Back on thread sometime soon?
Any chance that this thread could get back on thread soon?
All the to and fro about dogfighting seems a little premature to me, I thought that the idea of 5th Generation was that they were part of an integrated battlespace management solution, or something like that, so they can if deemed necessary take out an enemy without necessarily revealing their position using sensors on other F35s, Linked aircraft, or land and sea based resources, so dog fighting was not what the aircraft was designed for.
Taking dog fighting a bit further, as I understand it no non development F35 is cleared to go to the design maximum G yet and will not be for a time, nor is the external carriage of weapons available on line aircraft yet, nor is the use of the integrated or indeed podded gun. I do wonder what the point of trial dog fighting in an aircraft that will in the future be able to turn sharper etc, when the only weapons that you have are AMRAAMs and possibly 2,000lb bombs, neither a particularly dogfight optimised weapon system.
It would be good to hear on the progress to final sign off of the as initially promised 3F software, how the multi ship communications problems are being resolved and how progress was being made on the design of spars that did not crack under load.