
F-35 Scores Impressive 15:1 Kill Ratio at Red Flag War Games - jonbaer
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a25078/f-35-red-flag-war-games/
======
Analemma_
Readers of Blink might remember the "Millenium Challenge"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002))
war games. In short, General Van Riper- commanding the simulated insurgent
forces- decisively defeated and humiliated the simulated US forces in 24
hours... until the DOD decided to roll back the exercise and deliver instead a
completely scripted (and useless) version where America won handily.

I don't trust this outcome one bit and suspect something very similar happened
here. I'm guessing the Pentagon is getting very sensitive to the increasing
volume of accusations that the F-35 is a trillion-dollar garbage fire, and
wanted to do anything to try and save its reputation. This result seems very
suspicious in light of the previous evidence that the F-35 loses to both
current- and even previous-generation fighters. Not buying it.

EDIT: Thanks to jljljl for correcting my faulty memory about the book. I get
my pop-sci insight porn confused sometimes :)

~~~
alkonaut
It's very simple to let the F-35 look good - stick to BVR combat. The
scenarios in which it looked poor was in WVR combat where the F-35 has no
benefit of stealth and an excellent radar, but all the drawbacks of stealth
(fewer weapons etc)

I don't doubt the F-35 can dominate in simulations where there either is no
WVR engagements or there are other aircraft to take care of those.

Also, aggressor aircraft were presumably 4th gen aircraft which leaves the
question open how it would perform against other craft.

~~~
sandworm101
No aircraft looks good BVR against live targets. There have only been perhaps
one or two air-to-air missile kills bvr against aware/equiped targets in the
last 40 years (targets with trained pilots and realistic countermeasures).
Most pilots assume a 10-15% hit chance in a realworld bvr situation. No
aircraft looks good when launching all your bvr weapons (4?) will likely not
score a single hit.

~~~
nickff
It looks like the historic kill rate with radar-guided weapons has been quite
low, but the technology has advanced significantly since it's early
deployments around and before the Vietnam war.[1] I would suggest that weapons
like the AMRAAM would have a high probability of kill in real large scale
conflicts if and when IFF issues are not present.

[1]
[http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/11/09.pdf](http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/11/09.pdf)

~~~
crypto5
In Yugoslavia war, all(6) air-to-air kills were performed by AMRAAM according
to wiki.

~~~
sandworm101
But against what target? A poorly-equiped fighter with no EW capability, one
that doesnt move becausr it doesnt see the threat? Lets see how the amraam
handles a 4th or 5th generation fighter. There are stories of f22s having
trouble downing f4 drones.

~~~
crypto5
Against mig-29, modern enough for that time.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Don't believe military wargames anymore. They have become a mechanism to
bolster the procurement status quo. A Trillion dollar industry has developed
around military procurement--they resist disruption using political means.
Military procurement is not a free market. Its a network of old boys.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002)

~~~
douche
That's pretty much the way it has always been. You can go back at least to the
Civil War and find politics has had more to do with procurement than
performance of the weapon systems in question.

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phkahler
If you read between the lines you may see something. The F-35 still sucks at
air-air combat. Period. But if you use its radar and software systems to feed
tactical data to the "real fighters" the team becomes extremely lethal. So
it's still a giant money sink and they should probably just retrofit some of
the older planes with those more advanced info systems.

~~~
na85
>The F-35 still sucks at air-air combat

It was never going to be good at air-to-air. It's a strike fighter by name,
which means it's intended to be basically an A-10 that can also do some air-
to-air in a pinch.

There's a reason they operate the F-22 in the air superiority role.

~~~
bluthru
>basically an A-10 that can also do some air-to-air in a pinch

With four seconds of bullets? [https://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-
two-gatling-gun...](https://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-
guns-f-35-vs-a-10/)

~~~
na85
It's designed to engage from well beyond the ranges at which guns are
effective. I'm not necessarily saying I agree with the choice of gun armament,
but... yeah.

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to3m
1\. Since He threated the F-35 program with closure, I guess we will see more
of these. The US$399,792zn that's been spent so far must have left at least
some spare for PR

2\. There was an unofficial war hardware porn series on HN a while ago, front
page full of Boy's Own stuff, one of them being an article by a pilot who
sounded pretty positive about the F-35's capabilities. So this is either a
long-running PR drive or the plane actually doesn't suck

3\. For US$401,722zn (since it's now a minute or two after I wrote point 1)
I'd like to think that we can expect the plane to be, at the very least, OK

~~~
alkonaut
The question isn't really whether it's ok it's whether M F-35's are better
than N alternative fighters at some task, for M<N.

A problem is that it needs to replace a lot of different planes (a-10, f-18,
f-16, harrier...) and those have different roles. It's likely to suck royally
at replacing the A-10 for example, or to act as an interceptor for defending
the airspace Norway and Denmark which have no alternative fighters to back it
up - but if a decision is made to e.f extend A-10 life, or buy a light attack
plane for that role, then F-35 numbers go down, and unit price up.

Basically the F-35 has to be bought to do things it doesn't do very well or
very cost effectively because otherwise not enough will be sold for it to be
economical

~~~
probablybanned
Good points, but also consider the question of survivability in a world with
increasingly sophisticated anti-aircraft threats. One F-35 might be inferior
to four F-16s militarily speaking, and more expensive to boot, but are you
willing to lose pilots in the latter scenario to accomplish the mission?

Additionally, are you factoring in the cost in training, maintenance and fuel
for the larger force?

------
eliben
> "It's stellar performance"

Am I the only one deeply troubled by Popular Mechanics articles making this
ugly it's/its confusion in 2017. Is this really going to become a thing now?

~~~
ameister14
I'm not sure what it being 2017 has to do with it

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erentz
But how would this compare if you had upgraded, let's say the F16 and F18, to
have the same avionics and weapons systems capabilities as the F35? Or is that
impossible without an entirely new triple-gold-plated air frame design?

~~~
adamson
Next-gen fighters are moving in the direction of quadruple-gold-plating

~~~
Gravityloss
You probably love Norm Augustine's writings...

~~~
rhcom2
I hadn't heard of these before, the one you're referencing probably is:

"In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical
aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½
days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the
Marines for the extra day."

but Law Number XI might apply to this audience the best:

"If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice
as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast,
everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly
off."

~~~
Gravityloss
Yes, and he wrote a really good article recently for Aviation Week's 100 year
theme number that expands on that [1]. Basically, how could aircraft cost
increase, when it's at the level of the aircraft's weight in gold? You can't
add hardware that would increase cost... unless you invent something that uses
no space and has no mass. It's software.

x: [http://aviationweek.com/defense/next-100-years-norm-
augustin...](http://aviationweek.com/defense/next-100-years-norm-augustine)
(paywall)

~~~
dingaling
The weight-in-gold metric was first passed by the B-58 in 1956. So 60 years on
and we're now at weight-in-platinum I think.

------
fundameen
Seems like the whole concept is outdated. Humans are a bottleneck that needs
to be mitigated. Each F-35 should probably have a thousand drone missiles
flying behind it, ready to swarm-attack any threat. Not just a few F-22s...

Send 20 missle drones at any fighter or 100 into any deep bunker. It shouldn't
be hard or expensive to fly missiles around the world anymore. An aluminum
tube, some fuel, and a computer.

The F-35 could be the swarm leader and have the big computer capable of
serving its 1000 drones without any outside support.

China or Russia could build this today and the technology is only advancing.

~~~
Jtsummers
If you wanted to go this route, there are probably better control aircraft
than the F-35, or a fighter for that matter. The primary benefit of the
fighters is their ability to get in and out of situations quickly, and the
F-35 stealthily, keeping close proximity (mitigating some electronic
countermeasure threats) for command and control.

An AWACS, C-130 refueler, or a long-range bomber is probably a more credible
C&C platform for the mission, setting aside the preference for proximity.
Longer times airborne, more space for controls and _controllers_ , meaning
more missions can be managed simultaneously, more power (mitigating the
electronic countermeasure threat by power in transmitters rather than
proximity), and the potential capability of carrying many of these flying
missiles within range of their target mission, reducing the range needs of the
missiles themselves.

The refueler has the added bonus of literally being able to refuel them while
loitering over a target area.

The downside, of course, are all the present downsides of drone weaponry
(largely moral/ethical concerns). Cheaper to build, deploy, and use means a
potential (I'd say probable) increase in their utilization (moral hazards
here), without regard to potential casualties (rationalized locally as, "not
our citizens/troops dying").

Ultimately, though, this is probably the endgame for weapon systems. It is
financially the better option, it does reduce the risk to that side's citizens
and soldiers (at least in the short term, long term political and economic
fallout may be different), and practically anyone can already make a miniature
airborne missile fleet now, though with poor range and precision at present.

~~~
fundameen
If distance was acceptable you could use satellites. I think you need to
escort your drone swarm into hostile territory using something like an F-35 so
the whole package can penetrate as a unit.

You might even want the drones to fly behind using a wire-guided system so
they can't be jammed.

Imagine the F-35 trailing a cable that spreads out to 1000 wires. It's
basically just a way of giving one F-35 a thousand smart missiles that it
could never fly itself.

The basic idea is used by MIRV ICBMS. You get the whole thing into enemy
territory quickly and then launch more attacks than the defense can hope to
counter.

1\. Fly to the edge of enemy territory.

2\. Launch your F-35 towards the enemy.

3\. Launch 1000 drone missiles following the F-35 (maybe from a C-130)

4\. Split off drone missiles in variable sized chunks according each target
detected.

Just imagine an F-35 with a dozen F-22s vs an F-35 with 1,000 flying missiles
behind it.

------
JohnJamesRambo
"Against the ramped-up threats, the F-35A only lost one aircraft for every 15
aggressors killed"

Wait does that mean like one aircraft for 15 aggressor PEOPLE and sites on the
ground? They mention SAMs and things that sound like ground forces. That
sounds like an awful ratio. You lose 120 million dollars for every 15
aggressors killed? A hostile state can cheaply churn out aggressors 15 at a
time all day long.

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Cookingboy
If you read the full article this is comprehensive exercise where the F35 is
shielded from airborne threats by the much more vaunted F22s, and the fourth
gen aircrafts were used for most of the actual striker roles.

I have no doubt the F35 is a capable platform, but this does not represent its
standalone performance. If anything, the enemy forces will be primarily
targeting the F22 and other strike crafts.

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SFJulie
Ho! A wargame situation.

What about a real situation?

Insurrection in a city, and a budget of 10M$ for the defenders.

Cheap old schools baloons (like WWII), drones maybe, 1000 persons paid to
watch and use high EM beams to direct at planes, maybe 2-3 hackers asked to
read the papers on how iranians where able to spoof GPS signals to steal drone
....

I don't know, but war is assymetric. It has never been about who has the best
weapons, but who can take with an inferior budget the expensive weapon of the
opponents, using any trick possible.

The allies attacked the nazis on their weapon's greatest vulnerability:
resources and energy.

That's the reason why the dam in Germany were bombed, and africa was invaded
to cut access to oil/lubrificants.

Having complex weapons to fight in situation you don't know is stupid.

IED for instance are costing 100$, AK47 way less then USA guns. Still, Iraki &
Afghanistan have proven they are efficient... against a better doted army.

Vietnam with cheap radars and missile batteries was a pain for USAF. And
aerial domination did not helped win the war.

And well, given how it is a mess in middle east and how USA may not have the
most solid allies there, what would happen if someone attacked the oil tankers
or ridge?

F35 would still fly, but what about the economical situation? How long can USA
debts inflates and still stays sustainable for USA's economy?

Remember Reagan triggered an arm race that resulted in USSR fall, not a
military win. But, USSR army after that was way less of a threat.

So, yes, cool F35 can export and if you buy it you probably have a super
weapon. Will it be a good cost/benefits investment though?

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mgarfias
Since when have our political leadership allowed for BVR kills? The F-4 didn't
have a gun as it was supposed to be the age of the missile, and the
maneuverability was built into the missiles. Then the pilots were required to
close up and identify the targets before shooting. I can think of one missile
kill BVR and they already knew the opfor was hostile. As long as there is
ambiguity in the conflict there will be no BVR kills.

In my opinion we should scrap the whole manned fighter thing, as sad as that
thought is, and create an army of expendable maneuverable drones that are
affordable enough to throw them into combat.

