sferrin wrote:More whining from the usual suspects:
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of its habit of selectively releasing details and figures, the US Air Force makes it impossible to understand whether the F-35A’s performance during the deployment was as impressive as it sounds.
For example:
-- a “surge” of 138 missions by 14 aircraft over two weeks may sound impressive, but it averages out to less than one (precisely, 0.7) mission per aircraft per day, which is rather pedestrian.
-- The story does not say how many of those 138 missions were aborted.
-- The story says the squadron scored 110 kills against “enemy” aircraft, but again that averages out to 0.56 kills per aircraft per day, which is not really impressive.
-- how many of the “suppression of enemy air defenses, destruction of enemy air defenses” missions were assisted by EG-18F electronic attack aircraft?
-- how many “offensive counter-air” missions were assisted by E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, and/or F-16 and F/A-18 Super Hornets fighters?
More details are needed to determine the F-35A’s real performance during this simulated deployment.) http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articl ... -date.html
LOL, just LOL...
1. Yes, because exercises always go full steam from the 1st day to last day with maximum amount of sorties flown every day...

Also that amount of sorties is fairly normal for mature in-service aircraft during similar time frame. Besides, each F-35 sortie is likely a quite a bit longer as it has much better endurance than most fighters. It might be hard for this editor to understand, but even F-35s need maintenance and their crews need to eat and sleep... Not to mention mission planning and debriefing...
2. Killin
over 110 enemy aircraft without any losses is fairly impressive to me... Especially since most missions weren't even air-to-air missions at all. Only F-22 has ever done anything remotely similar in exercises.
3. What does it matter if F-35s got support or not? This exercise wasn't about showing how super-awesome F-35 is. It was about everybody getting important training, including F-16, F/A-18, Growler and E-3 crews.
This is getting really stupid. If F-35 doesn't kill everybody within secods and if there are some other aircraft in the air at the same time, it sucks...