Demon Lord Razgriz wrote: |
I have no doubt that the F-35 will be in the same over all performance bracket as the F-22 for air to air combat. You seem to not get just how big of a thing the datalinks and sensor fusion is.
I don't care how big a thing datalinks & sensor fusion is, doesn't mean jack if the plane gets shot down due to shitty half-assed stealth that's only effective towards X-Band. It has the biggest, most powerful engine ever put in a fighter, yet can only go Mach 1.6?
It's a compromised PoS designed by committee that should have been axed when it became clear that is was going to be a turkey. But now, like the banks, it's too big to be axed.
I presume you have some facts to back up the stealth claims, or some data that shows that radar stealth is the end-all of fighters?
Don't get me wrong I would rather have the A/F-X (if it could have been made to work), or even some ASF-14s over the F-35, but the fact is the F-35 is what we are going to get and it isn't that bad of a plane.
The Stealth problem I mention comes from a PDF that got released by accident by LockMart last year and taken off within 2-3 hours that went into details about the stealth being optimized for the X-Band only to cut down on development costs. Unfortunately I wasn't able to save the PDF due to me being on a school computer, but I'll ask around if anyone managed to get a copy of it before LockMart took it down.
As for the F-35 itself, my main problem is that they've asked so much from it, it's held back by it's own weight. Cause when a single engine "light" fighter weights more than a F-15, they've really fucked up. Seriously, why is it so bloody heavy?!