Fiction
The F-35’s ambitious capability suite – precision attack, air-to-air combat, and information/surveillance/reconnaissance – will result in a compromised platform that will never be any good.
FACT
Starting with the Six-Day War of 1967, for more than 40 years, advanced Western air forces have demonstrated a level of superiority perhaps unequalled by any form of combat power in the history of warfare. In the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Falklands War (1982), Operation Desert Storm (Iraq 1991), Operation Deliberate Force (Former Republic of Yugoslavia 1995), Operation Allied Force (FRY 1999), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan 2001), and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003), advanced air forces have utterly dominated their opponents.
Those operations were primarily planned and fought by the USAF, the Israeli Air Force, and the RAF, arguably the three best air forces in the world. It is noteworthy that each of these air forces is likely to become a major user of the F-35, using it to replace many of the platforms that have underwritten their extraordinary war fighting successes of the past four decades. It is also significant that Israel – not an original partner in the JSF project – has now indicated its intention to join, based on data emerging from the aircraft’s test and development program. Other air forces either involved in the program or expressing a strong interest include: Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Turkey, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.
If the most successful air forces in the history of air warfare believe that, on the best available evidence, the F-35 is likely to provide the best solution for their future combat needs, then their judgment warrants respect.
Fiction
The F-35 will be outclassed by other fighters in air-to-air combat.
FACT
There are two air-to-air domains to consider here: Beyond Visual Range, and Within Visual Range.
Authoritative American simulations have indicated that BVR engagements will dominate future air-to-air combat (as indeed they have since 1991). The estimate is that 93% of all engagements will occur at BVR and transitional distances, that is, at ranges greater than about 14 kilometres; while only 7% will occur WVR, that is, inside 14 kilometres.
Based on the best information publicly available, the only aircraft superior to the F-35 in the Beyond Visual Range domain will be the F-22. In other words, the F-35 will be better than every fighter – Russian, European, Asian, and American - except the F-22. And since it is improbable in the extreme that Australian F-35s would ever have to challenge American F-22s in combat, any thought of competition between the two is of academic interest only.
The key determinants of BVR dominance as reflected in the F-35 and F-22 are as follows:
• Both are described by the US Services as having ‘all aspect Very Low Observability’. VLO has to be built in from the ground up and cannot be added to fourth-generation aircraft.
• Both have enhanced situational awareness compared to fourth-generation aircraft, with the F-35 being the more advanced because of its extensive array of electro-optical sensors and data fusion capabilities.
• Both have advanced networking capabilities, including inter-flight data links that permit the transfer of high fidelity information between aircraft in a formation, allowing them to operate as a fully-integrated team.
• Both use the same air-to-air missiles. The F-22 will carry more AIM-9s than the F-35, but the F-35’s will be a later (i.e., better) version.
Within Visual Range, the F-35 will enjoy significant advantages through its exceptional situational awareness systems and advanced radar (both of which will be better than the F-22’s), and its advanced missiles and high off-bore sight aiming system (which allows a pilot to fire his missiles without having to manoeuvre to advantage).
Special mention should be made of the F-35’s distributed aperture system, which uses multiple infrared sensors to generate a full spherical image and allows the pilot to ‘look’ through the airframe via a helmet mounted display. While the sensor’s manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, may be overstating the case by claiming that it will make manoeuvrability ‘irrelevant’, the technology is a potential game changer. When the F-35 enters service it will be the only fighter in the world with such a system.
Simulations indicate that the F-35 will have a kill/loss ratio of around 8:1 against every competitor other than the F-22. By any standards that is a historically high figure. Furthermore, given the F- 35’s superior BVR capabilities, pilots almost invariably should have the option of breaking off a pending engagement should they assess that the odds are against them.
Conclusions about the F-35 as an air superiority system based on assessments of platform manoeuvrability, acceleration and maximum speeds, are ill-founded. Instead of focusing on such secondary issues, political and defence decision-makers would be better off contemplating why the most successful air forces in the history of air warfare are planning to make the F-35 the centrepiece of their operations for the first half of the 21st century.