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Comment by pippy | Hacker News Reader

>Turkey shoot doesn't even begin to describe it. If you bring a biplane to a modern dogfight, you'll end up a splat mark on the ground.

Kind of unfair example, the Israelis had a lot of time to prepare for that battle. On top of that the Syrians knew they didn't stand a chance given their resources.

Given any situation you have to fit the resource to meet the need. The United States deploys the EMB 314 Super Tucano to great effect, which is a WW2 style fighter fitted with modern electronics. The F35 in the modern context simply doesn't make sense, as it's simply over engineered and doesn't fit current individual needs.

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How is it unfair? The Syrians had plenty of time to prepare for the battle, they had Soviet weapons and advisors, their SAMs were excellent, they just got waxed by better planes, better command and control, better pilots. The F-15 and F-16, combined with the E-2 were so far better than the Mig-21bis and Mig-23 that the Syrians were flying, that the outcome was almost pre-determined once the Syrians started moving SA-6 units into the valley.

And the Super Tucano? WTH. The USAF accepted 20, temporarily, before transferring them to the Afghan AF. The USAF has no squadrons that utilize this airframe, and no intentions to. It has no survivability in a contested airspace at all.

> It has no survivability in a contested airspace at all.

Seeing as how the last time the USAF operated in seriously contested airspace was forty years ago, this is perhaps not as big a problem as it would seem.

The military needs to plan for the worst case scenarios, not the best. Ask the Ukrainians how it feels to be on the short end of the stick. The Russians are doing a bang up job with ECM/ECCM and denying them any airspace to fly in. The US doesn't need to plan on fighting tribesman in the Hindu Kush. Almost any aircraft can do that. It needs to plan to fight peers.

The F35 is supposed to eventually have some amazing capabilities, but CAS isn't one of them. It can't do CAS, and it will never be able to.

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