F-15 driver says the Eagle can beat the F-35A in dogfight

[zero-one]

http://www.informationdissemination.net ... /label/JSF

In an interview with Defense News, Capt. Brock McGehee, an F-15 pilot from the 44th Fighter Squadron (FS) says the F-35A has been defeated by the Eagle during mock dogfight training.

12 F-35As from Hill AFB 34th FS are currently deployed to Kadena Air Base, Japan.

According McGehee the F-35 is an “extremely capable” air-to-air fighter. “It’s just kind of scary a little bit to fly around in the dark with an invisible airplane that’s around you somewhere,” he pointed out. “Those guys are very good pilots, their situational awareness is very high and they do a good job of keeping us in the loop of where they are when they’re on the same team as us.”

McGehee explained that like its fifth-generation brother, the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 is very difficult to detect at long distances thanks to its stealthiness. But in close combat, an F-15 will engage an F-22 and F-35 very differently, he said. He declined to discuss specifics that could reveal tactics, techniques and procedures and provide an adversary with hints about how to best either aircraft.

“An F-22, if you’ve ever watched the demo of it, you can turn inside out. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “An F-35, it turns differently. So that’s just [basic fighter maneuver] kind of awareness for us of what to do differently.”

So can the F-15 beat the F-35 in dogfights?

“I mean, sometimes,” McGehee said, adding that all aircraft lose in aerial combat sometimes, and for various reasons.

“Part of it is the aircraft and part of it is the man in the aircraft,” he continued. “We’ve got some really talented pilots here who are able to gain the offensive on a lot of other pilots. A pilot who understands this aircraft very well and is very skilled at it is pretty lethal no matter what he’s flying, so it’s possible.”

According Capt. Ryan Fantasia, an F-35A pilot with the 34th FS, in the skies above Kadena, F-35 pilots are focusing primarily on the air-to-air fight — a rarity for the F-35, a stealthy fifth-generation jet that is more known for its air-to-ground capability. “The airspaces are all over the water, so it’s a lot harder to look down and see the ground or anything like that. Plus, the Eagles are here,” he said referring to the F-15C/D Eagle fighters from the 44th and 67th fighter squadrons based at Kadena.

Actually the F-15 fourth-generation fighter jet still can pose a challenge in a dogfight and as reported by Defense News the F-35’s record against fourth-generation fighters hasn’t always garnered the jet positive attention. In 2015 in fact an F-16 beat an F-35 in a dogfight.

At the time, the Defense Department claimed that the F-35 involved in the mock dogfight was a very early model with a flight envelope limited to only 5.5 G’s. Furthermore the jet also did not have many of the mission systems, stealth coating or helmet display functionality which are now widely available.

In February, the F-35s at Kadena got the latest block 3F software, the full combat capability version that allows the aircraft to fly its entire flight envelope and up to 9 G maneuvers. However the Lighting II’s air-to-air game had already shown improvement before that, achieving a 20-to-1 kill ratio at its first Red Flag event in early 2017.

[zero-one]

The headline is misleading, but I guess thats what the author chose to make it a click bait.

However he did have some very good insights. They fight an F-35 "very different" from an F-22 and the F-35 turns "different" from a Raptor.

I always thought the both planes as well as the F-15 and F-16 turns the same at fighting air speeds, differences are only spotted in the extreme parts of the envelope.

F-22 has post stall and supersonic maneuverability next to none, it also has great vertical performance along with the F-15.

The F-16 is a beast in horizontal turns and stays fast no matter how hard you turn. F-22 is as well.

From what we know, the F-35 is a Hornet with turbo charged engine.

But to me it looks like differences are more pronounced.

[spazsinbad]

The headline is misleading? FFsake read the forum first. Your post is the FOURTH about this McGehee HEE HEE NOT!

Perhaps they are all not EXACTLY QUOTED THE SAME but at least the same name crops up saying the same things here:

viewtopic.php?f=59&t=53576&p=391816&hilit=McGehee#p391816
& here:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53556&p=391835&hilit=McGehee#p391835
& here:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=53556&p=391837&hilit=McGehee#p391837 VIDEO HERE ALSO scroll down
But hey break up the forum so that the comments are scattered to the FOUR WINDS - good strategy.

[zero-one]

Woah, sorry, the article was published today, so I thought there was no topic about it yet. Apologies everyone. I think mods will just delete this thread.

Or people who want to talk about it can just post here

[spazsinbad]

OR they can post at the other three places eh. IF you do not want to post the same the same the same then SEARCH the forum. Often people posting do not add the author nor the date which can make searching less fruitful but there are other strategies such as search on an unique word such as McGHEE HEE HEE HEE Ha Ha whatever. I'm searching ALL THE TIME.

[zero-one]

why the disdain for McGhee? I mean he seems to be a really good pilot considering he can beat F-35s at times

[spazsinbad]

No disdain just making a joke - unfortunate trait of a lot of Australians - with silly names aplenty - Woolloomooloo is one.

[hb_pencil]

didn't see it until you posted it. Thanks.

[zero-one]

I see, but this is not news, If I remember correctly, you guys beat the crap out of supposedly superior platforms on your A-4s

[optimist]

we had a f-111 take out a f-16 who came low and into the weeds, that was a show worth talking about.

[zero-one]

Talk about Twisting words around

http://www.businessinsider.sg/f-35-vs-f ... ?r=US&IR=T

F-35s in Japan are still losing dogfights to F-15s sometimes — here’s why

F-35s dogfighting against Cold War-era F-15 fighter jets still sometimes lose, according to a new report.
The F-35 has been plagued by reports that it can’t dogfight for years, but experts say that’s not really the purpose of the new jet.
Instead, F-35s stealth features mean they’ll do most of their fighting unseen, and that something has gone wrong if they forfeit their stealth advantage by fighting up close.
But as F-35 software, tactics, and pilots develop, the jet may soon start to beat older planes designed specifically to kill anything that flies.

The most expensive weapons system in history, the US’s F-35 Lightning II, is still sometimes losing to the 1970s F-15 in dogfights during training scenarios in Japan.

US Air Force F-15 pilot Capt. Brock McGehee, when asked by Defense News if the F-35s at Kadena Air Force base in Japan still sometimes lost to the Cold War-era fighters, said “I mean, sometimes.”

The F-35 has long been plagued by reports of that it can’t dogfight as well as older, much cheaper jets, despite being in development for nearly two decades and claiming to revolutionize air combat.

In 2015, War is Boring published a report from a test pilot that said the F-35 couldn’t turn or climb fast enough to keep up with older jets, and F-16s lugging heavy fuel tanks under wing still routinely trounced it.

But a lot has changed since 2015. The F-35 has had its software upgraded and the tactics refined.

Retired US Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Berke previously told Business Insider that the older jets benefited from decades of development and training, whereby new pilots today have established best practices. As the F-35 is still in its early days, Berke said the best is yet to come.

In 2017, the F-35 dominated older jets with a ratio of 15 kills to one death.

“The biggest limitation for the F-35 is that pilots are not familiar with how to fly it. They try to fly the F-35 like their old airplane,” Berke said.

But the pilots at Kadena dogfighting against F-15s may be a cut above, according to Berke, who said that because they have never flown a legacy jet before, they won’t bring the bad habits with them, and will instead learn how to fly the F-35 like the unique plane it is. “They’re going to be your best, most effective tacticians,” Berke said.“The F-35 cannot out dogfight a Typhoon (or a Su-35), never in a million years,” Justin Bronk, a combat aircraft expert at the Royal United Services Institute, previously told Business Insider.

The reason why, according to Bronk and other experts on the F-35, is that the F-35 just isn’t a dogfighter. The F-35’s stealth design put heavy demands on the shape of the aircraft, which restricted it in some dimensions. As a result, it’s not the most dynamic jet the US could have possibly built, but it doesn’t have to be.

Instead, the F-35 relies on stealth. F-35s, employed correctly in battle, would score most of their kills with long range missiles fired from beyond visual range.

“If you get into a dogfight with the F-35, somebody made a mistake. It’s like having a knife fight in a telephone booth,” civilian F-16 pilot Adam Alpert of the Vermont Air National Guard wrote in 2016 after training on F-35 simulators.Berke, an alumnus of the US Navy’s famous Top Gun school, echoed Alpert’s assessment, but warned that the common perception of dogfighting was “way off,” and something US jets haven’t done in 40 years. Berke disagreed with Bronk’s “never in a million years” assertion, but maintained that the dogfighting issue was basically irrelevant.

The bottom line is that in training, all jets lose “sometimes.” That the F-35 can hold its own and beat a jet refined over four decades to excel exclusively at air-to-air combat – when the F-35 has been designed to fight, bomb, spy, and sneak – shows its tremendous range and potential.

[usnvo]

:lmao: why the disdain for McGhee? I mean he seems to be a really good pilot considering he can beat F-35s at times

"So can the F-15 beat the F-35 in dogfights?

“I mean, sometimes,” McGehee said, adding that all aircraft lose in aerial combat sometimes, and for various reasons.

“Part of it is the aircraft and part of it is the man in the aircraft,” he continued. “We’ve got some really talented pilots here who are able to gain the offensive on a lot of other pilots. A pilot who understands this aircraft very well and is very skilled at it is pretty lethal no matter what he’s flying, so it’s possible.”"

Sorry, if that was how you read the article, you need some remedial work in reading comprehension.
1. He never says he can beat an F-35 or any aircraft, in fact he bends over backwards to not mention himself (pretty amazing for a fighter pilot, his hands must have been tied behind his back).
2. He says sometimes, not a positive comment.
3. He talks about "really talented" and "very skilled" pilots in the 3rd person, indicating that is someone else. Again, pretty humble for a fighter pilot.
4. He is answering a question which, by all accounts, is absolutely true. A F-15 can beat a F-35 in a dogfight. He basically sets up a scenario of a top tier F-15 driver taking on a less than top tier F-35 pilot. Not seeing why that is so unlikey. The F-22 has been beaten by other aircraft before and even a 20:1 kill ratio make it clear F-35 pilots have been beaten as well.

If anything, your negative response to the comments is an indictment of your own prejudices as opposed to anything in the comments.

[steve2267]

The F-16 is a beast in horizontal turns and stays fast no matter how hard you turn. F-22 is as well.

From what we know, the F-35 is a Hornet with turbo charged engine.

But to me it looks like differences are more pronounced.

Start hanging 370gal EFT under each wing, plus AIM-120s, AIM-9s, targeting pods etc underneath its wings and the F-16 is not quite the same beast in horizontal turns.

"is a Hornet with turbo charged engine" or, as another former Hornet driver is quoted as saying, "is a Hornet with four engines!"

It has been discussed on here many times: the design goals of the F-35 were to have the kinematics of an F-16 with the high alpha, nose-pointing authority of the F/A-18. People poo-pooed that notion, or said it could not be done, or that the F-35 had not achieved it... but as more and more pilot interviews keep coming in, along with reports, and anecdotal stories of F-35 performance, people act surprised.

But the F-35 appears to have phenomenal acceleration. One of the first comments out of the mouths of most new F-35 pilots are accolades about the engine -- how much power it has. Then they invariably rave about the pedal turns.

One F-35 pilot with whom I corresponded, put it thusly:

• Fighting an F/A-18, he could defeat the Hornet by out-rating him
• Fighting an F-16, he could defeat the Viper by out-radiusing him

The impression I developed was that the F-35 has enough of the right tools, that a competent pilot will be able to choose the correct tool (or maneuver) from the tactical toolbox to defeat any other aircraft, possibly excepting the F-22, out there.

I like to think of an F-35 as either an F/A-18 that has the kinematics / acceleration of an F-16 Blk 50, or as an F-16 Blk 50 with the nose pointing of the Bug / Rhino. Plus it comes with a neato disappear switch better than an F-117 (possibly better than an F-22 in some areas), and the avionics to make an old A-7D pilot weak in the knees.

usno mentioned reading comprehension... somewhere around here someone posted an old powerpoint slide where the JSF was projected (or a goal of the jSF was) to have an 8-to-1 kill-loss ratio. (Maybe it was as low as 4-to-1, I can't recall.) But Red Flag 2017-1 suggests it may be more like 17-1 or 20-1. Against the Mountain Home boys, earlier stories had the F-35 waylaying the Mudhens. Didn't sound fair. So for some of the best air-to-air F-15 jockey's to achieve some kills against the F-35 should not come as a surprise. I think it's smart to send a Hill squadron to get schooled in air-to-air tactics against the Eagles at Kadena -- a good way to start developing air-to-air prowess amongst the F-35 pilots, esp. the new, young guys, which they can then disseminate to the rest of the wing and F-35 community at large.

What would be nice is some honest reporting that doesn't require dissecting and reading between the lines to understand what is really going on. But clickbait journalism seems to be the norm these days. Combine that with a largely anti-F-35 journalism institution, and it makes for hair pulling F-35 stories.

[zero-one]

Just so we're clear USNVO and Steve2267

Heres what I think of the F-35:
- the second best air superiority fighter ever (behind the Raptor)
- combined the best of both worlds with the F-16's Energy and the F/A-18's high alpha and slow speed
- the 3rd best all around kinematic performer:

Some planes are great energy fighters but have poor high alpha and slow speed maneuverability (i.e. F-16, Typhoon)
Some have great high alpha but...not so great energy (F/A-18, Su-30)
And some planes can do it all (Raptor, Su-35, F-35)

So no, I am not sugesting for one second that the F-35 is a duck. In fact I have posted many times before that the best way to defend the F-35 against trolls is to give em all the evidence in the world (and there are plenty) that the F-35 is a very high performance platform, Before you go on stealth and the fact that it does not need to maneuver.

Just in case you guys are interested here are some:

1. 31 pilots from the USAF said they would choose the F-35 over their former 4th gen fighters when in a dogfight.
Read here: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... itics.aspx

2. Royal Norwegian pilots say the F-35 maneuvers like an F/A-18 (high angle of attack capabilities) with 4 engines.
Read here:
https://theaviationist.com/2016/09/20/d ... snt-agree/

3. Maj. Dolby Hanche says the F-35A maneuvers better than his F-16
Read here:
https://nettsteder.regjeringen.no/kampf ... ft-rollen/

All Im saying is, that in training....with the right circumstances, right ROEs, a lot of luck maybe, Mr. McGehee was able to beat some F-35s SOMETIMES. That's actually a testament to the F-35, that one of the best ACM platforms ever made has been reduced to something that can beat a fighter bomber only sometimes

Thats not a knock on the F-35, Any plane can loose even the Raptor.
So please don't treat me like a troll.

[Corsair1963]

Talk about Twisting words around

http://www.businessinsider.sg/f-35-vs-f ... ?r=US&IR=T
Justin Bronk, a combat aircraft expert at the Royal United Services Institute, previously told Business Insider.

The reason why, according to Bronk and other experts on the F-35, is that the F-35 just isn’t a dogfighter. The F-35’s stealth design put heavy demands on the shape of the aircraft, which restricted it in some dimensions. As a result, it’s not the most dynamic jet the US could have possibly built, but it doesn’t have to be.

Instead, the F-35 relies on stealth. F-35s, employed correctly in battle, would score most of their kills with long range missiles fired from beyond visual range.

Really, Combat Aircraft Expert???

This is Justin Bronk
https://rusi.org/people/bronk

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/justin-bronk-395a5661

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