The Genius of the F-35
The Missileer
In 1963, the Air Force conducted a study called Project Forecast, which attempted to predict the future of how aerial warfare would be fought. The study concluded that most combat would be conducted Beyond the Range of Visual Sight (BRVS) with air to air missiles, and that dogfighting would no longer be a viable form of combat. This study heavily influenced US fighter jet design and air warfare doctrine during the Vietnam War and the initial versions of the F-4 Phantom II was only armed with missiles, not guns.
Unfortunately, the conclusions of the report proved to be false in Vietnam, due to the unreliability of Air to Air Missiles (AAM) at the time and the United States experienced higher losses than anticipated. This created a massive stigma in the US Fighter Jet community, from manufacturers, to pilots, to policy makers in congress, around the necessity of gun armed jet aircraft. The problem with this is that Project Forecast was not wrong, just ahead of its time.
Project Forecast was wrong in the 1960s. But in 2017, the report’s predictions are accurate. Unfortunately, the stain of the false conclusions created an environment in which the natural assumption is that dogfighting will always be a part of aerial warfare and to say anything else is to fall into the trap of Project Forecast. The day of the dogfight is over, and the era of BRVS has begun. The F-35 will be the future of this type of warfare.
The F-35
The F-35 is a plane that has clear strengths and weaknesses. Most people consider the F-35’s stealth to be its biggest asset but this is incorrect. It’s biggest strength is as a force multiplier and it does through a complex network of sensors and communications that allows it to share information with other assets in the air, space, ground, and sea. The F-35 is a great member of the American military team.
Unlike Indian, Russian and Chinese, or even European aircraft, it is not designed to fight every threat it will face alone because it will not have to. It is designed to engage them as part of a unit, a member of a team. The F-35 will be a master of a few trades, rather than a jack of all, and in the high speed world of modern combat, it will dominate the jack of all trades fighters of other nations.
The communications integration technology onboard allows it to coordinate and control the firepower of other units nearby and even guide in ordinance fired by supporting units. It is likely that in combat the F-35 will be used in a “spotter” role to target waves of allied missiles into enemy aircraft.
Attempting to dogfight in the 21st Century will be the equivalent of charging a machine gun nest in World War 1. With enough men, it may be possible to eventually overtake the position, but the casualties incurred will make the effort too self destructive to be done repeatedly. Stealth will also be a necessity in future warfare, especially in the air. Planes without it will be swatted from the sky with ease, even by nations with vastly inferior air forces due to the prevalence of highly advanced Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs).
This is why the Air Force dislikes A-10 Warthog, because even at the time of its conception, every single A-10, all 700 of them, deployed in Europe was expected to be destroyed in the event of a Soviet Invasion within two weeks of a conflicts start. Their sacrifice would allow the blunting and halt of a Soviet Invasion but every single plane would be lost.
In a modern battlefield with weapons systems that already exist, like the Russian S-300 and S-400 SAMs, which countries like Iran and Syria already possess, the A-10 will not be able to operate in a modern combat zone without significant Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) efforts by other planes, most likely the F-35.
The extensive resources required for SEAD for a plane whose sole role is to provide Close Air Support (CAS) makes the Air Force calculate that it makes to more sense to just use the F-35 as replacement for the A-10. Now this calculation should be taken with a grain of salt as the Air Force has long disliked providing CAS to ground forces, a role it sees as beneath it and the job of artillery or helicopters, but the USAF does make a fair point that the A-10 will have a hard time operating in modern combat zones.
The other factor into this is the prevalence of low-intensity conflicts like those against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In conflicts like this, stealth is unnecessary and makes the use of stealth aircraft cost prohibitive. However, this does not mean the A-10 is the best choice for a conflict like this by any means either. The large amount of armor on A-10s and their age (they were introduced in the late 1970s), and jet engines, like the stealth coating of F-35s although less so, makes them very expensive to fly. For a true low intensity conflict, it makes more sense to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and turbo prop planes, which cost significantly less than jets to fly, make the most sense.
The Team
The best metaphor for how combat works is that it is not 1 v 1 basketball, or even 5 v 5. Imagine a sport in which literally every asset available can be employed with only the limits of creativity and ruthlessness, and that is war, especially modern war. In fact, in all likelihood, within the lifetime of most people reading this article, a war will be fought and won in cyberspace the same way Gulf War 1 was fought from the air. Ground troops and air units will participate, but the battle will already be decided by the time they arrive on scene.
Many of the F-35s weaknesses can be compensated for by other units. It’s lack of payload capacity can be fulfilled by a so-called “Arsenal Plane,” a larger less stealthy aircraft with a vast number of missiles, or even just a F-15 modified to carry up to sixteen air to air missiles. Both of these units are still conceptual but could be crafted in an extremely short time in the advent of the outbreak of hostilities. While purely theoretical, the F-35 could also act as a “queen bee” for a number of drones.
The bottom line is that in a real war the United States will not engage hostiles unless we can win or have to. Movies, video games, and other media have given the American public a false idea of both what aerial combat looks like, and how the US military and tactics are employed. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States will not engage hostile forces on the ground unless we have numerical superiority and air or artillery coverage, and these are insurgents not real near peer adversaries.
In a true war with Russia or China, the United States will fight smart given the fact that this is real life and not a movie or video game. This is not Top Gun. In real life combat scenarios, the success of the mission supersedes both the value of men’s egos, and their lives if it is necessary. The F-35 is a “bean counter” plane. Its use by all three services will drastically reduce cost of upkeep and increase ease of resupply in combat zones. Wars are won through money and logistics more than anything else, and the F-35 is dominant in this regard.
If used properly and in conjunction with other weapons, troops, and tactics properly the F-35 will aid the United States in continuing to win wars and remain a global force. Like any tool, if it is used improperly, it will result in injury and possibly death to the user. In war, there are no silver bullets, so it is unfair to expect the F-35 to be. But hey, any plane that can achieve a 20–1 kill ratio is pretty damn close.
