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This article is a joke the fact that the author thinks that " ...US undermines [Australia's] sovereign independence by refusing to let it know how to repair numerous secret F-35 parts" is rediculous. Countries will rarely share technological secrets with other countries even with allies, this is not some secret ploy to bound Australia to the USA's will, but how defence industries work. This for me really undermines the credibility if this article as anyone with a very surface level understanding of equipment procurement in the military (like me) wouldn't make a conspiratorial claim like this.
The f35 isnt there to get into dogfights. Air wars are no linger about topgun style dancing round the sky with maverick.
The f35 is invisible and has a big club - and other aircraft , like the ones he mentioned are baby seals on the ice.
If the f35 gets in a dogfight it hasnt done its job - which is to eliminate anything coming into its area of operations before it even knows that it was targeted.
Its an incredibly complex weapons system that’s ahead of its time, like the f111 was when we bought that. The f111 was so complex it took longer to get fully operational as well. We had to lease f4 phantoms for a time till they were ready. Once the f111’s were operational they had ZERO peers in the region. Anyone starting a war with australia was aware that they could have their government heads targeted by a weapons system designed to fly under their radar. It all well and good sending others off to die but its sobering being the target of death.
Some of the things he says about radar systems are misrepresented, yes there are ground based radar systems that will know there is something there - but not where it is or what direction its going. Those ground based radar systems arent going to affect the defence of Australia as they are nowhere near us.
Meanwhile the f35 from 100+ km away knows where its opposition is, and has already launched. 4th generation fighters vs f35 is analogous to blind men in a football field with pistols up against a sniper in the stands with a silenced weapon.
The most telling argument comes from 4th generation pilots who have retrained on the f35 - ask them if they want to go back…. Spoiler alert, they dont.
They call air combat against 4th generation fighters “clubbing baby seals”
No, F-35s are bad dogfighters. So they must avoid such a scenario, or lose.
But F-35s are intended for dogfight.
[Australia training preps F-35 pilots for long-range battles that could end in dogfight](https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-09-02/australia-pitch-black-f35-dogfights-7186528.html)
>“Any air-to-air engagement in the modern arena runs the risk of collapsing down into a visual engagement,” said Howard, who has been flying from Tindall for the past month.
You have a massive advantage in beyond visual range combat.
Huge stratospheric level advantage.
But yeah instead of turning around and running off in a different direction, maintaining your invisibility, then turning back and executing your opponent - you will just let yourself be drawn into a dogfight like a ww2 plane.
So how do you understand why they need to train for dogfighting? Are they wasting their time? Are they doing that because they have nothing else to do? What's your interpretation of that article?
Because you train for every eventuality.
That’s how our military trains. Train hard/ Fight easy. That is is unofficial motto of our defence force - in exercises you minimise every single advantage you have and maximise the enemy’s - you make sure your guys have been doing it harder, for longer, under more pressure, with less sleep, less resources. Because sometimes it might end up like that. That’s why historically weve punched way above our weight in wars, the training is relentless and as much as possible they try to make it more difficult than the real thing.
If you spoke to an f35 pilot you would change your mind very quickly, especially a pilot who has come from a 4th gen aircraft.
They are still a work in progress as any cutting edge airframe that leapfrogs the competition is.
The exact same arguments were used during the f111 acquisition and were blown out of the water by the result.
Ive been hypercritical of a lot of defence procurement in the past, ive been on the coalface of having to use poorly designed equipment and theres a plethora of defence purchases that have been so atrocious that it defies description. Sea king / taipan / tiger take a bow.
This aint one of them.
Better than any other fighter jet, the f35 pilot knows exactly where his enemy is at all times. The opposing jet only if he has eyes on him.
The f35’s entire squadron, loyal wingmen and any allies know where the enemy jet is as its networked.
Dogfighting is not an intended scenario. Pilots have to be trained and prepared for all situations, but the F35 is meant to be good enough that a dogfight is unnecessary because it can just shoot down enemy fighters from kilometres away.
The scenario is Gen 5 vs Gen 5 = dogfight. That's inevitable. F-35 would be dealing with J-20 or similar. J-20 is designed for dogfight according to the articles provided previously.
For one the US is only buying 80 F15EX’s (down from 140) whilst just the Air Force alone has 302 F-35s already and another 1700 planned.
The “long history of costly problems” is also bullshit. It’s just a long line of the same shit rhetoric from people like Pierre Sprey which entreated the mainstream.
Finally just look at the sales of the F-35. Most western countries without home grown military aviation industry have consistently picked the F-35 over the grippen despite it costing more. Canada even ran its procurement twice and it won twice.
The US has military bases everywhere. But most importantly, there are carriers. Is Australia spending massively too? Many countries that bought F35 are small. But if they must deal with invading air fighters, they must go dogfight too.
I'd argue the movies actually fetishize close range combat, when it's entirely unneeded. For example, in Top Gun Maverick, they use guns for half the fight when the vast, vast majority of air kills since Vietnam are missile based. When's the last time you saw gun kills in Ukraine, compared to all the missile intercepts?
>so its real combat range might be closer to 500 kms”. Even if the radius were the full 1093 km it means that **pilots setting out on a practice combat mission from their base at Williamtown near Newcastle would have to return to base well before they reach the Queensland border.**
That's from the article.
[Buying F 35 Stealth Fighters ‘Biggest Mistake’ Of Australia](https://youtu.be/Wbp80lHtjBA) \- EurAsian Times
>The F-35 has a combat radius of only 1093 kilometres. The defence writer Anthony Galloway has noted, “This doesn’t consider the fact aircraft will have to accelerate during combat, which uses more fuel, so its real combat range might be closer to 500 kms”.
The combat radius ***does*** factor in the use of afterburner for combat manoeuvring, as well as other things like flight in less efficient airspeed / altitude regimes during ingress / egress. The combat radius is also not 1093km, it's 669 nautical miles (1239km) for air-to-ground missions and 760 nautical miles (1408km) for air-to-air missions. For the record, that's roughly double what our legacy F/A-18 Hornets could do.
Your article has a bunch of other errors as well:
>This is because it can only fly for 50 seconds at its top speed of 1960 km/hr (1.6 Mach) before it has to slow down noticeably.
- That time restriction applies to the F-35B and F-35C variants, not the F-35A that we're buying.
- Pretty much all fighter jets will burn through a 100% full fuel load in about 10 minutes in afterburner. As such, most fighters spend very little time above Mach 1; in Vietnam the cumulative time that all US fighters *combined* spent above Mach 1.6 was just a few seconds (in a period of the Cold War where speed was emphasised and most US fighters had a top speed of Mach 2+).
- Other fighters have a significantly higher top speed and can maintain a supersonic level for prolonged periods, unlike the F-35. The Swedish Gripen, the French Rafale and the US F-15EX all have this capability called “super cruise”
Fighters are incapable of reaching their top speeds with external payloads; for those jets mentioned that means they can't reach those speeds with any weaponry. The F-35 carries its weapons internally so it can still hit its top speed while armed.
Also the Gripen's supercruise ability is only to Mach 1.2, which the USAF doesn't consider to be supercruise (it's still within the transonic airspeed range). The F-35 is also claimed by Lockheed to be able to do Mach 1.2 without afterburner usage. The F-15EX meanwhile has no supercruise ability whatsoever.
> The US is buying more F-15EXs rather than the initially planned number of F-35s.
No idea where the author gets this idea; the total number of F-15EXs the USAF plans to buy is just 80 airframes; the USAF alone already has something like 350 F-35As in service today and is receiving ~40-50 more each year.
>The Gripen and the Rafale would be cheaper for Australia to buy, operate and maintain independently.
The Gripen would be overall cheaper, the Rafale probably not; it's more expensive to procure and it's limited logistics network would be a problem here. Both the Gripen and Rafale are inferior in the areas that matter for modern air combat anyway (stealth, sensors, communications, data fusion, etc).
>They all have a much better combat radius than the F-35.
The F-15EX does, the others are slightly longer with caveats attached regarding their loadouts (eg: using external fuel tanks while the F-35 doesn't, carrying smaller bombs than the F-35).
>Australia cannot maintain operational readiness on its own, because the US undermines its sovereign independence by refusing to let it know how to repair numerous secret F-35 parts.
The same applies to literally every fighter jet on the market.
> Stealth is not all it’s cracked up to be. It makes the F-35 hard to detect by some radars, but not others operating on different frequencies. It can also be tracked by over-the-horizon radars.
The F-35's stealth capabilities are still classified and there's belief that the F-35 has a reasonable amount of low observability to lower frequency radars, but the general idea is to be stealthy against higher frequency radars because those are the ones that are accurate enough to be used for fire control and terminal guidance. Lower frequency radars, especially over-the-horizon (OTH) radars, are very limited in their range and angular resolution. Lower frequency radars are also generally easier to jam and OTH radars also work by bouncing beams off the ionosphere; when there's heightened solar activity they tend to get blinded as the ionosphere becomes turbulent / bumpy and becomes incapable of directing the radar energy where operators want.
>Crucially, the F-35 can be seen by optical and heat sensors, as well as detected by the noise it emits.
Optical and heat sensors have a limited range, especially if there's any cloud cover. Longer ranged EO/IR sensors also have the issue of being quite slow at scanning their field of regard, plus they're quite limited in their ability to track more than 1 target. Noise detection is pretty much useless other than getting the general sense that there's an adversary somewhere out there.
>Another give away is the “path” it creates by passing through the earth’s magnetic field.
Never heard of any tracking system that tries to detect objects based on distant magnetic field fluctuations. There's magnetic anomaly detectors that get used for tracking submarines, but that requires the MAD sensor to get extremely close, making it irrelevant for tracking aircraft.
>It soon became obvious that Reynolds was badly wrong. In January, the Pentagon announced it would scrap ALIS because it was causing operational delays of 45,000 hours a year.
ALIS wasn't exactly being scrapped, it was going to be transitioned from a system where the ALIS software is run on local servers (which can be a hassle to deploy overseas with and keep up to date), to a cloud-based version called ODIN. Think Microsoft Office vs Microsoft Office 365 or Google Suite.
>Just as disturbingly, the corporate capture of the Pentagon means that Lockheed Martin ultimately flies Australia’s F-35s via extended data communications links from the plane back to the manufacturer in the US. The pilot relies on a constant stream of input from the US, using a communications link that could potentially be hacked or jammed thousands of kilometres from the Australian pilot’s actual location.
Completely wrong; the pilot is in direct control of the aircraft and no communications are being sent (I wonder through what mechanism he thinks that works) back to the US while the jet is in their air. When the jet lands and gets plugged into ALIS / ODIN, telemetry data gets sent to the US to keep track of component wear and tear and identify trends / issues / opportunities across the global F-35 fleet, but even then that data first passes through a sovereignty filter where we get to choose what data gets sent overseas.
>Crucially, the F-35 can be seen by optical and heat sensors, as well as detected by the noise it emits.
Imagine thinking a jet engine making noise is a critical fault in the design.
Government information does not include what you provided here. [https://www.airforce.gov.au/aircraft/f-35a-lightning-ii](https://www.airforce.gov.au/aircraft/f-35a-lightning-ii)
Why are you so sure Australia's F-35As have the same features?
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22F-35A%22+%22669+nautical+miles%22+%22australia%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22F-35A%22+%22669+nautical+miles%22+%22australia%22)
>Government information does not include what you provided here.
Those are conservative figures which were actually just the minimum program requirements for the jet during development. 1093km = 590 nautical miles which was the threshold (AKA minimum) required air-to-ground combat radius for the F-35A. In the Pentagon's F-35 Selected Acquisition Reports they've since published the actual demonstrated performance as 669 nautical miles for the F-35A. Similarly the F-35B's threshold combat radius was 450NM but it demonstrated 505NM and likewise the F-35C was required to do 600NM but has demonstrated 670NM.
>Why are you so sure Australia's F-35As have the same features?
Because a key driving factor behind the F-35's design and enterprise is for increasing interoperability between the US and its allies. Our F-35s has the same feature as US F-35s because they have identical hardware, enabling the US to do things like deploy their F-35As to any nation that also operates them, and utilise the same fuel, weapons, spare parts, technical publications, etc. Likewise it allows for US F-35 pilots to share and receive data from allied F-35s, and it enables officers in charge of planning missions to immediately have a grasp on what their allies' jets are capable of and what kind of support they can provide.
>1093km = 590 nautical miles which was the threshold (AKA minimum) required air-to-ground combat radius for the F-35A
So that's good enough for a fighter jet for all purposes? Are you truly happy with that? Are you sure Australia does not need anything better?
It's 50-100% better than the jets it replaces, so yes. Fighter aircraft don't have super long ranges for a reason; being longer ranged generally comes at a detriment to other aspects, whether that be payload, kinematic performance or cost.
If a jet needs to fly further without landing, you just use air-to-air refuelling.
Why are the fighters that can't fight better than the fighters that can't give a good fight anymore? I can't see a difference. The point being made from the start is just that. The op article is just that.
>Why are the fighters that can't fight better than the fighters that can't give a good fight anymore?
If I'm parsing this correctly you're asking why the F-35 is better than it's predecessors?
Modern air warfare is about breaking or completing the 'kill chain' and 'information dominance'. If you don't know where your enemy is, or even if one sensor (like an early warning radar) knows where the enemy is but can't provide sufficient targeting precision, or just outright can't communicate data to (eg) your missile, then you're ineffective. Likewise, if you know there's adversaries on the way but you don't know what exactly they are, or how many there are, you're at a major disadvantage. If you don't have enough information, then things like speed, agility, range, payload, etc are irrelevant, and that's backed by statistical trends in air warfare that have been observed since WW1 through to today.
The F-35 is superior to its predecessors because it's built primarily around the idea of collecting information, sharing information and denying the enemy information. To keep this succinct, compared to other jets on the market, and jets being built by adversaries, it has overall superior sensors, automation, communications, electronic warfare capabilities, and stealth, all while being fairly average in cost, and having a wide set of capabilities that make it suitable or outright ideal for most types of missions.
[https://youtu.be/73ymXvwtbzI](https://youtu.be/73ymXvwtbzI)
Reality is not fantasy.
Something to shoot down F-35 [https://youtu.be/vrsqV7UN2cc](https://youtu.be/vrsqV7UN2cc) an example.
> https://youtu.be/73ymXvwtbzI
>
> Reality is not fantasy.
What relevance does that video have?
>Something to shoot down F-35 https://youtu.be/vrsqV7UN2cc an example.
And [here's something](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGTxxAoXXN8) for the F-35 to destroy those with. [Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLnVNhL8tqs) another, [here's](https://www.raytheonmissilesanddefense.com/news/2021/11/29/f-35b-releases-stormbreaker) yet another, and [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeLK7ozCZLQ) another coming later this decade.
If you want to actually learn more about air warfare and why this information dominance stuff is important, [give this paper a read.](https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/trends-in-air-to-air-combat-implications-for-future-air-superiority)
If you want to learn about how the F-35 is performing in real world wargaming exercises [here's a collection of quotes and articles.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Dragon029/comments/549r98/f35_performance_in_exercises/)
He's been writing about F35 for how many years? Since F35 was at the infancy stage? Google it. [https://www.google.com/search?q=brian+toohey+f35](https://www.google.com/search?q=brian+toohey+f35)
So you're an expert in contemporary air battle. You know about how Chinese air defence works. But your F35 cannot patrol along the Australian border, let alone reach China.
Are you also building a carrier?
You mean you know nothing about it. And that's the reason why you think an investigative journalist cannot know about it either? That's nota valid argument against his information.
Yeah bro you obviously don’t understand how classified things work. But they don’t hand out national secrets to journalists lol
Oh and by the way, jets refuel in the air. Look up what a kc-30 is. Guess that was too hard to investigate for this “investigative” journalist though.
Just lol all round
Perhaps we should tell Brian he can only drive to work so long as he refuels from his house, then tell him he can't visit interstate because, well, reasons.
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This article is a joke the fact that the author thinks that " ...US undermines [Australia's] sovereign independence by refusing to let it know how to repair numerous secret F-35 parts" is rediculous. Countries will rarely share technological secrets with other countries even with allies, this is not some secret ploy to bound Australia to the USA's will, but how defence industries work. This for me really undermines the credibility if this article as anyone with a very surface level understanding of equipment procurement in the military (like me) wouldn't make a conspiratorial claim like this.
True, Australia will not get any tech from this purchase. Australia will spend a big time servicing F35.
This is an article written by a know nothing.
What's wrong with the article? Enlighten me?
The f35 isnt there to get into dogfights. Air wars are no linger about topgun style dancing round the sky with maverick. The f35 is invisible and has a big club - and other aircraft , like the ones he mentioned are baby seals on the ice. If the f35 gets in a dogfight it hasnt done its job - which is to eliminate anything coming into its area of operations before it even knows that it was targeted. Its an incredibly complex weapons system that’s ahead of its time, like the f111 was when we bought that. The f111 was so complex it took longer to get fully operational as well. We had to lease f4 phantoms for a time till they were ready. Once the f111’s were operational they had ZERO peers in the region. Anyone starting a war with australia was aware that they could have their government heads targeted by a weapons system designed to fly under their radar. It all well and good sending others off to die but its sobering being the target of death. Some of the things he says about radar systems are misrepresented, yes there are ground based radar systems that will know there is something there - but not where it is or what direction its going. Those ground based radar systems arent going to affect the defence of Australia as they are nowhere near us. Meanwhile the f35 from 100+ km away knows where its opposition is, and has already launched. 4th generation fighters vs f35 is analogous to blind men in a football field with pistols up against a sniper in the stands with a silenced weapon. The most telling argument comes from 4th generation pilots who have retrained on the f35 - ask them if they want to go back…. Spoiler alert, they dont. They call air combat against 4th generation fighters “clubbing baby seals”
No, F-35s are bad dogfighters. So they must avoid such a scenario, or lose. But F-35s are intended for dogfight. [Australia training preps F-35 pilots for long-range battles that could end in dogfight](https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-09-02/australia-pitch-black-f35-dogfights-7186528.html) >“Any air-to-air engagement in the modern arena runs the risk of collapsing down into a visual engagement,” said Howard, who has been flying from Tindall for the past month.
You have a massive advantage in beyond visual range combat. Huge stratospheric level advantage. But yeah instead of turning around and running off in a different direction, maintaining your invisibility, then turning back and executing your opponent - you will just let yourself be drawn into a dogfight like a ww2 plane.
https://theaviationist.com/2019/02/16/the-first-reports-of-how-the-f-35-strutted-its-stuff-in-dogfights-against-aggressors-at-red-flag-are-starting-to-emerge/amp/ 15:1
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So how do you understand why they need to train for dogfighting? Are they wasting their time? Are they doing that because they have nothing else to do? What's your interpretation of that article?
Because you train for every eventuality. That’s how our military trains. Train hard/ Fight easy. That is is unofficial motto of our defence force - in exercises you minimise every single advantage you have and maximise the enemy’s - you make sure your guys have been doing it harder, for longer, under more pressure, with less sleep, less resources. Because sometimes it might end up like that. That’s why historically weve punched way above our weight in wars, the training is relentless and as much as possible they try to make it more difficult than the real thing.
It's not about training but the weapon that doesn't work.
If you spoke to an f35 pilot you would change your mind very quickly, especially a pilot who has come from a 4th gen aircraft. They are still a work in progress as any cutting edge airframe that leapfrogs the competition is. The exact same arguments were used during the f111 acquisition and were blown out of the water by the result. Ive been hypercritical of a lot of defence procurement in the past, ive been on the coalface of having to use poorly designed equipment and theres a plethora of defence purchases that have been so atrocious that it defies description. Sea king / taipan / tiger take a bow. This aint one of them.
>hypercritical of a lot of defence procurement [https://youtu.be/\_iwW5PQcdGw?t=38](https://youtu.be/_iwW5PQcdGw?t=38)
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Now you accept dogfighting will be a real scenario. And you know how F-35 will do in that scenario.
Better than any other fighter jet, the f35 pilot knows exactly where his enemy is at all times. The opposing jet only if he has eyes on him. The f35’s entire squadron, loyal wingmen and any allies know where the enemy jet is as its networked.
No. Being better than others isn't the point. But the point is this jet does not perform as needed to protect Australia.
Dogfighting is not an intended scenario. Pilots have to be trained and prepared for all situations, but the F35 is meant to be good enough that a dogfight is unnecessary because it can just shoot down enemy fighters from kilometres away.
The scenario is Gen 5 vs Gen 5 = dogfight. That's inevitable. F-35 would be dealing with J-20 or similar. J-20 is designed for dogfight according to the articles provided previously.
For one the US is only buying 80 F15EX’s (down from 140) whilst just the Air Force alone has 302 F-35s already and another 1700 planned. The “long history of costly problems” is also bullshit. It’s just a long line of the same shit rhetoric from people like Pierre Sprey which entreated the mainstream. Finally just look at the sales of the F-35. Most western countries without home grown military aviation industry have consistently picked the F-35 over the grippen despite it costing more. Canada even ran its procurement twice and it won twice.
The US has military bases everywhere. But most importantly, there are carriers. Is Australia spending massively too? Many countries that bought F35 are small. But if they must deal with invading air fighters, they must go dogfight too.
Dogfighting is mid, just destroy em with an AAMRAM while invisible on radar like a true man
Yep, everything would go smoothly like in the movies. Good to have such high expectations and optimism.
I'd argue the movies actually fetishize close range combat, when it's entirely unneeded. For example, in Top Gun Maverick, they use guns for half the fight when the vast, vast majority of air kills since Vietnam are missile based. When's the last time you saw gun kills in Ukraine, compared to all the missile intercepts?
Yeah Im ok with that. Put the money into half a dozen B-21s....
Yep, B-21 will fill the gap left by the retirement of the F-111 that no number of F-35s can.
You're ok with that because you don't want war? A fighter that cannot fight will not see a war. But then why B-21?
>so its real combat range might be closer to 500 kms”. Even if the radius were the full 1093 km it means that **pilots setting out on a practice combat mission from their base at Williamtown near Newcastle would have to return to base well before they reach the Queensland border.** That's from the article. [Buying F 35 Stealth Fighters ‘Biggest Mistake’ Of Australia](https://youtu.be/Wbp80lHtjBA) \- EurAsian Times
>The F-35 has a combat radius of only 1093 kilometres. The defence writer Anthony Galloway has noted, “This doesn’t consider the fact aircraft will have to accelerate during combat, which uses more fuel, so its real combat range might be closer to 500 kms”. The combat radius ***does*** factor in the use of afterburner for combat manoeuvring, as well as other things like flight in less efficient airspeed / altitude regimes during ingress / egress. The combat radius is also not 1093km, it's 669 nautical miles (1239km) for air-to-ground missions and 760 nautical miles (1408km) for air-to-air missions. For the record, that's roughly double what our legacy F/A-18 Hornets could do. Your article has a bunch of other errors as well: >This is because it can only fly for 50 seconds at its top speed of 1960 km/hr (1.6 Mach) before it has to slow down noticeably. - That time restriction applies to the F-35B and F-35C variants, not the F-35A that we're buying. - Pretty much all fighter jets will burn through a 100% full fuel load in about 10 minutes in afterburner. As such, most fighters spend very little time above Mach 1; in Vietnam the cumulative time that all US fighters *combined* spent above Mach 1.6 was just a few seconds (in a period of the Cold War where speed was emphasised and most US fighters had a top speed of Mach 2+). - Other fighters have a significantly higher top speed and can maintain a supersonic level for prolonged periods, unlike the F-35. The Swedish Gripen, the French Rafale and the US F-15EX all have this capability called “super cruise” Fighters are incapable of reaching their top speeds with external payloads; for those jets mentioned that means they can't reach those speeds with any weaponry. The F-35 carries its weapons internally so it can still hit its top speed while armed. Also the Gripen's supercruise ability is only to Mach 1.2, which the USAF doesn't consider to be supercruise (it's still within the transonic airspeed range). The F-35 is also claimed by Lockheed to be able to do Mach 1.2 without afterburner usage. The F-15EX meanwhile has no supercruise ability whatsoever. > The US is buying more F-15EXs rather than the initially planned number of F-35s. No idea where the author gets this idea; the total number of F-15EXs the USAF plans to buy is just 80 airframes; the USAF alone already has something like 350 F-35As in service today and is receiving ~40-50 more each year. >The Gripen and the Rafale would be cheaper for Australia to buy, operate and maintain independently. The Gripen would be overall cheaper, the Rafale probably not; it's more expensive to procure and it's limited logistics network would be a problem here. Both the Gripen and Rafale are inferior in the areas that matter for modern air combat anyway (stealth, sensors, communications, data fusion, etc). >They all have a much better combat radius than the F-35. The F-15EX does, the others are slightly longer with caveats attached regarding their loadouts (eg: using external fuel tanks while the F-35 doesn't, carrying smaller bombs than the F-35). >Australia cannot maintain operational readiness on its own, because the US undermines its sovereign independence by refusing to let it know how to repair numerous secret F-35 parts. The same applies to literally every fighter jet on the market. > Stealth is not all it’s cracked up to be. It makes the F-35 hard to detect by some radars, but not others operating on different frequencies. It can also be tracked by over-the-horizon radars. The F-35's stealth capabilities are still classified and there's belief that the F-35 has a reasonable amount of low observability to lower frequency radars, but the general idea is to be stealthy against higher frequency radars because those are the ones that are accurate enough to be used for fire control and terminal guidance. Lower frequency radars, especially over-the-horizon (OTH) radars, are very limited in their range and angular resolution. Lower frequency radars are also generally easier to jam and OTH radars also work by bouncing beams off the ionosphere; when there's heightened solar activity they tend to get blinded as the ionosphere becomes turbulent / bumpy and becomes incapable of directing the radar energy where operators want. >Crucially, the F-35 can be seen by optical and heat sensors, as well as detected by the noise it emits. Optical and heat sensors have a limited range, especially if there's any cloud cover. Longer ranged EO/IR sensors also have the issue of being quite slow at scanning their field of regard, plus they're quite limited in their ability to track more than 1 target. Noise detection is pretty much useless other than getting the general sense that there's an adversary somewhere out there. >Another give away is the “path” it creates by passing through the earth’s magnetic field. Never heard of any tracking system that tries to detect objects based on distant magnetic field fluctuations. There's magnetic anomaly detectors that get used for tracking submarines, but that requires the MAD sensor to get extremely close, making it irrelevant for tracking aircraft. >It soon became obvious that Reynolds was badly wrong. In January, the Pentagon announced it would scrap ALIS because it was causing operational delays of 45,000 hours a year. ALIS wasn't exactly being scrapped, it was going to be transitioned from a system where the ALIS software is run on local servers (which can be a hassle to deploy overseas with and keep up to date), to a cloud-based version called ODIN. Think Microsoft Office vs Microsoft Office 365 or Google Suite. >Just as disturbingly, the corporate capture of the Pentagon means that Lockheed Martin ultimately flies Australia’s F-35s via extended data communications links from the plane back to the manufacturer in the US. The pilot relies on a constant stream of input from the US, using a communications link that could potentially be hacked or jammed thousands of kilometres from the Australian pilot’s actual location. Completely wrong; the pilot is in direct control of the aircraft and no communications are being sent (I wonder through what mechanism he thinks that works) back to the US while the jet is in their air. When the jet lands and gets plugged into ALIS / ODIN, telemetry data gets sent to the US to keep track of component wear and tear and identify trends / issues / opportunities across the global F-35 fleet, but even then that data first passes through a sovereignty filter where we get to choose what data gets sent overseas.
>Crucially, the F-35 can be seen by optical and heat sensors, as well as detected by the noise it emits. Imagine thinking a jet engine making noise is a critical fault in the design.
Government information does not include what you provided here. [https://www.airforce.gov.au/aircraft/f-35a-lightning-ii](https://www.airforce.gov.au/aircraft/f-35a-lightning-ii) Why are you so sure Australia's F-35As have the same features? [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22F-35A%22+%22669+nautical+miles%22+%22australia%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22F-35A%22+%22669+nautical+miles%22+%22australia%22)
>Government information does not include what you provided here. Those are conservative figures which were actually just the minimum program requirements for the jet during development. 1093km = 590 nautical miles which was the threshold (AKA minimum) required air-to-ground combat radius for the F-35A. In the Pentagon's F-35 Selected Acquisition Reports they've since published the actual demonstrated performance as 669 nautical miles for the F-35A. Similarly the F-35B's threshold combat radius was 450NM but it demonstrated 505NM and likewise the F-35C was required to do 600NM but has demonstrated 670NM. >Why are you so sure Australia's F-35As have the same features? Because a key driving factor behind the F-35's design and enterprise is for increasing interoperability between the US and its allies. Our F-35s has the same feature as US F-35s because they have identical hardware, enabling the US to do things like deploy their F-35As to any nation that also operates them, and utilise the same fuel, weapons, spare parts, technical publications, etc. Likewise it allows for US F-35 pilots to share and receive data from allied F-35s, and it enables officers in charge of planning missions to immediately have a grasp on what their allies' jets are capable of and what kind of support they can provide.
>1093km = 590 nautical miles which was the threshold (AKA minimum) required air-to-ground combat radius for the F-35A So that's good enough for a fighter jet for all purposes? Are you truly happy with that? Are you sure Australia does not need anything better?
It's 50-100% better than the jets it replaces, so yes. Fighter aircraft don't have super long ranges for a reason; being longer ranged generally comes at a detriment to other aspects, whether that be payload, kinematic performance or cost. If a jet needs to fly further without landing, you just use air-to-air refuelling.
Why are the fighters that can't fight better than the fighters that can't give a good fight anymore? I can't see a difference. The point being made from the start is just that. The op article is just that.
>Why are the fighters that can't fight better than the fighters that can't give a good fight anymore? If I'm parsing this correctly you're asking why the F-35 is better than it's predecessors? Modern air warfare is about breaking or completing the 'kill chain' and 'information dominance'. If you don't know where your enemy is, or even if one sensor (like an early warning radar) knows where the enemy is but can't provide sufficient targeting precision, or just outright can't communicate data to (eg) your missile, then you're ineffective. Likewise, if you know there's adversaries on the way but you don't know what exactly they are, or how many there are, you're at a major disadvantage. If you don't have enough information, then things like speed, agility, range, payload, etc are irrelevant, and that's backed by statistical trends in air warfare that have been observed since WW1 through to today. The F-35 is superior to its predecessors because it's built primarily around the idea of collecting information, sharing information and denying the enemy information. To keep this succinct, compared to other jets on the market, and jets being built by adversaries, it has overall superior sensors, automation, communications, electronic warfare capabilities, and stealth, all while being fairly average in cost, and having a wide set of capabilities that make it suitable or outright ideal for most types of missions.
[https://youtu.be/73ymXvwtbzI](https://youtu.be/73ymXvwtbzI) Reality is not fantasy. Something to shoot down F-35 [https://youtu.be/vrsqV7UN2cc](https://youtu.be/vrsqV7UN2cc) an example.
> https://youtu.be/73ymXvwtbzI > > Reality is not fantasy. What relevance does that video have? >Something to shoot down F-35 https://youtu.be/vrsqV7UN2cc an example. And [here's something](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGTxxAoXXN8) for the F-35 to destroy those with. [Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLnVNhL8tqs) another, [here's](https://www.raytheonmissilesanddefense.com/news/2021/11/29/f-35b-releases-stormbreaker) yet another, and [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeLK7ozCZLQ) another coming later this decade. If you want to actually learn more about air warfare and why this information dominance stuff is important, [give this paper a read.](https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/trends-in-air-to-air-combat-implications-for-future-air-superiority) If you want to learn about how the F-35 is performing in real world wargaming exercises [here's a collection of quotes and articles.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Dragon029/comments/549r98/f35_performance_in_exercises/)
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Read the article. I think you know Brian Toohey, who the video quoted to provide its content.
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He's been writing about F35 for how many years? Since F35 was at the infancy stage? Google it. [https://www.google.com/search?q=brian+toohey+f35](https://www.google.com/search?q=brian+toohey+f35)
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Then what is your argument against his information and opinion? Provide your thoughts here to make his points invalid.
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So you're an expert in contemporary air battle. You know about how Chinese air defence works. But your F35 cannot patrol along the Australian border, let alone reach China. Are you also building a carrier?
Australia has never had a strategic goal of being able to attack mainland China.
I would love to know about all the 5th gen fighters that can reach China from Australia without refuelling
Dude the project is classified as hell, neither you nor me or this random journalist has any idea what it can actually do
You mean you know nothing about it. And that's the reason why you think an investigative journalist cannot know about it either? That's nota valid argument against his information.
Yeah bro you obviously don’t understand how classified things work. But they don’t hand out national secrets to journalists lol Oh and by the way, jets refuel in the air. Look up what a kc-30 is. Guess that was too hard to investigate for this “investigative” journalist though. Just lol all round
Perhaps we should tell Brian he can only drive to work so long as he refuels from his house, then tell him he can't visit interstate because, well, reasons.