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Comment by u320 | Hacker News Reader

"F-35 is bad" is just an internet meme with little to support it.

It's more like the F35 over promises and under delivers compared to what it is expected to replace. The F15 comes with a 20,000 hour airframe, while the F35 comes with a 8000 hour airframe. The F15 can get to target much faster, much farther, and still have fuel to do something when it gets there. The F15 can carry 12 AIM-120s (or 24 depending), while the F35 can carry 4. The F15's a great interceptor. The F35 is a great aircraft, but too expensive and limited to operate in that role.

The following article analyzes the F15EX buy that is being debated as compared to the F35.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/buying-just-80-f-15exs...

The f15 is going to be shoot down 60km from target by s400s, the f35 can get close enough to drop an harm on them at a speed they cannot intercept, so there's that.

Also the f15 has speed or range, and if you need one it reduces the other.

Isn’t the F22 the successor to the F15, being air superiority fighters?

It was, but since 22 production has stopped and there are plenty of 15s around, the 35 is often paird up with the 15 for wargaming. Doctrine and training is always dictated by practicalities like which aircraft you have to play with.

It was but production was scaled back so much, and the peer enemy aircraft it was needed to defeat still largely don't exist yet. As a result the production lines were shut down and equipment moved to permanent storage and other multirole fighters that are usually less expensive end up doing the F22's job.

In the horrifying event of a US-China war or similar they'd be front line units along with F-35s and other modern fighters, but as is they'll probably end up on service life extension and retired without ever being used much in combat.

The F-15 was sold to other nations and IIRC the majority of its air superiority engagements were with the Israeli air force.

Sure, 100% agree w/ all of that. Just pointing out that F15 vs F35 as a fighter isn't the right comparison, as they're not intended to fill the same roles. I think of the F22 as the ultimate expression of the old style of fighters, whereas the F35 is the start of a new style of military aircraft.

The F-15E and F-15EX (specifically these 'E' variants, aka "Strike Eagles") are multirole strike fighters. They're derived from an air superiority fighter and remain capable of filling that role, but being strike fighters they have a new emphasis on attacking ground targets with precision bombs. It is very similar to the way the F-14, the Navy's old air superiority fighter, was later turned into a strike fighter with the addition of LANTIRN (which the F-15E also got.) In addition to LANTIRN, the F-15E also gained a second seat for a weapon systems officer. Two seat F-15s had previously existed as trainers, but F-15s configured for air superiority normally have a single seat.

The F-22 is foremost an air superiority fighter and was intended to replace all the air superiority F-15s (but not the F-15E Strike Eagles.) However the USAF didn't get enough F-22s so they still have air superiority F-15s and will for some years to come.

This is why both platforms were designed to be used together as a team. F-35 provides sensor fusion and the F-15 is the missile truck. That also allows the F-35 to continue to evade detection, since launching attacks tends to get you noticed by the enemy.

Modern air combat can't be measured in direct comparison like this, or even thought of in terms of "we should be using X instead of Y"

The F-35 costs are also going down relative to it's peer group as the export market has grown significantly. The F-35s issue is that it's misunderstood, not that it doesn't meet expectations.

It always seemed to me that F-35 is an advanced replacement to F-16, which excelled in networked and multi-role operations.

Of course, by now the networked operations are in use by other aircraft too, just F-16 and F/A-18 operate at the very tip of the multi-role.

Whether the networked use could remain operational in a conflict against technologically advanced enemy (with saturated ECM and comparably aggressive AA systems) is not yet proven. Also with addition of drones, the whole air-dominance becomes a tough objective to attain.

The F-16 never really "excelled" at multirole operations. It was pressed into that because there were no other options available. But it has always had an insufficient fuel fraction and is forced to depend on constant tanker support to accomplish anything. The tankers are becoming more vulnerable.

This is why both platforms exist. There seems to be this strange idea that the F35 must be compared against the abilities of fighter in a direct 1v1 dogfight scenario, despite that this situation would almost never happen. Modern air-to-air engagements are not squads of fighters dueling one another, but instead entire fleets of aircraft with differing roles and responsibilities working together in a coordinated fashion. AWACs, electronic warfare planes, missile trucks (like the F15EX), and fighters that can get in close all working together. This is environment the F35 was designed for. The fleet level data-link and sensor fusion capabilities of the F-35 are it's main feature, as they augment the capabilities of the entire fleet. Then fact that F15EX can act as a better standalone interceptor is not really relevant, since it would almost never perform this role unsupported. An F35 and F15EX operating in tandem would be much more effective than either operating alone, since the F35 could enter areas covered by opposing fighters / ground fire, and feed sensor information to the F15EX to take out threats outside of its own sensors range.

You try flying an F-15 with 12 to 24 Slammers (and bags since you'll have so much drag. That's going to fly like a pig. Just because Boeing does some demo of it to sell more airframes doesn't mean it's going to be used that way.

Could go for those quad MRM packs though. Easier than 7 GBU-31s right.

We can revisit it after it is proven in combat, something that still has to happen.

What does proven in combat even mean? Win a war against China?

F-35s have flown over 1,000 combat sorties. When would you consider it "proven"?

Bombing ISIS does not count. Here is an example of something that could really hurt.

"...The F-35 can only tolerate supersonic speeds at high altitudes for short bursts before it sustains lasting structural damage and the loss of stealth capabilities..." - https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/five-problems-with-amer....

The Israelis have released footage of shooting down two drones, so they have the first kills with the F-35. Obviously this was not against a maneuvering human pilot, but still important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdSFEpqwA6Q

They also have multiple (unproven but everyone knows who did it) strikes against iranian positions in syria and even in iran itself, it is rumoured. The ability to be invisible to radar is an absolute gamechanger.

That just make it difficult to lock on with weapons. They are not invisible and any radar operator would tell you that if they would be allowed...

"...Stealth designs minimize an aircraft's radar signature, delaying and sometimes even preventing detection, but because of the physical requirements for tactical jets, stealth fighters can be easily spotted by certain low-frequency radar bands.

In fact, it's not even uncommon for air traffic control radar to be able to spot stealth fighters on their scopes. And we're not just talking about when these aircraft are carrying external munitions or fuel tanks, rather, even in full-on "stealth mode," F-22s and F-35s aren't as sneaky as you might think."

- https://www.businessinsider.com/radars-can-see-best-stealth-...

While you're not wrong that stealthy ≠ invisible, a proper mission design will render the aircraft effectively invisible to air defenses.

If you've got an active radar system you'll bounce signals off anything in the sky. Your ability to actually detect those things is based on the strength of the return and sensitivity/signal processing of the system. Big things can be detected hundreds of miles away, small things only tens of miles away. To protect some high value target you string together multiple radar systems to provide overlapping coverage. With enough systems you can have an unbroken wall of radar directing defending aircraft and SAMs.

Stealth lets a big thing (a jet) pretend to be a small thing in the view of an air defense system, essentially cutting the detection range of radar. This means your unbroken radar coverage that would work for an F-15 now has a bunch of holes because each radar can only detect an F-22 twenty miles out instead of two hundred. Your radar is also further compromised because the stand-off range of anti-radiation missiles is outside the range you can detect and intercept the jets carrying them.

Being able to see a stealth aircraft after it's fired a weapon to kill you isn't super helpful. A stealth aircraft can also fly through the artificial holes it made in your radar coverage and blow up the thing you're protecting and you only find out about it after the fact.

That isn't really how it works. Low observable aircraft flying in friendly civilian airspace generally have radar transponders turned on specifically to make themselves visible to air traffic control and prevent collisions. Those transponders are turned off for combat missions. And ATC mostly doesn't use primary radar any more so they don't even get skin paints on regular aircraft.

The F-35 has been proven in simulations with aggressor squadrons. The Air Force does that all the time: real aircraft in the air, real pilots, real weapons, they just don't actually shoot them for obvious reasons. But they have other ways of simulating kills.

https://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-pilot-describes-going-u...

Here's what a F-22 pilot (!) had to say about the F-35.

"It is challenging, even flying the Raptor, to have good [situational awareness] on where the F-35s are," he said.

Bowlds said that inserting F-35 aggressors into Red Flag made things "more challenging because there is a little bit of an unknown in terms of what they are going to be able to do."

Additionally, "red air detects are happening at further ranges," Bowlds explained. "It inherently poses more of a threat to allied blue-air forces than older aggressors," such as the fourth-generation F-16s.

The F-35s "have better detection capabilities kind of against everybody just because of their new radar and the avionics they have," he said. "It definitely adds a level of complexity."

I think this combined with the carrier capability is the scariest for the enemy. You'll never be sure there aren't F-35s around.

Proven in simulations is an oxymoron...

“Proven in combat” seems like a tricky concept. I mean the F-15 has that incredible 104:0 record, but that is because

1) it was ahead of the rest of the world when it came out

2) it spent a lot of time fighting older MIGs

Which is to say, the circumstances requires to get a real peer fight for a US plane are quite rare. Thankfully!

3) Flown by some of the best combat pilots in the world (at the time).

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