprise, it just improves the likelyhood of it occurring. Once you have that and engage/get within range, you will need the kinematics to maintain the advantage.

The same philosophy is valid in ground combat. If you dont have enough firepower to make good use of the surprise element/to keep the initiative in the engagement you really should not get in the fight. In the case of the F35 it will really have a hard time to, in secret, get in position to silently flank the enemy… and once there it will have shorter ranged weapons.

So F-35 is accelerating fast in the transonic regime and badly in the supersonic? That sounds very unlikely to me.

It is fairly ok (according to LM) in the subsonic region. But accelerating from m 0,8-1,2 takes ~68 seconds for the F35A, the under powered Gripen A/C accelerates (clean) from mach 0,5 to mach 1,15 in 30 seconds. The Typhoon is a bit faster than Gripen A/C and both are more than twice as fast as the F35 in acceleration with light AA load (Gripen E will get 20-25% more thrust than C).

Now, the longer time the chase takes and the slower the missile is the greater impact will kinematics have.

Pls stop trolling Spud.

I will show it with a graph what kinematic performance does and why it is so important.
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As you see the superior avionics and VLO platform makes the track and detection range relatively impressive. But is it comes at the expense of poor kinematic performance this means that the enemy will have one advantage in launch speed and one in exit speed. In the case of EF 2000 its close to doubling the effective range of a Meteor. This is just physics and has nothing to do with avionics so far.

Against old jets however it is a different story. What the ultra cool stuff like EOTS, stealth and radar does is increasing the blue bar for the F35. But unless the orange can keep up it is of no benefit at all.

The can’t climb, cant run argument is the relative performance of the F35 vs the competition. And that assesment is as correct as it gets.

The F35 is not designed as a fighter jet. It is the most advanced attack jet made but without kinematic performance that’s on par (or close to) the competition it simply isnt good enough as a fighter. And you can have as many cool gizmos as you please, but unless your orange bar is larger than the enemys blue bar it will be a fight where kinematics crown the winner.

EDIT: The F35 should have a larger blue bar but I dont see if that matters.