Comments on: Why the Super Bug is no substitute for the F-35, Part 2

By: zbigniewmazurak

zbigniewmazurak — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:25:54 +0000

Of course the F-35 is no fighter and is inferior to the latest Flankers. It is, and was always supposed to be, a ground attack jet.

But in that role, the F-35 is MUCH better than the Super Bug.

And, as the evidence presented here proves, the F-35 is also better than the Super Bug in the A2A self-defense role, if push came to shove. The only way the F-35 can get shot down in droves is if the adversary deploys even bigger droves of Flankers. Sadly, China and Russia can both afford to do so.

By: Picard578

Picard578 — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 08:05:24 +0000

Super Bug is inferior to latest Flankers, but so is F-35, in ALL criteria EXCEPT RCS. F-35 was also always intended to be bomber / ground attack aircraft; extremely limited air-to-air capacity was thrown in “just so”, and later used to say “well, it CAN do air-to-air, so it is fighter”. It can do, but it will get shot down in droves.

By: zbigniewmazurak

zbigniewmazurak — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 06:59:47 +0000

M. Johnston,

Carlo Kopp is one of the most knowledgeable and most credible scientists and aircraft analysts in the world, with decades of experience, hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, and academic degrees under his belt, so if I were you, I would not attack his credibility.

(BTW, POGO hacks like to quote him… but only when he bashes the F-35. When he points out the Super Bug’s flaws, or the F-22′s virtues, they make no mention of him.)

The F-111 is a medium range bomber which gave Australia coverage of a significant part of SE Asia. By retiring it, Australia lost this capability. Look at a map. Australia is so far from other countries that in order to have a credible power projection capability, it needs medium-range strike aircraft. The Super Bug, with its extremely short combat radius of 390 nm, is unable to fill that role.

Logistics is certainly important, but logistics can’t compensate for deficient, inferior aircraft design. The Super Bug, as demonstrated here, is decisively inferior kinematically, aerodynamically, radar-wise, and weapons-wise to most Flanker variants as well as the J-10, the PAKFA, and the J-20 (to the extent info is available on the J-20). Nothing can compensate for this, and these deficiencies cannot be overcome with upgrades.

The Super Bug is, in fact, inferior in some parameters even to the J-7 and the J-8.

This is not surprising, of course, to those of us who know something about military aircraft. The Super Bug was never designed to be a fighter; it was intended only to be a cheap attack jet operating solely in benign environments where the only opponents are insurgents unable to contest control of the air. If the Navy and the Marines are denied the F-35 and forced to fly the Super Bug, that’s the role they will be relegated to.

By: M. Johnston

M. Johnston — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 21:54:04 +0000

Quoting Karlo Copp. Credibility fail right there. He has zero Aerospace credentials and even less Defence credentials. If he had his way Australia would have spent billions on “sheet metals” changes to keep the F-111 in the air another 3 months. As for quoting developmental A/C stats in a comparison (especially ones for which the numbers are highly speculative at best) is a spurious method designed to make it appear the weight of evidence is against the A/C you are slamming.

Apart from all that, this type of “analysis” completely disregards a whole slew of factors that can easily invalidate a mismatch in specifications.
1. Logistics
2. Training
3. Supporting systems
4. Leadership
Thus the utility of a weapon system is so so much more than the numbers printed in the spec sheet.