“Ridiculous title. The F-35 was never meant to be a dog fighter.”
Ohhh, I understand now. That must be why it carries a gun with an air to air engagement targeting system.
Here you go, wiseguy:
In the aftermath of the F-22’s cancellation, the Air Force was forced to alter its plans and press-gang the F-35—originally meant as a ground-attack aircraft—into service as an air-to-air fighter. It was the only way for the flying branch to keep enough dogfighters in the air.
“Operationally, we have to have it,” says Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh. “The decision to truncate the F-22 buy has left us in a position where even to provide air superiority [we need the F-35], which was not the original intent of the F-35 development.”
To be clear, the F-35 has always had some air-to-air capability. But that latent dogfighting ability was mostly meant for self-defense—not for aggressively challenging another country’s fighters in the air.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/can-the-f-35-win-a-dogfight-95462ccd6745