Most agile F-35?

[lbk000]

Gums is probably talking about running a grind. Despite the speculative tone of this illustration, it's a very real thing:

Before you take the picture at face value though, the chainsaw can be run in any direction by changing which leg of the loop the aircraft flies faster on, so you can run a "retreating" grind to kite the enemy along and keep them at arms distance. In such cases retreating aircraft would light blowers -- thus you can surmise, advancing aircraft would not be flying so fast.
One could view the chainsaw as a modern adaptation of the old WW2 energy grinder, where elements of a flight successively make swooping attacks on lower altitude targets before escaping to altitude and resetting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_iW1T3yg80 (15:00+)

In light of this, I think the F-35 is comfortably at home in a conventional, toe to toe, you-see-me-I-see-you engagement in the theoretical scenario that adversary sensor technology has eroded the VLO advantage. The F-35's ability to rapidly decelerate and make high ITR subsonic bat turns and then accelerate is perfectly tailored to a tactic like the chainsaw and is likely a major reason why modern aircraft designs have all trended towards favoring ITR over STR.
--

A very low turn rate will still generate tons of G at those speeds, and corresponding concerns over GLOC.

You'll run into this before you even get past the sound barrier -- there's a reason why despite advances in potential in the past 50 years, ACM has remained inside a particular band of airspeeds.

Frankly, you sound like you've latched onto this idea of supersonic maneuvering because you "heard of this concept" and now you're trying view everything through this lens. The reality is that there are a lot of practical realities in time, fuel economy, maneuvering space, among others, that incentivize fighters to fly (perhaps surprisingly) slowly, relative to their potential top speeds.

[spazsinbad]

Great illustration thanks - my attempt to make it clearer below.

[Gums]

Salute!

The AIMVAL-ACEVAL exercises were run in the mid-seventies, best I recall, Another test about that time was conducted to evaluate the Lima and the Slammer. And then there was the "Red Baron" study or whatever. You can look them up, I guess, but I'll do it myself and see what I come up with

Our initial cadre at Hill had a few folks from those exercises, and we used their experience to develop our initial ACM syllabus missions and such. Bear in mind that our students were not all aggressor pilots, and many were like me - mudbeaters from the Sluf or even F-4's or 'vaarks.

Of interest to me personally, is my classmate/friend Ritchie that got all his kills with the Sparrow. He knew the envelope and he knew how to get there. One of his shots was a shoot-shoot from across the circle and the second missile flew thru the fireball from the exploding Mig hit by the first one. Like JR007 here signed off, "Burning debris never reversed on anyone".


++++++++++++++++++

The tests in the mid-seventies had full-up ACMI and the GCI folks were from the aggressor group. Red Flag was just getting cranked up, but the new debrief capabilities were of great benefit.

My point is that in a large fight you are very likely to wind up within miin-range for the Slammer, or you are winchester. So getting outta there is important, and it's nice to have something to at least scare the bandit as you try to escape.

Gums sends...

[lbk000]

My point is that in a large fight you are very likely to wind up within miin-range for the Slammer, or you are winchester. So getting outta there is important, and it's nice to have something to at least scare the bandit as you try to escape.

No doubt, but also anyone who has been in a many vs many melee also knows that presenting a difficult aspect to one opponent usually means you're not far off from giving a good shot to someone else -- and also vice versa. In a many vs many furball, there is a stream of good shot opportunities opening and closing, rotating through different targets: the difficulty is finding and recognizing them in time before they close. This is why networked coordination and SA augmentation is so important. If the F-35 doesnt have it already, the next step to networked, sensor fused ACM is multiship coordination and analysis of geometries for constantly updating target delegation so that each pilot can be notified of the safest, surest, quickest kill that can be accomplished -- and this may not be the target 1500ft ahead but rather another guy traversing his field of view 1.5 miles off that he otherwise may not have considered as a primary target, but who would actually be able to be quickly shwacked by a sidearmed AMRAAM shot.

Technology has been inexorably marginalizing the defensive value of aerodynamic agility. While that is not to say that we should "make it easy" for adversary weapons by dropping maneuvering altogether, it stands that into the future a dependency on aerodynamic maneuvering for defense is about as ill-advised as wearing medieval plate armor to defend against the bullet. The mantle of final defense will rest more on active countermeasures: chaff, flares, interceptors, point defense lasers, jamming, etc., and with that, we arrive at the battle being lost and won at the sensor level.

Hey guess what the F-35 is really good at???

[spazsinbad]

Does anyone have a quote how the F-35 can keep track of baddies within 10 miles or so? TIA. Bin Lookin' No Find - but...

Air Force F-35 Proponents Strike Back at Critics
Sep 2016 Stew Magnuson

"...Harrigian [former F-22 pilot, Maj. Gen. Jeff Harrigian] said: “The F-35 [helmet’s] tremendous capability is really a first step toward providing that asymmetric advantage to the pilot with that situational awareness it provides for communications, navigation and identification capabilities.” In air combat mode, when the “world is swirling around the pilot,” who may be turning 15 to 30 degrees per second with many aircraft flying around in different directions, keeping track of just the friendly jets is a big challenge, Venable [John Venable, a former F-16 pilot with more than 3,000 hours of flying time, who is now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation] said. “What this aircraft does is to look in any direction and see who is there and you’ll be able to tell who is a good guy and who is a bad guy,” he said...."

Source: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... itics.aspx

[SpudmanWP]

That's what EODAS is made for.

With the ability to detect and track approaching aircraft from any angle, the DAS also greatly reduces the potential for mid-air collisions and virtually eliminates surprises.

https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities/missionsystems

[spazsinbad]

Thanks 'SWP'. Sure, however the quote I look for is something like "in every furball I lost sight of friend/foe recognition whereas within ten miles I can see friend / foe easily" with F-35 HMDS and I think a RAAFie Chappie said this AVMstyle.

[popcorn]

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

[blindpilot]

Great conversation, I'm enjoying following ... but we are still tangled up in 4th gen ( or Gripen/Rafale 4.5 gen) understanding of what is happening here with F-22/35 SA on sensor fusion.

5th (22/35) gen fusion and SA is operating on a different level of processing. The EODAS helmet is not cool because it shows the targets. The Mark 1 eyeball can do that. (even if you have to roll to see below the jet) Fifth Gen isn't even tagging the targets with "more info" on the visor (can you say information overload). That millions of lines of code is doing things that the thousands of lines of code (see Gripen et al) aren't even attempting.

Fifth Gen fusion/SA starts top down/end result first and brings the info to feed that answer. I'm not "target chasing." I am filling in the gaps of the kill chain with a focus on the environmental objectives. So EODAS et al (even off board info feeds) are churning (that millions of lines of code algorithm stuff) to provide a basic and simple "shoot this weapon here now to achieve objective" answer, in an SA perspective that makes that "Duh" obvious to the pilot. We aren't talking sensor fidelity or maximum data on each target. We just want to kill the nearest biggest threat, one after the other (or simultaneously) until the threats are gone, or mitigated through evasion. That's at the App level. "Siri take me to mom's house"... not "Tell me how many miles before I turn south onto the interstate." (Garmin et al)

There really is a big difference here, that radically changes the paradigm ... such that even an Intel 286 (see F-22) can overwhelm doing it the old way. Stealth simply precipitated the change in thinking, by making it possible, but isn't necessarily needed to fulfill the benefits to some extent. What was needed was $$$ and years of programming. Anyone with a couple hundred $billion, and a lot of talented programmers dedicated for a decade can probably pull it off again by 2028 or 203?.

MHO anyway,
BP

[element1loop]

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.

[element1loop]

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.

[falcon.16]

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.

[element1loop]

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.

[element1loop]

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.

[spazsinbad]

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]