How Will The F-35 Perform In A Dogfight?

Three F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (Reuters/Lockheed Martin/Darin Russell)

Can The F-35 Win A Dogfight? -- Dave Majumdar, War is Boring

The Air Force says it will have no choice but to send the sluggish stealth fighter into aerial battle.

In order to maintain its fighter squadrons, the U.S. Air Force needs the entire planned buy of 1,763 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. That’s in part because the flying branch was allowed to buy fewer than planned F-22 Raptors from Lockheed.

The F-35 will have to complement the F-22. But can the smaller, slower, less nimble F-35 hack it as an air-to-air fighter?

The Air Force has just 186 F-22s, of which only 123 are “combat-coded” and immediately available for war, according to Air Combat Command. The service had originally wanted 750 of the stealthy air-superiority fighters, but eventually settled on a requirement for 381 Raptors before the program was further truncated by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the early 2000s.

But even 381 F-22s proved to be an unfulfilled dream. Ultimately, the Raptor program was terminated by Rumsfeld’s successor, Robert Gates. The last F-22 rolled off the assembly line in Georgia in 2011.

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My Comment: I get the impression that they do not know how well the F-35 will perform in a dogfight .... which is disturbing when one considers how expensive these planes are ... and when one looks at what the Russsians and Chinese are now preparing to field..