Posted on 02/07/2012 4:14:53 PM PST by kronos77
THE stealth qualities of the futuristic F-35 Joint Strike Fighter on order for the Royal Australian Air Force are overrated and the plane's combat performance greatly exaggerated, a defence lobby group has claimed.
The complaints by Air Power Australia, longtime critics of the $16 billion JSF acquisition, were made last night before a public hearing of parliament's defence sub-committee.
Latest-generation Russian fighters such as the Sukhoi T-50 would easily defeat the F-35 in air-to-air combat, Air Power's Peter Goon said, referring to recent modelling tests by his organisation.
"The aircraft we are planning to buy is carrying over 2000 pounds (900kg) of dead weight," Mr Goon said, referring to the JSF's big jet engines.
New Russian and Chinese air defence radars would also have little trouble detecting the JSF, a craft touted for its stealth qualities, he added.
The RAAF says it wants 100 US-designed JSFs to replace the decommisioned F-111 strike aircraft, with the first squadron supposed to be operating by 2018.
But the program has been mired in cost overruns and delays.
Last month US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta ordered the purchase of US JSFs to be delayed to allow Lockheed-Martin time to resolve production and technical shortcomings.
The company is contracted to deliver the first two training aircraft in 2014 with another 12 scheduled for 2015-17.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith has said he is now considering an option to order additional F/A-18F Super Hornets to fill any capability gap created by further JSF production delays.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.com.au ...
But, can the Super Hornet take on the T-50?
FR aviation-types: Is there any truth to the assertation that the F35 is inferior to the T50?
It’s the pilot not the plane.
The list, Ping
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Interesting article... If the JSF is so bad in comparison to the Russian and Chinese designs then how come the Chinese have done everything in their power to steal every secret it has? And those efforts have been successful in delaying the program over and over again.
http://defensetech.org/2012/02/06/did-chinese-espionage-lead-to-f-35-delays/
The Goon Show, back on Down Under.
It’s the “Two Ronnies” that I like here!
interesting, considering 35% of our aircraft are pilot-less.
the future will be thousands of drones versus a handful of 1980s tech
any cost overruns are, of course, planned to help handicap / cripple US air superiority
They said the same things about the MiG-25 Foxbat until a Soviet defected in one.
Found out that every time they attained the incredible performance the engine would fail.
Read the book by the defector, after actually seeing one of them no one was impressed. Unground rivets on wings etc.
Not hi-tech.
Say BS!
The F-35 is a multirole strike fighter, not an air superiority fighter. As such, I wouldn't expect it to be able to out-fly the T-50 or Su-30.
I would expect it to out-bomb them, however.
Best air superiority fighter (guns on guns, no missiles) is the F-16. I had a flight in one and it’s the best thing you’ll ever have with your clothes on.
The truth is that phase radar has taken away the stealth.
IIRC when that Foxbat flew to Japan the USAF and JSDF found vacuum tubes among its electronic components. Years later Soviet apologists would say they were there to make the Foxbat less vulnerable to EMPs. The Japanese model outfit Hasegawa had a detailed model of the Foxbat on the market about two months after the defection.
That used to be somewhat true, but not so much anymore. Essentially, our entire air superiority doctrine is now built around first-look/first-shoot, and we rely upon our technology to do that.
If a 4th generation fighter manages to close in on an F-35, the newer fighter’s advantages largely disappear, leaving it in a knife fight with a more agile and maneuverable foe.
We threw in the towel on fair fighting a long time ago. Our whole strategy revolves around being invisible and untargetable.
What this article does NOT explain to my satisfaction, however, is why the F-35 is “no match for newer Communist bloc radars.” We know the Serbs downed an F-117, and we also know how.
The thing is, the trick the Serbs used isn’t something you can pull off anywhere or anytime. You have to have certain elements in place before hand and you also have to be looking specifically for a certain something (or lack thereof) to even point your missile in the right general direction.
I think it was nearly fifty years ago that McNamara edicted one design to replace multiple specialized ones. That didn’t work out then, either. Some people never learn.
I wonder if those were climate modeling computers they used?
This is one of the biggest pieces of nonsense around (not that you are responsible for that, I realise you are just repeating what others are saying).
The F-35 was not intended by either the RAAF or the ADF in general to be a replacement for the F-111. It just happens that we have stopped using the F-111 at about the same time as we are waiting for the F-35s and so some people have talked about the F-35s replacing the F-111s.
Australia originally ordered the F-111 in the 1960s in a very different strategic environment. We went with the F-111 over other choices to give us two specific capabilities - one, strategic strike capability on targets in South East Asia, and two, to give us a nuclear capable bomber if we decided to acquire nuclear weapons.
We have never needed either of these two capabilities, and when the F-111 was reaching the end of its life, it was decided that we didn't need to look for a replacement with those capabilities now. We are never likely to acquire nuclear weapons at this stage (unless the world changes dramatically) and the strategic strike capability we wanted can now be better handled by ship or aircraft launched missiles which can be fired by other aircraft or ships.
In essence, Australia hasn't tried to replace the F-111 because we do not believe we have the same needs for those capabilities in our modern strategic environment, that we needed at the height of the cold war.
We used the F-111s because we had them but, to a large extent, the way we've used them has been as a much lighter strike aircraft.
The F-35 is the replacement for the F-18s more than anything else.
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