zero-one wrote:Corsair1963 wrote:the F-35's advantages in Stealth and Sensor Fusion Give the Lightning many advantages over even the Raptor including some in the "Air to Air Role".
Publicly available RCS figures put the Raptor's RCS lower than the F-35's
Those figures seem to come from very, very old article in AWST. Actually those figures are from previous millennium as that article was from 1999, meaning almost 20 years old figures. I doubt those figures are anywhere near correct values as F-35 was barely on drawing board. Those figures are even wrong for the physical objects they refer to (metal marble and metal golf ball).
zero-one wrote:Granted that these are not accurate, there is nothing out there to suggest that the F-35 has better stealth
the closest that we get from official sources is from Gen. Mike Hostage
https://breakingdefense.com/2014/06/gen ... -starts/3/“The F-35 doesn’t have the altitude, doesn’t have the speed [of the F-22], but it can beat the F-22 in stealth.” But stealth — the ability to elude or greatly complicate an enemy’s ability to find and destroy an aircraft using a combination of design, tactics and technology — is not a magic pill, Hostage reminds us.
in the same breath he says
The problem is, with the lack of F-22s, I’m going to have to use F-35s in the air superiority role in the early phases as well.....“Because it can’t turn and run away, it’s got to have support from other F-35s. So I’m going to need eight F-35s to go after a target that I might only need two Raptors to go after.
This from Gen. Hostage who knows more about these 2 planes that we can ever hope. So all this talk about the F-35 being better than the F-22 in A-A has to stop. If it was, the USAF would label it as their premier A-A platform and not the F-22.
It's the second best A-A platform, wildly better than anything else EXCEPT the Raptor.
Strange as Gen Hostage clearly refers to "site" in that interview meaning a ground target. He also says that F-35 has much smaller cross section than F-22. So he seems to consede that F-35 has lower RCS.
About stealth in that interview:
The F-35′s cross section is much smaller than the F-22′s, but that does not mean, Hostage concedes, that the F-35 is necessarily superior to the F-22 when we go to war.
Because it can’t turn and run away, it’s got to have support from other F-35s. So I’m going to need eight F-35s to go after a target that I might only need two Raptors to go after. But the F-35s can be equally or more effective against that site than the Raptor can because of the synergistic effects of the platform.
Doesn't seem to be about air-to-air combat at all. It seems like he considers two F-22s being able to attack a ground target using speed and altitude advantages. F-35 would attack it relying more on numbers and co-operative capabilities and tactics. I really doubt it would normally take 8 F-35s to do a job 2 F-22s can do, especially against ground targets.
Here is what F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan said in here:
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArch ... roach.aspxHostage caused a stir in late spring when, in press interviews, he said the F-35 would be stealthier than the F-22, its larger USAF stablemate. Conventional wisdom had pegged the F-22, with its angled, vectored-thrust engines, as a stealthier machine than the F-35. Hostage also said the F-35 would be unbeatable when employed in numbers, which is why the full buy of aircraft is "so critical."
"I would say that General Hostage … is accurate in his statement about the simple stealthiness of the F-35 [with regard] to other airplanes," Bogdan said in the interview. The statement was accurate for radar cross section, as measured in decibels, and range of detectability, he said, and he scoffed at the notion that anyone can tell how stealthy an aircraft is just by looking at it.
The comment about the effectiveness of F-35s together "has less to do with stealthiness and more to do with overall survivability," he said.
"We are going to ask the F-35 to do things that no other airplane—fourth gen or otherwise—is going to be able to do in the future," he stated. For some of those missions, "it would be much better to do it with more than one F-35."
Besides their stealthiness, the F-35s share information and can perform electronic warfare, electronic attack, and cyber missions.
"When you put two F-35s in the battlespace, … they become even more survivable when they do it together," Bogdan asserted. With two or more, "the sum of the parts is greater than the whole," especially when the aircraft are teaming up "from different parts of the airspace, on the same targets. It becomes quite effective."
I'd say Bogdan knows a thing or two about this issue...