Quote:
Originally Posted by FlameOn
To be fair though, wasn't that exact same statement made in Vietnam when the F-4s got deployed? They deleted the guns off that fighter because missiles made dogfighting a thing of the past. When unacceptable combat losses mounted from Vietnamese and Soviet pilots during dogfights, they put a guns back onto the F-4 and started up the Top Gun program at the naval academy.
Point is, a fighter that is meant to replace a 20 year old design, should be no worse than the 20 year old design. And we haven't had a hot war where a dogfighting would be required in a long time, doesn't mean we should be less ready for one.
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Because the Russians designed good dog fighters, with decent sensors and guns. The American's had a stupid design flaw in the day and age when sensors on planes weren't long range, there was no low observability and missile range was very short range.
The guns would have been un-neccessary if the F-4 would have had a longer range sensor suite. and more reliable longer range missiles. their missile envelope was about 20 miles with the I think sparrow and early rear aspect side winder.
The F-4 design initially was confused.
They had to basically let the enemy get within 20 miles because of their sensors and their missiles and at that point it becomes a dog fight and the F-4 was a poor dogfighter and designing it without a gun was just plane stupid. The American's were stupid when they designed it. They basically discounted the Russian factor in Vietnam.
With the f-35 they're going to see you long before the enemy sees them. Then the enemy is going to be put on the defensive because of over the horizon missile attacks.
And every unit around the F-35 will know where the enemy is and what it is.