THE DISAFFECTED LIB has a post about the F-35 you must check out. It seems that the F-35 may be quite vulnerable to the latest Sukhois, plus it has to have systems tie-in to American AWACS and re-fueling to function adequately.
And Stevie would have saddled us with this turkey? Buyer beware . . .
4 comments:
Careful. The F-35 doesn't require an AWACS. It can act as an AWACS though. There is a community in the USAF that wants to ditch the highly vulnerable AWACS and increase the F-35 buy to replace them.
Ah, I see your point, but it's probably at its operational best when the AWACs are there with their Godzilla-power-level phased-array systems and the F-35's remain in stealth. Only it seems that against some wavelengths, it's not stealthy. Oops.
I am very wary about making too many detailed armchair analyses of the vulnerabilities and strengths of the idealised or real F-35 and other planes. I think for us mostly lay audiences it is fair to say some general things about the relative merits/demerits of the platform and that there are planners building credible countermeasures. Detailed analyses require a thorough knowledge of the engineering of modern fighters and weapons meant to kill them, as well as a practitioner's knowledge of modern air combat, including those bits not meant for public knowledge.
I can't remember exactly where I read it, but it was a USAF Lt. Gen that wanted to ditch big AWACS and go with F-35 claiming the F-35 has a higher probability of surviving the first 10 minutes of a hostile air environment.
The problem is information overload. The Int plane is still only one pilot. The Russians have looked at the problem and are configuring their equivalent with two.
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