F-35 dogfight report

[Gunner 69]

  So, guys , what do you think?

 

 

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-beat-the-plane-its-replacing-in-a-dogfigh-1714712248

[MartinW 0]

I'm dubious about this article to be honest. "Unnamed pilot" my arse.
 
I doubt the smart people who designed the aircraft, plus the test pilots that fly it, are idiots.
 
This is early days. There are still tweaks that can be applied to the control laws.
 
The article below is positive. They remark that pilots were pleased with the performance, and that they believe they can now give the go ahead to the engineers to fine tune the control laws for greater manoeuvrability.

 

 

The operational manoeuvre tests were conducted to see “how it would look like against an F-16 in the airspace,” says Col. Rod “Trash” Cregier, F-35 program director. “It was an early look at any control laws that may need to be tweaked to enable it to fly better in future. You can definitely tweak it—that’s the option.”

“Pilots really like maneuverability, and the fact that the aircraft recovers so well from a departure allows us to say [to the designers of the flight control system laws], ‘you don’t have to clamp down so tight,’” says Nelson.

http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-flies-against-f-16-basic-fighter-maneuvers

[Andrew Godden 943]

Any article which is posted on a web site with the title "War is Boring" clearly has a heavily slanted perspective and a predisposition to inaccurate, selective, and misquoted reporting to serve its own end and justify its existence.  In other words, not worth the paper it could be printed on - and thank goodness we are not wasting good trees to do that.  As for the "unnamed pilot", if they actually spoke to anyone, it was probably the janitor in overalls and they mistook him for a pilot.

 

Propaganda is easy to write.  Having the actual knowledge and credibility to write an informed and authoritative article on a highly complex and technological aircraft is another.

 

The sad thing is, this web site probably exists under some government funded arts and free speech grant.

[MartinW 0]

Probably worth adding that the F35 isn't primarily a dogfighter anyway. It's a multi-role fighter. 

 

Would it beat something like a Typhoon in a dogfight, an aircraft designed to be a supremely effective dogfighter? No, but once the flight control laws are fully tweaked, I can see it being as maneuverable or better than the F16.

 

If you happen to be an F35 pilot and you find yourself in a dogfight, then basically you've cocked up. Much of what the F35 does is outside of dogfighting range.

 

 

[J G 927]

I have to agree with Andrew.  The market for fighter aircraft in the USA must be fierce given the number of players and the huge upfront costs. With that environment there will inevitably be some sledging going on.

 

I noted the phrase "Keep in mind, all of this is anecdotal," in the text, so it may be possible to replace the word anecdotal with the word bollocks.

[MartinW 0]

Personally, with all respect to Pierre Sprey, I think he's talking bollocks. don't care if he's a co designer of the F16.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/pierre-spreys-anti-f-35-diatribe-is-half-brilliant-and-1592445665

[J G 927]

So a small winged VTOL aircraft such as the Harrier wouldn't do well in a dogfight?????  Errm hasn't he heard of the Falklands war?  The above IS bollocks.

[MartinW 0]

The link underneath the video provides a very good analysis of Spey's, crap!

Harrier did indeed perform well in the Falklands, thanks to VIFFing etc. I think the Argentinean aircraft were at a disadvantage though, in terms of being at the edge of their range. Having said that, they were up against new and capable Mirages, and kicked their arses.

[allardjd 1,853]

Quote

So a small winged VTOL aircraft such as the Harrier wouldn't do well in a dogfight?????  Errm hasn't he heard of the Falklands war?

 

Actually the Falklands was not a dogfighting situation at all and there is little there to confirm or deny the Harrier's dogfighting capability.  The Argentinians were flying attack missions at extreme range and had little or no capability for air-to-air combat over the Falklands, nor did they seek it.  There was no close escort of the attacking aircraft and no fighter sweeps, as such, attempting to engage the Harriers. The Argies were near bingo fuel after dropping their anti-ship stores and had neither the equipment nor the inclination to mix it up with the Harriers hundreds of miles from their mainland bases.

 

Their objective was the ships and they focused on that.  What little air refueling capability they had (a very few C-130s with hose and drogue systems operating pretty close to the mainland, as I recall) was used to enable the attack aircraft to reach the Falklands and return.  It was not really a contested air-to-air environment so the Harriers had nothing much to worry about except the WX, which was bad enough and finding the incoming attack aircraft.  Their adversaries were for the most part, targets in a shooting gallery and nobody was shooting back at them, except perhaps ground fire when they engaged land targets in the occupied parts of the main island.

 

I submit that was a pretty special case where there was no ACM threat against them, allowing them to operate without any serious opposition in the interceptor role against incoming targets who had little capability to defend themselves from an air-to-air threat.  It says nothing about the Harrier's ability to exist in a contested air-to-air environment.

 

(some of this copied in from what I posted in another thread)

 

John

[allardjd 1,853]

Quote

Having said that, they were up against new and capable Mirages, and kicked their arses.

 

From Wiki:

 

"Argentine sources indicate that a number [of Mirages] were withdrawn from operations over the islands to protect the mainland against Vulcan strikes, however, they made 58 sorties providing decoys for the strike units with particular success on the June 8 attacks against the British landings ships. Their lesser internal fuel capacity, compared to the Daggers, prevented them from being used in their escort role."

 

The Argies lost exactly two (of 17 total) Mirage IIIEAs, one by a Harrier and one to friendly fire. That's not exactly kicking their arses.

 

In a larger sense, of course, the Sea Harriers did indeed kick the Artentinian's asses, but it was not in a dogfighting context. The Argies were flying attack missions, mainly, plus supporting decoy, recon and supply missions. The Harriers were acting as interceptors. This was simply not a dogfighting war.

 

John

[J G 927]

@ John A. 

 

Where as I agree with a lot of what you say, your first paragraph is not strictly true.  Although the aircraft were at extreme range, when the Harriers appeared the Argentine pilots had to choose between fight or flight.  To flee could be suicide as you became a sitting duck for any Harrier to drop in behind you and and then drop you.   

 

Those who elected to fight stood little chance of getting home but if they could survive the fight, they had a chance of at least getting most of the way, and more importantly to the pilots, staying alive. When the Skyhawks did mix it with the Harriers they sadly didn't do to well. In total 21 Argentine aircraft were lost to Harriers in air to air combat. not a single Harrier was lost in air to air combat.  A rock and a hard place.

 

For those interested, the losses by Harrier were as follows:

 

9 IAI Dagger A 

8 Skyhawks

1 Mirage 111

1 Canberra

1 C130 E

1 Pucara

 

Other aircraft losses:

 

17 Were bought down by ground fire,

  2 By Argentine "friendly fire"

21 Destroyed on the ground

27 Captured after the war

 

I haven't included the accident attrition for the Argentine Airforce here and those lost on their return to mainland Argentina. In the latter case there is no reliable data .

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

We musn't forget of course that the Harrier was first and foremost a ground attack aircraft. The Sea Harrier added fleet defence to its mission and gained a few other tweeks including the new cockpit and radar. It excelled in this mission as one would expect, however like its GR3 cousin it was still primarily a mud mover. The fact that it did well as an interceptor as well was the thing that endeared itself to the crews and the British public, many whom now see the Harrier with the same sort of admiration as the Spitfire. Mention the Falklands war, and three things pop up, Maggie Thatcher, Argentina and the Harrier! I very much doubt that anyone will be looking at the F-35 in the same way!...........If it ever gets into service of course!

[allardjd 1,853]

Quote

Where as I agree with a lot of what you say, your first paragraph is not strictly true. Although the aircraft were at extreme range, when the Harriers appeared the Argentine pilots had to choose between fight or flight. To flee could be suicide as you became a sitting duck for any Harrier to drop in behind you and and then drop you.

Those who elected to fight stood little chance of getting home but if they could survive the fight, they had a chance of at least getting most of the way, and more importantly to the pilots, staying alive. When the Skyhawks did mix it with the Harriers they sadly didn't do to well. In total 21 Argentine aircraft were lost to Harriers in air to air combat. not a single Harrier was lost in air to air combat. A rock and a hard place.

 

Flee they did, in every case as far as I can determine. Are you aware of any events where any of the Skyhawks turned and fought as opposed to turning for home? Even if there might have been a few exceptions it was simply not a dogfighting war - it was an attacker vs. interceptor war.

 

The Daggers and Skyhawks, (17 of 21 losses) were flying in the attack role in all cases and carried no AA stores, i.e. missiles (one exception, see below). They had guns and probably had ammunition for them but they were near bingo fuel, hundreds of miles from home. The Argentine Skyhawks had no missile capability at all after May 1 (the record doesn't say why - out of missiles? racks removed in favor of bombs or fuel tanks?). The record indicates that the Daggers only carried missiles on one day, May 1. The Sea Harriers were armed with AIM-9L all-aspect IR missiles.

 

The Skyhawks required air-air refueling to make the round trip. The Daggers, with no air refueling capability, had to fly the shortest path from and to their nearest bases and had less than 10 minutes of reserve fuel. About 30 seconds in burner and that 10 minutes of spare fuel is gone.

 

As far as I can determine none of them chose to fight the Harriers. Their priority was to attack the ships and escape to the mainland, preserving the aircraft so it might attack again another day. It would have been both tactically and strategically foolish for them to engage in ACM with the Harriers at the certain cost of taking that particular attack aircraft out of the fight for the duration.

 

John

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Something I knocked up some years ago when it was announced that we'd be buying the things. I used a spare set of decals from a Sea Harrier to do it. 1/72 scale Revell kit.

[allardjd 1,853]

That's the B model? Very nicely done.

John

[MartinW 0]

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with John on this as I don't have the facts at my disposal. However, I thought you might be interested in this account...

 

 

It didn’t take long for full on dogfighting to take place against the Mirage III.

It was on the afternoon of May 1st. HMS Glamorgan vectored a pair of SHAR towards three targets approaching at supersonic speed. As the SHAR turned towards the threat, the three targets turned away and used their superior speed advantage to escape. The SHAR returned to their CAP station until a few moments later the Glamorgan controller announced that the targets had returned and were descending in bound at some 25 miles away.

The SHAR immediately turned towards the targets, and decided to perform the hook manoeuvre: the lead aircraft flew head-on to the target and the wingman split to swing around to attack the targets from the rear.

The lead plane was unable to get a lock onto the fast approaching Mirage aircraft but the Hook maneuver worked perfectly as the Mirage pilots didn’t spot the wingman turning onto their tails until it was too late.

The wingman got his tone and released the AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile, that hit the Mirage for the first Sea Harrier’s confirmed kill.

The Navy’s SHARs went on to score 20 kills (none of which was achieved using the famous trick of stopping the plane midair by pointing the jet nozzles slightly forward inducing a 2g deceleration) to no loss in air-to-air combat. However, two were lost to ground fire (radar guided 30mm AA and a Roland missile) and a further two were lost to accidents during the conflict.

 

http://theaviationist.com/2012/05/22/sea-harrier-the-forgotten-hero-that-won-the-war-in-the-falklands-to-be-replaced-by-the-f-35b/

 

 

I recall the US Marine Corp Harriers engaged in dogfighting against Mirage 2000's, think it was last years. Cant find any info on how it went though.

[allardjd 1,853]

That's an interesting account but it reads much more like a coordinated, ground-controlled interception than any kind of dogfight.

 

If factual, which I have no reason to doubt, that accounts for the only Mirage kill of the war.

 

John

[brett 2,308]

I'll go with whatever the Marines choose to fly.

[MartinW 0]

That's an interesting account but it reads much more like a coordinated, ground-controlled interception than any kind of dogfight.

If factual, which I have no reason to doubt, that accounts for the only Mirage kill of the war.

John

 

Oh yes. I posted it out of interest, and to provide an inkling into how the Falklands air combat proceeded.

This is an interesting article, well worth reading the entire 8 page article....

 

But British forces train with a rigor exemplified by high scores against superior aircraft in competitions. “We had fought the Sea Harrier against every airplane in the western world,” says Tim Gedge, then a lieutenant commander. And the British had adopted the new U.S.-built AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missile, with a new wide-angle sensor to improve off-boresight engagement.

 

 They had more than ten times the combat aircraft of the British battle group, including 16 Dassault Mirage III supersonic interceptors. The navy had the formidable combination of the Dassault Super Etendard and the Exocet sea-skimming anti-ship missile, though they had only a handful of the latter, which were then embargoed by France.

The two sides skirmished throughout the day until Barton scored with a Sidewinder that shattered everything aft of one Mirage’s cockpit. Wingman Steven Thomas fired at and crippled a second Mirage just as it entered cloud. The pilot limped toward Port Stanley, where Argentine guns shot him down—the first of many incidents of friendly fire.

Meanwhile, three Daggers managed to damage some British vessels with cannon fire but narrowly missed with their bombs. Two more Daggers with Israeli Shafrir heat-seekers engaged Flight Lieutenant Tony Penfold and Lieutenant Martin Hale, but the Argentine pilots fired at extreme range. One missile followed Hale into cloud before losing its lock. Moments later, the offending Dagger was nailed by Penfold and the other turned for home. Six attacking Canberra bombers were scattered, but not before one of them was dropped by a Sidewinder.

 

But so far, the Sea Harrier and AIM-9L Sidewinder had easily defeated the Mirages and Daggers sent against them. Part of that was attributable to the Argentine pilots’ lack of combat experience.

 

 Neill Thomas and Lieutenant Commander Mike Blissett, on CAP, picked up four inbound Skyhawks. Each Sea Harrier destroyed one and might have downed more but for low fuel.

 

Grupo 5 Skyhawks ran in, aiming for the beachhead—and also poor Ardent, which took two more bombs. Three Daggers strafed Brilliant but were picked off by 801 Squadron’s Ward and Steven Thomas.

 

. By the end of the day, Argentina had lost five Skyhawks, five Daggers, and two Pucarás, nine of them to Sea Harriers. The British had lost Jeff Glover’s GR.3 and two helicopters to ground fire.

 Contrary to expectations, the Sea Harriers and GR.3s proved effective and durable. “We flew nearly 1,500 missions, with 98 percent serviceability,” says Gedge. The hapless Argentine pilots were running on nothing but courage—and the tender care of the ground crews, who spent freezing nights resuscitating the riddled aircraft.

The Sea Harriers were stretched to their range limits. Neill Thomas says that because they could land vertically, Harriers didn’t need much fuel in reserve. “As we went on,” he says, “we began getting shorter and shorter on fuel. You got used to it.” To which Gedge adds, “You know you’re going to land the first time. Landing allowance is about 400 pounds.” By comparison, he notes, the figure for the F-14 is about two and a half tons.

 

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/air-war-in-the-falklands-32214512/?cmd=ChdjYS1wdWItMjY0NDQyNTI0NTE5MDk0Nw&page=8

[J G 927]

 

 

The Sea Harriers were stretched to their range limits. Neill Thomas says that because they could land vertically,

 

Landing vertically wasn't actually done that often, it was far easier to land a Harrier with a very short landing.  

 

The Harrier can only land vertically when it is low on fuel because weight issues.  In order for a Pegasus engine to develop enough thrust to land the aircraft from a hover (vertically) water had to be injected into the engine.  The water tank contained 50 gallons of distilled water that gave 90 seconds of injection. The water added 500lbs to the weight of the aircraft and was stored in a tank over the front of the engine behind the pilot. The injected water allowed the engine to run wet at faster speeds than its dry maximum speed as the jet pipe temperature was cooled by the injected water.  

 

The down side was that the water was usually only used for landing, and so was a dead weight for almost the whole mission.

 

[allardjd 1,853]

The idea of taking the risk of flying without the water tank filled, to increase the available payload for fuel and weapons must have been tempting at times. Do you know if they ever exercised that option?

 

John

[MartinW 0]

Landing vertically wasn't actually done that often, it was far easier to land a Harrier with a very short landing.

The Harrier can only land vertically when it is low on fuel because weight issues. In order for a Pegasus engine to develop enough thrust to land the aircraft from a hover (vertically) water had to be injected into the engine. The water tank contained 50 gallons of distilled water that gave 90 seconds of injection. The water added 500lbs to the weight of the aircraft and was stored in a tank over the front of the engine behind the pilot. The injected water allowed the engine to run wet at faster speeds than its dry maximum speed as the jet pipe temperature was cooled by the injected water.

The down side was that the water was usually only used for landing, and so was a dead weight for almost the whole mission.

Worth mentioning that during the Falklands campaign Harriers would often hover for 5 minutes or more, before landing vertically. The aircraft could actually hover for several minutes. At light weights, distilled water injection to generate more thrust wasn't required.

 

Depends on other factors as well, like atmospheric conditions of course. Falklands was cold so max thrust available.

 

The Mk 107 engine was better and relied less on water injection. It generated 23,800 lbf thrust, more than any previous engine.

 

The Harrier was perfectly capable of landing vertically with a heavy weapons load, with the aid of water injection. Or with more fuel and less weapons of course.

 

It was actually Bill Chapman from the US Air Force that originally suggested that water injection would be useful for hot high operations, or VTOL landings with a heavier load.

The AV-8B's maximum vertical landing weight is 9,043 kg.

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

I still think it was bloody stupid idea to retire our Harriers before their replacement was anywhere near ready. Now the talk is of inviting the USMC to fly THEIR Harriers from OUR carriers to get the crews ready for air operations! How ironic!

[MartinW 0]

We didn't just retire them, we sold all engines and spares to the US. The US you see had the common sense to realise that there would be delays with the F35B.

So they have enough engines and spare to keep then going for years.

So we went for the F35C.
Decided the F35C was too expensive.
So went for the F35B.
There were delays with the F35B so we switched to the F35C for the first carrier.
Decided that was too expansive, and the technical issues with the F35B were solved.
Switched back to the F35B.
Now the US get delivery priority so massive delays.

 

 

 

 

 

[dodgy-alan 1,587]

Should have told them to stuff it and built the carriers as through deck ships, then bought FA-18s or Dassault Rafale Ms.