Most agile F-35?

The agility capability comes into play in different ways.

WVR
I'll go against the grain here and state that WVR combat could possibly increase in frequency, but with the caveat that it will be one-sided and with substantial differences in attacker velocity versus the prey, to the extent that wingman reaction will not be able to employ weapons effectively if they survive the ambush. With DAS/EOTS/AESA fused, the attackers will be able to watch and set up on their prey with continuous visual acuity and sense of space and time that has never existed in a fighter cockpit before.

The problem with this is you're inside the detection range of their IR sensor radius. Not good. MDF file inputs to the visual system should be telling you that you're in the wrong place for stealth to be maintained. I'm 100% for ambushing, but you need to back it out some, not leave no margin for things not going just so, because they won't. It's not just the wingman who is left with nowhere to go, in no time, as he also has helmet-cuing on IR.

I recall an article years back mentioning that offboard sensor feeds would not offer much benefit in a fur all due to latency delays. All the more reason to fight smart and from a distance where multiship SA is an important advantage.

You got my vote.

It's a matter of choice, the close stuff is a legacy poor choice that you don't have to make any longer.

The agility capability comes into play in different ways.

WVR
I'll go against the grain here and state that WVR combat could possibly increase in frequency, but with the caveat that it will be one-sided and with substantial differences in attacker velocity versus the prey, to the extent that wingman reaction will not be able to employ weapons effectively if they survive the ambush. With DAS/EOTS/AESA fused, the attackers will be able to watch and set up on their prey with continuous visual acuity and sense of space and time that has never existed in a fighter cockpit before.

The problem with this is you're inside the detection range of their IR sensor radius. Not good. MDF file inputs to the visual system should be telling you that you're in the wrong place for stealth to be maintained. I'm 100% for ambushing, but you need to back it out some, not leave no margin for things not going just so, because they won't. It's not just the wingman who is left with nowhere to go, in no time, as he also has helmet-cuing on IR.

But sensor radius of the IR on a 4++ generation fighter is limited to its frontal aspect. VLO fighter can decide from which aspect attack to the 4++ fighter without its irst can detect it. And other problem, IR scan search is very slow comparing scan radar velocity.

It is a enormous advantage when the other guy do not know where you stay, but you know where he stays.

In a real fight on the real world 4++ fighters have not any possibility for to survive against vlo fighter.

The agility capability comes into play in different ways.

WVR
I'll go against the grain here and state that WVR combat could possibly increase in frequency, but with the caveat that it will be one-sided and with substantial differences in attacker velocity versus the prey, to the extent that wingman reaction will not be able to employ weapons effectively if they survive the ambush. With DAS/EOTS/AESA fused, the attackers will be able to watch and set up on their prey with continuous visual acuity and sense of space and time that has never existed in a fighter cockpit before.

The problem with this is you're inside the detection range of their IR sensor radius. Not good. MDF file inputs to the visual system should be telling you that you're in the wrong place for stealth to be maintained. I'm 100% for ambushing, but you need to back it out some, not leave no margin for things not going just so, because they won't. It's not just the wingman who is left with nowhere to go, in no time, as he also has helmet-cuing on IR.

But sensor radius of the IR on a 4++ generation fighter is limited to its frontal aspect. VLO fighter can decide from which aspect attack to the 4++ fighter without its irst can detect it. And other problem, IR scan search is very slow comparing scan radar velocity.

It is a enormous advantage when the other guy do not know where you stay, but you know where he stays.

In a real fight on the real world 4++ fighters have not any possibility for to survive against vlo fighter.

The 'answer' to that is so obvious. So I'll say this instead.

Young guys who fly F-35s will not have their head full of old legacy concepts and habits. They will understand in an instant that to get inside the sensor detection radius of an opponent, whether in the FOV or not, when you don't even have to, or even to get close, is a bad move, and not the way to fight or to utilize the numerous hard-fought for system advantages.

There have been quite a few quotes posted in here in recent months (and maybe Spaz will kindly do the honors with one or two) about very accomplished multiple thousands of hours Teen pilots who have transitioned into F-35 to discover that all of their previous awesomeness and experience and reputation is no particular advantage within an F-35. That they're regularly getting beaten in A2A by comparative newbies to jet-combat, weapons, sensors, tactics, etc. The experienced guys struggle to cope with the fact that they suddenly seem to suck at A2A in an F-35, when they were wizards with an F-15C. It's confounding.

Why is this? It's clearly a very important factor to get at, to focus on, it's big in terms of relative pilot effectiveness.

I can see this same dynamic within this thread, and prior, where many very experienced people are mentally making the same errors, they're just getting it wrong (and can't see it, like the very experienced pilot can't see why it keeps happening). It's not complicated but very experienced people simply can't let go the natural drift into tried and true concepts that worked so well within other jets. It just isn't that way with an F-35. It's a different mentality, it's not about habits, it's making the right dynamic choices, without internally resisting doing it. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is with a generalized illustration of the problem:

Within an A2A fight that involves two opposing air forces of the same size and material resources using the exact same equipment, except one uses stealth tactics and BVR only while the other uses typical 4th gen tactics and goes for WVR fights or even towards a merge without much restraint, because they have been doing that for decades. It can't suddenly be completely wrong! That's unpossibles!

The airforce that most successfully fights to not be seen will achieve all or most of their missions, and suffer little or no combat attrition.

But the airforce that uses old tried and true tactics with the same jets will be hammered rapidly into the dirt, in every A2A unseen encounter, and be attrited to nothing and have failed to achieve a good proportion of their missions also.

You can choose to use the tactics that keep you from being seen - or you can be attrited.

That's really all it is, a choice. But the more experienced guys don't make the choice, but the young newbie, who has been given the tactical keys-to-the-kingdom in A2A, will make the choices more often, and will not be seen, and will achieve their missions, and will win.

I can't imagine why the choice would be made to run the risk of failing to win? But I can see that some people just aren't able to break free of the habitual, to make the right choice. Those people shouldn't be in F-35s because the designers and the engineers and the constructors deserve to have a better pilot in that jet who will do its capabilities justice, and not just waste it and throw it away, via using the wrong tactics for the capability, which capabilities they just ignore, downplay and discount, and make no or little use of.

I would rather have the aircraft remain on the ground for as long as it takes to find the right pilots, guys who make the right choices without inner resistance, than to put the wrong pilots into it who'll repeatedly use the wrong tactics for the aircraft and heroically get themselves seen and fired at, and eventually killed for no necessary reasons.

I think it's completely unacceptable for a pilot who doesn't have to, to put themselves within the detection radius of an opposing jet, when the F-35 was designed with the tools to make sure that they would not have to do that, that they could (without internal habitual resistance generating continual serious tactical errors) just choose to do the smart thing, and win, without getting killed, and with zero attrition of jet force and pilots. Zero attrition against other jets (excepting F-22A) is acceptable for an F-35 IMO.

If the pilot does not think that way, or rather can't, then that's the wrong pilot. There's no excuse for losing in combat to weapon-fire. If your tacticians don't see it that way and don't drive to achieve an airforce that will not be seen, who will achieve all of the missions, and suffer no combat losses, then they are the wrong tacticians. And if the pilot is that tactician, the pilot has to go.

You don't fly into the detection and tracking radius of your enemy when you don't have to. Why does that simple thing have to be explained, even once? To a newbie you would not have to explain that a second time, they would get it, they wouldn't resist it. And you don't try to 'rationalize' or to wrestle with it, or to resist why you still 'think' it's an acceptable thing to do, regardless. It isn't.

Choose stealth every time, every choice from wheels-up to wheels-down has got to be, to not be seen, without exception.

That choice is the Joint air battle winning-move, when an opponent force can't, or else won't do similar, or as well. The older experienced guy just doesn't make that choice, and keep making it, so he gets his butt handed to him by kids.

Don't resist the smart thing to do.

That's the real tactical 'answer' to your comment's question/statements.

The agility capability comes into play in different ways.

WVR
I'll go against the grain here and state that WVR combat could possibly increase in frequency, but with the caveat that it will be one-sided and with substantial differences in attacker velocity versus the prey, to the extent that wingman reaction will not be able to employ weapons effectively if they survive the ambush. With DAS/EOTS/AESA fused, the attackers will be able to watch and set up on their prey with continuous visual acuity and sense of space and time that has never existed in a fighter cockpit before.

The problem with this is you're inside the detection range of their IR sensor radius. Not good. MDF file inputs to the visual system should be telling you that you're in the wrong place for stealth to be maintained. I'm 100% for ambushing, but you need to back it out some, not leave no margin for things not going just so, because they won't. It's not just the wingman who is left with nowhere to go, in no time, as he also has helmet-cuing on IR.

Roger. Threat library dependent, it looks like everything is in place for the system of systems to keep you well advised as to how to set up, cooperatively. To clarify, I'm not talking about Hollywood dogfights, but edge of WVR/BVR approaches off aspect, with kinematic advantages for weapons employment and egress, especially after expending most of a 4-ship's AIM-120s and having a few AIM-120s but 2 x AIM-9X or ASRAAM per bird.

The Russians are reacting to this by installing more peripheral IR detection systems on the Flanker because they don't really have many other alternatives to defensive electronic suites when dealing with an off-aspect VLO approach.






The Indian Su-30MKI has some interesting international collection of Defensive IR and RF systems from SAAB, Thales, Avitronics, and Russia. South Africa, Sweden, and France are some of the top electronic countermeasures and avionics manufacturers in the world. I suspect the Russian technical advisors and SVR plants among them have G2'd those systems when doing maintenance support for the Indians, and you see a lot of these types of systems passed up to the Su-35S and prototype Su-57s. Since they entered into a military cooperative pact with China after the fall, it wouldn't surprise me to see technical exchanges with the Chinese either, although it appears the Chinese are trying to mimic the F-35's DAS when you look closely at the J-20.





With these in the threat library, it accounts for sensor aspect and detection ranges, but how far can a fixed, wide azimuth IR sensor really see that is peripheral on the airframe, vs something like an OLS-35 up front? It isn't going to be a large detection envelope, so I suspect an F-35 driver can thread the needle to increase Pk on the edge of WVR and reduce weapon flight time, while maximizing kinetic performance for impact.

I'm mostly thinking of off-aspect approaches combining approach angles and altitude outside of the altitude band of the targets.

The agility I'm thinking of pertains to egress. People like to criticize the Flanker, but from the intercept videos I saw where NATO F-16s and F-15s have joined them, the Russian Flanker pilots popped their F-15 copy speed brakes, then aggressively accelerated ahead of the F-15s and F-16s, then throttled back to show them how much energy they had compared the F-15C/F-16s. That video showed up initially, but seems to have been edited out when showcasing the US/NATO perspective. The Su-30s were close to home, with no external tanks, and appeared to be very responsive at that altitude compared to 2-tank Grey Eagles.

I might be flapping out there in the wind, but I would want to avoid a scenario where any surviving targets have a chance of turning into HOBS or OLS-35/R-73 LOAL parameters to get off a shot after accelerating when they see their wingman burst into flames.

F-35 makes something like that much less of a possibility than a 4th Gen due to VLO across RF and IR spectrums, but kinematics also comes into play because it allows you to get out of IR detection range faster without burners.

Yeah, they weren't called "Flankers" for nothing, they have the speed and the fuel to make a mess if you let them get wound up, that's for sure. I just figure you don't need to get so close to give them a chance at a lucky shot if/when it doesn't work as expected. I'd be trying and simulating all sorts of BVR options first.

Great post by the way.

Surprise Surprise - the PDF cited no longer at URL so I'll attach it below soonest. Meanwhile an F-35 FUSION Graphic from:

https://www.ncoic.org/apps/group_public ... 090225.pdf (7.5Mb) [2009]