re: #257 Dark_Falcon

War is Boring got something of shock when they used Matrix Games Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations , which is a hyper detailed a major advance over the Harpoon-era simulations, to play out a fight between four RAF F-35Bs and 4 Russian Sukhoi Su-35Ss. Do the F-35s get slaughtered? No, they don’t. In fact, the sim was run many times and almost all of them had Her Majesty’s Air Force “hitting the bear for six” (to use an expression from cricket):

End result
SIDE: United Kingdom
LOSSES:
Nil
EXPENDITURES:
12 Meteors — — — — — — — — —

SIDE: Red Air LOSSES: Four Su-35S Flankers EXPENDITURES: Two AA-12 Adder A [R-77, RVV-AE] Nine Generic Chaff Salvo [four Cartridges]

Read the story here. It makes clear that while the Su-35s may hold the edge in a dogfight, in a rane battle the JSF will be able to do much better than hold its own.

Do we even have an actual F-35 to test? I.thought they were still briefing designed/redesigned (again).

In my opinion the F-35 is the Air Force equivalent of the Bradley AFV (and for almost the exact same reason, inability to decide on being fish or fowl) and if you do not understad why that is a bad thing, go watch/read “The Pentagon Wars” except this time it is “Trillion, with a ‘T’”