wanting to benefit yes, but being tied to others even when they’d like to do something by themselves is what I’m talking about.

imagine for a second a country among these F-35 partners, that has a friendly nation they have a treaty with, asking for help (may be an ex-colony or something similar). You are supposed to get there and help them, except that you have no projection capability to speak of as your air force is only usable as a small fraction of a coalition where you’ll need the US to bring everything that makes your handful of aircraft usable. What do you do?

Like the Netherlands now with their ‘Low-Cost’ F-16s in the Middle East? This isnt a scenario that’s going to impact in the future, it has been this way for smaller nations for an awfully long time. There are very few nations that can afford even the low level power projection you’re talking about currently.

Falcon, maybe if you gave some examples of nations this scenario would be applicable to it would be useful. From the list of current Partners the only nation I can see entering a conflict alone would be Isreal, who is your argument applying to?

USA
United Kingdom
Italy
Netherlands
Australia
Canada
Denmark
Norway
Turkey
Israel
Singapore

Considering this then the current F-35 buyers are on the Russian side of your WWII analogy, maybe it wont have the kinetic advantage of a J-20T-50 but it will certainly have numerical superiority…..

Assuming that not every conflict is fought for only 1 day how many of these detection devices are going to survive the initial strike phases? In that case surely any VLO aircraft becomes a much more effective tool as its risks are drastically reduced as compared to traditional strike packages. Slipping through “gaps” in defensive networks suddenly becomes a lot more realistic proposition.

If you look at how the USAF have utilised their stealthy assets in the past this is exactly what has happened. Apaches struck the initial S&T Iraqi radars prior to F-117 insertions in 1991. The one technology that we know has drastically improved since that time is EM detection and processing, and in the case of the future operators of the JSF their nations have spent an awful lot more on ELINT & Digital C3 than any supposed opposition has. “A Force multiplier” may be a nasty buzzword but its hard to deny that the current NATO methods have proved very effective

Agreed, I just didnt think it would be that noticeable from that angle before. I know the Flanker series are slightly outwardly canted but even up close it doesnt seem to be as severe as the picture shows, just a by product of a long lens used on the camera maybe?

Does the KA-5x series still have issues with negative G flight or has that been resolved by now?

Are any of the pylon points in the bomb bays wet? For any of the missions where you plan to carry external stores having the ability to fill the bays with additional fuel would be a massive benefit, ala F-105 in Vietnam. Even being able to have an additional fuel pod in one bay and keep SDBs and an AAM in the other would be really beneficial on the Day 1 missions.

The real issue with all of the assumptions that Axe and Sweetman make is that somehow the PAKFA users will be facing a defensive and stable enemy and that they will be able to have enough C3 to exploit this enemies lack of flexability to expose these high value targets. In reality what the NATO forces are building towards is a force that by nature of its difficulty to detect is able to force its opponents to be on the defensive. Attacking a target defended by a VLO force with your arguably less VLO asset is a recipe for disaster and is best left to stealthy long range armaments if your I3 assets are that accurate in the first place.

“Imagine if we were comparing the F-16 to, say the EE Lightning or the MiG-21. How many areas would the Lightning or Fishbed beat the Viper?”

The interception ability of a Mig-21 or the Lightning is far superior to the F-16, especially the newer heavier versions of the Viper. Time to Altitude of either of those airframes is excellent. But the F-16 offers so much more in so many other arenas that I know which one I’d pick. Heres an easier one, the original F-16 could climb better, turn better and was cheaper to operate and maintain. How do you think 50 F-16A Block 15s would fare against even 30-40 Block 52/60s?

All of the advantages that the Block 52s would have in that scenario are vastly improved in the F-35 but people seem to think that isnt enough when they’re more than happy to see the sense in it when looking at the F-16 or Su-27/30 family?