The same that the Pentagon had defined as outdated by technology. "Cannons? Stuff overcome, missiles better "
The Phantoms launched 24 missiles (Sparrow and Sidewinder) shooting down only four MiGs. The North Vietnamese fighters, making sharp turns avoided the missiles, queuing up to the American fighters.
As hunters, the heavy and large Phantoms turned into prey. The much smaller and nimble MiG began to target American fighters with the defined weapons surpassed by the Pentagon: the cannons.
The MiG proved to be very agile and monstrously superior in dogfight compared to American fighters. Yet the Pentagon, until then, had always maintained that an F-4 would never enter a dogfight, because it was equipped with missiles capable of eliminating the enemy from a long distance. That theory cost the lives of dozens of American pilots.
At 50 years later - writes David Ax on War Is Boring - the Air Force is repeating the same error on the F-35.
Ax was the first to branch the perplexities of the F-35 pilot after the test carried out against an F-16 (we were the first in Italy to report the episode with the due proportions and cautions). The report is now in the public domain even if a certain press took the opportunity to discredit the whole JSF project based on the football concept of victory and defeat.
These are not the parameters that are used to evaluate a fighter, but it is also true that, as we have supported from the beginning, there is a fundamental problem for the F-35: having considered it a hunt pure.
In reality it was a tactical bomber, we knew it, but we also expressed doubts about its limited capacity in the JSF dogfight. To cut a long story short: the F-35 without a pure spare hunt could easily be knocked down by a fourth-generation aircraft (perhaps even by 3,5). This concept, deliberately stunted, can make the purists conceptual point of view, but on balance, the F-35 (platform in progress, we remember) is this.
The Lockheed fighter was not designed to impose air dominance (which will be the task of F-22 and EFA), but to eliminate the air-raid (IADS) threat.
The F-35 is part of a system composed of numerous aircraft: among them also the fighters who will have to defend it. In reality these concepts are not new, but considering the high number of militia analysts present in Italy, like football coaches, it would be appropriate to remember some points. The F-35 could never have been a pure fighter. Firstly because it does not have the quota nor the speed of the F-22, but it can eliminate enemies on the ground by exploiting its low observability and avionics (also in progress, but we have written enough about the software implementation) .
From the Pentagon, in a recent study, they confirmed that to impose air supremacy in a certain context with X opponents, it would take eight F-35s. To eliminate the same enemies, two F-22 would suffice. These are data that should make us reflect on the real capabilities of the F-35 cell and on its radar section, lower than the F-22. Having a low radar signature does not mean being superior to a heavier and more "visible" fighter.
The F-35 should confer undeniable advantages in a given operating context thanks to its low observability, on-board sensor capabilities and information integration with other platforms. Factors that give the F-35 a huge advantage over the aircraft it will replace.
We try to be even clearer, giving our readers the right tools to understand the F-35 affair. Fifth-generation aircraft, like the F-22 and the F-35 are not pure fighters, they are not real fighter. They are airplanes optimized for different threat systems and able to perform various missions. Just the specific aircraft no longer exists. On the other hand, there is the multirole aerial platform that can perform a myriad of missions very well, probably not excelling in any role.
The F-35 was not designed for dogfighting nor for dueling in one against one. It was designed to eliminate the enemy from a distance. Should it fail, the F-35 without pure stock hunting may not return to the base. And it is a fact.
Let's return to the analysis on War Is Boring. The trust of the Pentagon and Lockheed in the ability to bring down the enemy beyond the visual radius, excluding the possibility (by now congenital because design) to undertake a close combat, could be lethal.
Is it possible that the lessons (and the dead) of Vietnam have been forgotten in the United States?
The Air Force, it is good to remember, half a century ago was so enthusiastic about the missiles that it changed its doctrine, eliminating the cannons from the F-4. 50 years ago: for the Pentagon every war would be fought at a distance. The close encounters would have been relegated to books. The Americans, therefore, began producing aircraft designed to be powerful (and not agile). Thought, that is, for the penetration at high speed (we think maybe to a nuclear attack) in enemy territory or real missile platforms (like the F-14) of projection. This doctrine could also be corrected if the US had confronted the Soviets for a war that would be related to these parameters.
However, North Vietnam was not the Soviet Union. The new tactics of the Pentagon proved insufficient against the MiGs of Hanoi It would be correct to reel off even some data.
Between the 1965 and the 1968, American fighters launched 321 radar-guided missiles over Vietnam. Only 8% hit the target. This is what emerges from an 2005 study carried out by the Air Force.
A report of the 1968, following the numerous losses in battle, pointed the finger at the design of the missiles, designed to take down the bombers and not the small and nimble fighters.
The result led to the update of the entire Sparrow and Sidewinder inventory, while all the Phantoms received a cannon. The close combat did not prove to be over, indeed it was in line with a war that reverses theories. Vietnam also brought out the need for pure hunting with a better thrust-weight ratio, low wing loading, superior acceleration and maneuverability.
All coupled with advanced avionics and mixed weaponry consisting of missiles and cannons. The F-15 was born, a hunt that, at the distance of 43 years since its debut, occurred in the 1972, is the aircraft of superiority of the air of the United States (the 167 F-22 Raptor are too few).
In hindsight, the F-15 and F-16 designers were right. They optimized the fighter for real wars and against an uncertain enemy unlike the F-35 designed for future contexts that do not exist yet. Theories that the Russians married in full. Suffice it to say that the Su-35 of today, evolution of the fabulous Su-27, are much more powerful, fast and agile than an F-15 and probably have better weapons.
And the F-35? Tomorrow, the designers of the JSF may be right. Maybe its missiles will hit every target from a distance and maybe the Russians won't sell the Su-35s to all US enemies. Perhaps there will never again be a global war against a technologically equal enemy.
But what would happen if the optimistic projections of the American government were wrong?
And if, at least once in their operational life, the F-35 faced Sukhoi or MiG?
The crews of the F-4 - concludes Ax - rested maximum confidence in the government's strategy and in the superiority of long-range weapons. Many of them never returned home.
Franco Iacch
(photo: web)
