Forum: F-35 Lightning II

With some countries hemming and hawing about buying F-35s or going cheaper with Su-30s, Gripens, EF2000, etc. has anyone proposed an informal dogfight flyoff between some of the jets? Wouldn't that put some of the fence-sitters to rest? You know, any other fighter vs. a near invisible fighter?

F-16.net Sponsor

Closest thing I know is the X-32 vs. the X-35.

Last edited by psychmike on Jan 01, 2009 - 06:03 PM; edited 3 times in total

vegasdave901 wrote:

With some countries hemming and hawing about buying F-35s or going cheaper with Su-30s, Gripens, EF2000, etc. has anyone proposed an informal dogfight flyoff between some of the jets? Wouldn't that put some of the fence-sitters to rest? You know, any other fighter vs. a near invisible fighter?

It's an interesting idea but with the millions of dollars in contracts that would potentially be at stake, I imagine that any proposed flyoff would be anything but informal. I'm sure that any such flyoff would be preceded by a LONG sit down defining the parameters of the contest. All of the jets have different strengths and weaknesses and any proposed contest would inevitably highlight some at the expense of others.

I think we'd also have to consider who would benefit from such a proposed flyoff. Is Saab going to lend a Gripen and a trained pilot if it thinks the odds or at least the contest rules are stacked against it? Is Eurofighter? Is a nation state operator going to advertise that it's air force is substantially inferior to another's?

It's also important to stress that there are only a couple of F-35s flying and differ significantly from what will be produced. Look at the revisions from AF-1 to AA-1. Testing is ongoing and I doubt that LM is going to risk pushing and breaking one of its planes. A lot of the important factors that go into evaluating a fighter for an operator aren't known for the F-35 yet, including maintenance hours and costs. It's a beautiful airplane, but the F-22 has been more expensive and required more hours to maintain than LM predicted. It's not really fair to compare real numbers to proposed ones.

Finally, a lot of countries that are hemming and hawing about the F-35 aren't doing so because of performance. At least publicly, a lot of concern seems to be about industrial offsets, costs, and delivery times (there are a lot of important customers already standing in line like the USMC and British Navy).

Parenthetically, the contest between the YF-22 and YF-23 and the X-32 and X-35 weren't flyoff dogfights. Competitors in the air rarely saw each other. They were much more like parallel development programs with a winner selected based on the company's ability to realize its proposal.

Doesn't mean that I wouldn't pay to attend though!

Double post

The only fly-off that was relevant was the fly-off against the F-32 and that was they were built to the same specs.
Against other fighters I don't think a fly-off would offer anything that the current evaluations do not include. There is so much that goes into the choice of a new aircraft that has little to do with fighter versus fighter competition. Things like loan rates, length of the loan, dept forgiveness, lifespan of the airframe, transfer of technology, special political favors/considerations, etc.

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Has an F-35 flyoff ever been considered?