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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that dogfighting shouldn’t be a thing with the F-35. It’s not like in Top Gun where the pilot needs to align the plane with its target to shoot it down. The F-35 pilot just needs to point their head towards the enemy to lock on. That means they can shoot down someone that’s behind them. No acrobatics needed.

The F-35 comes with a bunch of other technology that make it truly formidable. The cost has also come down substantially, so it’s probably the cheapest option out there as well.

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We keep saying missiles are great and dogfighting is over, and we keep being proven wrong.

Mind you, eventually this will be correct... just it's been declared prematurely for 60 years and so this still may not be the correct moment to say so.

> The F-35 pilot just needs to point their head towards the enemy to lock on.

Missile performance won't be equal in this case; if the enemy can launch missiles with higher pkill, well..

Dogfighting has been over for advanced militaries for a couple decades now. It isn’t the 1970s. The BVR kill probabilities are approaching unity.

I agree with your main sentiment. There are niches for WVR combat, though, such as in mountainous terrain or in areas with massive amounts of SAM assets.

The enemy COULD pop out from just behind the mountain/hill in front of you, and force you to have to resort to short ranged (FOX 2) missiles or even guns.

Still, though, this is not enough to prioritize extreme agility over stealth today. The F35 is more than agile enough for the few times this occurs, especially if there is a wingman around.

Ukraine is proving this. The Ukrainian airforce is slowly being attrited through hypersonic BVR (beyond visual range) R37 and R77 missiles launched by Migs that aren't even flying over Ukraine. They're firing those missiles from the safety or Russia, 100km away from the border. And because they're hypersonic reaction times are short (they have a top speed of about Mach 5).

> We keep saying missiles are great and dogfighting is over, and we keep being proven wrong.

My understanding is that the "dogfighting is over" rhetoric stopped being proven wrong during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraqi fighters started mysteriously exploding in the sky during operations.

The thing that's complicated is rules of engagement.

If you can safely entirely rely upon on IFF and deconfliction, all is great.

If you ever have to close to identify targets, then you might end up with some significant maneuvering, etc. Of course, the F-35 isn't terrible at this, and stealth and efficiency lets it better choose the terms of this engagement.

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