Assuming you’re cool with breaking the Geneva Conventions, sure. I find it a problem that the J-31 made clear we traded dogfighting potential for illegal Over-The-Horizon engagement and a Really Big Fan that isn’t even in the vast majority of F35s that are/will be produced. Insanity.
Meanwhile, middle-eastern countries that won’t play ball with US bullshit are getting on great with China.
IIRC, it was regarging Air to Air engagement, and you got me on Geneva Conventions: It would be International Law, but I’m not having any luck finding anything the US has agreed to at the moment.
I will say, I made zero mention of Stealth. Nothing about Stealth prevents positive target identification once you have visual confirmation. The main reasons not to lob missiles at Stealth aircraft you can’t physically see revolve around not wasting those missiles on birds, kites, or small civilian aircraft.
There’s still the fact that Beyond The Horizon engagement is going to require either pilots firing blind or magically getting some sort of confirmation from a third party(gets dicey with weather or with all the ECM static that would need to be dealt with in a real war involving air to air combat much at all). Meanwhile, legitimate targets move fast enough to enter visual range before that can happen as often as not.
If dog-fighting were over, the F35 wouldn’t even have a gun, or it would be angled downward for ground support, a role which the standard F35 doesn’t/can’t fly slow enough for anyways. This is something that literally led to the design of the F14 in the first place, as they had thought dog-fighting was dead when they fielded the F4 Phantom.
Nothing in international law says you’re not allowed to shoot at something you can’t see. Almost all radar based air defense missile systems can not see their targets.
There’s multiple ways of identifying targets without looking at them. Radar cross sections are not all the same, you don’t just get a target size back. Modern radar systems can make pretty accurate assessments of what they’re looking at - down to different models of planes. Take into account altitude and speed of your contact and you can be very sure what’s out there.
It’s also highly unlikely that an F35 would try to identify a target on its own. They’re heavily networked with ground based radars, other airplanes and there’s almost always going to be an AWACS looking much further and with a more powerful radar. Modern BVR weapon systems also have a two-way data link, so you could abort an attack right down to the very last second.
But, most importantly, civilian airliners have transponders that broadcast an identifying signal. Even a shitty little Cessna has one.
As for the gun: it’s there because people can’t let go of them. Same reason why most air superiority fighters have them. As a last ditch weapon. We have zero confirmation of an air-to-air gun kill from Ukraine, a modern conflict between near peers (and most of those planes are old, compared to the F35). If the F35 is used the way it’s meant to be used it will not be in visual range of any of its targets.
As for the F4 Phantom – AA missiles just weren’t ready yet.
Sure…but the trouble is getting to the dogfight with the 35.
Assuming you’re cool with breaking the Geneva Conventions, sure. I find it a problem that the J-31 made clear we traded dogfighting potential for illegal Over-The-Horizon engagement and a Really Big Fan that isn’t even in the vast majority of F35s that are/will be produced. Insanity.
Meanwhile, middle-eastern countries that won’t play ball with US bullshit are getting on great with China.
Where in the Geneva convention is stealth and beyond visual range (which I think you mean) illegal?
Dogfights are over and they’re not coming back.
IIRC, it was regarging Air to Air engagement, and you got me on Geneva Conventions: It would be International Law, but I’m not having any luck finding anything the US has agreed to at the moment.
I will say, I made zero mention of Stealth. Nothing about Stealth prevents positive target identification once you have visual confirmation. The main reasons not to lob missiles at Stealth aircraft you can’t physically see revolve around not wasting those missiles on birds, kites, or small civilian aircraft.
There’s still the fact that Beyond The Horizon engagement is going to require either pilots firing blind or magically getting some sort of confirmation from a third party(gets dicey with weather or with all the ECM static that would need to be dealt with in a real war involving air to air combat much at all). Meanwhile, legitimate targets move fast enough to enter visual range before that can happen as often as not.
If dog-fighting were over, the F35 wouldn’t even have a gun, or it would be angled downward for ground support, a role which the standard F35 doesn’t/can’t fly slow enough for anyways. This is something that literally led to the design of the F14 in the first place, as they had thought dog-fighting was dead when they fielded the F4 Phantom.
Nothing in international law says you’re not allowed to shoot at something you can’t see. Almost all radar based air defense missile systems can not see their targets.
There’s multiple ways of identifying targets without looking at them. Radar cross sections are not all the same, you don’t just get a target size back. Modern radar systems can make pretty accurate assessments of what they’re looking at - down to different models of planes. Take into account altitude and speed of your contact and you can be very sure what’s out there.
It’s also highly unlikely that an F35 would try to identify a target on its own. They’re heavily networked with ground based radars, other airplanes and there’s almost always going to be an AWACS looking much further and with a more powerful radar. Modern BVR weapon systems also have a two-way data link, so you could abort an attack right down to the very last second.
But, most importantly, civilian airliners have transponders that broadcast an identifying signal. Even a shitty little Cessna has one.
As for the gun: it’s there because people can’t let go of them. Same reason why most air superiority fighters have them. As a last ditch weapon. We have zero confirmation of an air-to-air gun kill from Ukraine, a modern conflict between near peers (and most of those planes are old, compared to the F35). If the F35 is used the way it’s meant to be used it will not be in visual range of any of its targets.
As for the F4 Phantom – AA missiles just weren’t ready yet.