We’ve heard of significant shortcomings before with the fighter jet that’s supposed to be America’s future, but
this is just as bad as it gets. The F-35 performed so dismally in a
dogfight, that the test pilot remarked that the it had pretty much no
place fighting other aircraft within visual range.
And it’s
even worse than a mere maneuverability issue. At one point, the pilot’s
helmet was so big he couldn’t even turn his head inside the cockpit.
That’s according to a scathing report obtained by our friends over at War Is Boring
that details the results of visual range air-to-air engagement tests
between an F-35A and an F-16C. The F-35, which the US Air Force, Navy,
and Marines are expected to rely upon, in addition to the air arms of
militaries across the world for at least the next few decades, was
supposed to be better than its F-16 predecessor in all respects.
The F-35’s
ability to compete against other fighter aircraft in a close-in
dogfight, even against the decades old designs it looks to replace, has
always been a contentious issue. Long ago, the F-35’s maneuverability
was planned to far exceed that of fourth generation fighters. Over
time, those claims eroded to the point where the troubled stealth jet is
described as being “about as maneuverable as an F-16.”
The fact
that the F-35 can carry its weapons and fuel internally was of course
the major deciding factor in being able to make such a claim.
Keep in
mind, all of this is anecdotal, but testing reports over almost the last
decade have supported the fact that the F-35 was not nearly as nimble
as many would like it to be. Still, all claims regarding its performance
against other fighters in a dogfight remained largely academic, with
only bits of data to compare in a vacuum.
Which is why the candid report described in the War Is Boring article
finally gives us a good first hand account as to how capable – or
incapable as it may be – the F-35 is in the within-visual-range fight.
The test
pilot flying the F-35 makes it very clear that the new jet, even in its
ideal configuration without any external stores, was no match against a
Block-40 F-16C in a less-than-ideal configuration with a pair of
under-wing fuel tanks:
Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement.
In
dogfighting, energy is everything, and if your enemy has more kinetic
and potential energy for maneuvers than you do, then you’re toast.
The report
even goes into what is akin to a fairly desperate move usually only used
in one-on-one air combat maneuvers, known as a rudder reversal, that
the F-35 is apparently decent at performing at slow speeds. The fact
that this was even detailed in the report as a useful tactic is telling.
In reality, using such maneuvers means you are probably going to die if
any other bad guys are in the area as it rapidly depletes the
aircraft’s energy state, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
Another area that the test pilot highlights on is the F-35’s abysmal rearward visibility. David Axe from War Is Boring writes:
And to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn’t even comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet’s cramped cockpit. “The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft.” That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him.
The report
goes on to make other telling remarks about the F-35’s air combat
maneuvering performance. It should be noted that the aircraft’s flight
software can probably still be tweaked to offer a little wider envelope
for pilots to traverse during a hard turning dogfight, but seeing as
this test occurred this year (almost a decade after the first F-35
flew), the amount of extra agility that can be squeezed out of the F-35
is most likely marginal at this point.
All of this
also reminds us of the fact that we cannot believe the information
coming from the program itself, which is troubling. Only as the aircraft
continues to enter the fleet (which is a whole other ridiculous story) will we begin to hear more honest reviews of its performance,
as in the past we have had to rely on unclassified congressional watch
dog reports and other unbiased sources to identify trends and key data
points.
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