Originally Posted by Glad Rag
Simple question, pit both a US 4th gen and a F35 together, both at their respective best fighting weights and pick your goalposts. Would the F35 prevail?
The answer, unfortunately, is not quite so simple, though. Let me illustrate. If you went many v many wvr against, say, F-15C, the F-35 would probably not come off too well because of its max sustained g and the fact that it's not optimized for air-to-air and would have limited a-a weapons, et, etc. But that is also not where it is designed to fight. Moreover, it's multi-role so simply measuring it's a-a KILL RATIO isn't really meaningful.
In modeling or evaluation terms, putting 'blue' up against 'blue' isn't a recognized method. If you want to evaluate a number of types (let's say competitors for a defence contract), you devise your trials so that you put each type up against a fixed 'red' adversary and compare the results in terms of kill ratio and mission success. You use a variety of representitive scenarios, support assets and geolocations. The results expose the strengths and weaknesses of each type - provided the scenarios have been properly devised - the results aren't always what you'd predict.
Just for fun, the F-15C vs F-35B BVR fight would be interesting, though. The air-superiority ac will throw his slammer further, faster, higher and will produce better defensive manoeuvre. The MR jet only gets a couple of shots, but if it uses its LO properly may get first launch. For political reasons, no one would ever let that fight take place in public, certainly without stacking the odds for obvious reasons. And who could blame them?