Interesting but I have a few points I disagree with.
Then there is the undeniable combat record of the Eagle, yet Mr. Sprey seems to think that the F-15 is a loser even after four decades of incredible success, not to mention the fact that it has never been bested in air-to-air combat and retains a kill ration of 105.5 to 0.
Putting words into Sprey's mouth doesn't actually address what he was on about. To begin with, there is more than one version of the F-15 and the controversial one is the E model, AKA, the "Strike Eagle" or "Beagle". That had a whole raft of extra shit stuffed into it for a mission the aircraft was never designed for. The original philosophy for it was "Not a pound for air to ground". Secondly, the much-vaunted "kill ration"
(sic) is a political hot potato and not a realistic indication of anything much. No nation, particularly the United States (they built it), is ever going to open itself up to anything by revealing the real scoreboard. This scorecard doesn't take into account at least two F-15Es which were lost in the 1991 Gulf War. On top of that, there is a claim - still pending - that an Israeli F-15 was shot down by an Egyptian MiG-25 in about 1981. Given the amount of hot air which has been expended by fanbois decrying the MiG-25, nobody is ever going to admit to it, even if it did happen. The issue drags up chest-beating nationalism to a level of 11 on the pain scale.
The main reason why the F-15 has been so successful is that it has always been integrated into a force package involving AWACS and AEWC aircraft, jammers and other strategic and tactical advantages. It has also usually been pitted against barely functional, out-of-date aircraft with poorly trained and unsupported pilots. If you want to win in air combat, that is what you have to do. Gain air superiority. This is not to put the F-15 down in any way. It has been the dominant fighter for 35 years but the picture is rarely as simple as that statistic pretends it to be. It's not WWI any more.
Wildly successful fighter aircraft are capable of both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, including his own baby, the F-16 Viper, along with the Hornet Series and what became the F-15 Strike Eagle, just to name some American examples. Even the F-14 Tomcat ended up being as good of an attack aircraft as it was an interceptor even though it was never originally designed to do the precision bombing mission.
Jesus Christ. All these of these examples presuppose that you have air superiority or better yet, air supremacy. In all cases over the past 25 years, that has been true. You could fly a Harvard into some of those places and get a result. That makes the success of these things
relative.
So justifying saving the A-10 from a premature retirement is one thing, but trying to straight-face tell the world that multi-role fighter aircraft are crap is denying the historical successes of these aircraft.
Sprey has not said this. He has said that the F-35 is a dog of an aeroplane because of a number of salient points which he has repeatedly outlined. That should not be misinterpreted.
Without this damning requirement, the F-35 would probably have been the best fighter ever built, not just in its avionics and sensor fusion abilities, but also in its raw kinematic performance.
Nonsense. The author has provided no basis in fact for this rather silly assertion. It is exactly the kinematic inferiority that is the problem. It's no good comparing the A and B models and insisting that they are the same. They are not. There are major structural differences and therefore weight differences. The maths just don't add up. That's a basic fact.
...by and large most everyone agrees that the F-35 is as maneuverable as an F-16 with a comparable stores load-out...
Everyone does not agree. Not unless you're reading from the Lockheed Martin sales brochure. Wing area and T/W ratio just don't work out. This guy is going to have to find better references than a website which is just echoing LM's claims.
Mr. Spey's talk of wing-loading as if it were the only factor that dictates an aircraft's maneuverability is a great simplification of aerodynamics, propulsion and flight control systems, but I will save you the long technical spiel here. The F-35 does have higher wing loading than many other fighter aircraft, but the story is so much more complicated than just that, and Mr. Sprey's lack of disclosing this reality is an issue.
Oh please don't! You're supposed to be blowing the lid off his argument. You need to back up your claim. I'm not afraid of a little "long technical spiel". I'd like to know if you really know what you're talking about.
Stealth
is a scam. The only radars which
can't see a stealth aircraft are X-band, the ones it is designed to defeat. There are literally dozens of radar types which can see it, target it and fire on it. Again, the success of stealth aircraft has to be refracted through the fact that they have only ever been used by an air force which had complete control of the airspace (and the virtual airspace as well).
And it's no use dragging up BVR combat. I've kinda already explained why that doesn't hold any water.
The author eventually concedes that the F-35 "may not be the best way to go" but he does raise one point. Sprey is very decided about the philosophy of building single-purpose, high-performance combat aircraft. It's based on the notion that you can get more bang for your buck by designing to a purpose. The A-10 was designed for a specific role. So was the F-15. The MiG-31 is another example. Whether this is true or not is open to question but here's a sobering document to read. It's called The Rand Report:
http://www.mossekongen.no/downloads/200 ... iefing.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Thanks Montey. Sorry for the rant.
сначала мы убиваем американского лося и белку.
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell.
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