Forum: F-35 Lightning II

Very long ago on this forum, there was a discussion of the frontal views of the F-35 vs various other fighter jets.

http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopi ... art-0.html

However, I haven't seen a comparison of the F-35 and later model F-16's. I'm attaching a roughly to scale comparison of the two jets. As most comparisons seem to include legacy fighters in a clean configuration, I thought I'd include a picture of a legacy fighter in a more representative combat configuration. In the case of the F-16, the picture is of an F-16I, with conformal fuel tanks, targeting pods, drop tanks, bombs and missiles. F-16 Block 50/52/60/etc have basically the same frontal profile. As the F-35 carries essentially the same load internally (minus two missles, or bombs), the F-35 is depicted 'clean'.

(BTW: I've been on this forum for years, but this is my first topic. Be Gentle...)

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Nice comparison. One might wish to add that this falcon's range with THREE external tanks is roughly double the clean F-35 configuration. Otherwise one might wish to draw in an external tank, another AIM-120, and an external JDAM on the F-35's half of the drawing.

If you're going for more than two JDAM bombs, two A/A weapons, and ranges in excess of 600 miles, the F-16 block 50+ is your bird. There's no serious investment in extending the F-35's range with drop tanks, yet the CFT's of the F-16 makes it much more comparable to the lightning II's range.

Not sure I buy the range claim that the F-16 goes further, especially with all that crap hanging off it. Meaningless anyway if the target has any sort of defence as the F-16's going to be picked up on radar so much sooner.

Interesting comment about the range of the two compared here:
http://www.wingsoverkansas.com/features ... asp?id=797

"On Flight 9, we performed the first afterburner takeoff. Flight 9 was also our longest flight to that point, 1.5 hours. We took off with 3,500 pounds short of a full fuel load and landed with about 4,000 pounds of fuel remaining. So we shorted ourselves more fuel than the entire internal fuel capacity of an F-16 and still flew for 1.5 hours without aerial refueling. During Flight 9, we also flew close formations, power approaches, and maneuver blocks to sixteen-degrees angle of attack at 20,000 feet."

A fine first post too majorzaid.

battleshipagincourt wrote:

Nice comparison. One might wish to add that this falcon's range with THREE external tanks is roughly double the clean F-35 configuration. Otherwise one might wish to draw in an external tank, another AIM-120, and an external JDAM on the F-35's half of the drawing.

If you're going for more than two JDAM bombs, two A/A weapons, and ranges in excess of 600 miles, the F-16 block 50+ is your bird. There's no serious investment in extending the F-35's range with drop tanks, yet the CFT's of the F-16 makes it much more comparable to the lightning II's range.

One might wish to add that, but it simply isn't the case. There's no configuration of F-16, that's going to have a combat radius of >1200nm. An F-35's combat radius(A/C), on internal fuel is~700+nm.

Israel To Buy F-35s With Cockpit Mods; Aug 27, 2010; By Alon Ben-David@AviationWeek mentioned that the F-35I was inquiring about a single 600 gal. external drop tank or roughly 25% more fuel to be carried. Good first post, welcome. Smile

If we elaborate a bit this could mean a ~3 h endurance on internal fuel, taking some emergency reserves of lets say ~1500 lb of fuel into account. This assumption also compensates a bit for the not necessarily optimal flight profile (20k ft isn't the most economical flight regime). If we aspect an optimistic 900 kph economical cruise speed this would turn out to a range of approximately 2700 km on internal fuel. As said a very rough estimation.

Interesting comparison but keep in mind that the F-35 you used in that pic is a C model, and has a wingspan of 43 feet. The A model which is supposed to "replace" the F-16 will have a wingspan of 35 feet, a normal F-16 wingspan is 32 feet.

xcraftllc wrote:

Interesting comparison but keep in mind that the F-35 you used in that pic is a C model, and has a wingspan of 43 feet. The A model which is supposed to "replace" the F-16 will have a wingspan of 35 feet, a normal F-16 wingspan is 32 feet.

I do see that the F-35 used was a C model. I used the drawings from dwightlooi's original post (the one in the link) to coble together the picture. It would have been more accurate to include a picture of the F-35A. Sorry for any confusion.

The range of the F-35A would definitely be less than an F-35C. However, the clean profile would be essentially the same.

Just to keep everything honest, I threw together another picture. This time with the F-35A and the F-16I. As before, the picture is roughly to scale. Something difficult to do with a photograph of one jet, and a drawing of another...

This comparison is worhtless(different angles).

exec wrote:

This comparison is worthless(different angles).

As majorzaid said it's hard to keep the picture roughly to scale (or lined up perfectly). Those who can do, those who can't criticize. Whistle

Quote:

This comparison is worhtless(different angles).

Angles are close enough. I think most of us get the basic idea. Relax, dude.

Quote:

Nice comparison. One might wish to add that this falcon's range with THREE external tanks is roughly double the clean F-35 configuration. Otherwise one might wish to draw in an external tank, another AIM-120, and an external JDAM on the F-35's half of the drawing.

I might believe an F-16 with CFTs and 3 external tanks might have more range than a clean F-35.

Quote:

If you're going for more than two JDAM bombs, two A/A weapons, and ranges in excess of 600 miles, the F-16 block 50+ is your bird. There's no serious investment in extending the F-35's range with drop tanks, yet the CFT's of the F-16 makes it much more comparable to the lightning II's range.

What's the point of carrying more ordinance if you're going to get blown out of the sky before you reach your target. That second sentence in your quote has thrown me off. What were you trying to say about your range comparison? A data source would be nice.

F-16/F-35A.

Like the F-16/F-35A shot. The F-16's vertical tail is more visible in this one (and the two aircraft look to be lined up a little better). My only gripe is that you can't really see the gun (DRAT)!

Ah well you can't have everthing! Shrug

180 rounds? That's it?

Forum: F-35 Lightning II

F-35 & F-16 (Block 50 +) - Comparison of frontal view.