Anyone who thinks the Su-35 would win falls into one of three distinct categories: first, he could be a Russian bot (yes there are tons of them, along with a fair number of Russian sympathizers who love to post); second, he could be a person who is very poorly informed (most likely reliant on hopelessly dated\/inaccurate information); third, he could be a person who loves to assign ludicrous\/unrealistic restrictions and rules of engagement that profoundly limit the F-35 for inexplicable reasons (i.e.both pilots must be able to see the white\u2019s of each other’s eyes before the fight begins).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is simply no comparison to be had between a stealth fighter and a non-stealth fighter. None. The Su-35 is a perfectly capable plane, it just has no means to detect an F-35 before an F-35 detects (and subsequently kills or evades) it. It\u2019s a fact, the F-35 can detect the Su-35 well within its missile\u2019s guaranteed kill range while remaining undetectable by the Russian plane. The Su\u2019s great maneuverability, its best feature, does not solve that problem. What\u2019s more, even if the detection range of the SU\u2019s IRST pod expands (though there are limits) the range and kill radius of U.S. missiles is just as certain to expand. In fact, once LREW and the AIM 260 (the AMRAAM replacement missile) comes online, there will be even less hope for the Su-35 and there already isn\u2019t any. Though little is known, the AIM 260 is probably a long-range ramjet missile with an AESA radar that the Air Force has been working on for a few years. It\u2019s probably a combination between the British Meteor missile\u2019s ramjet, which provides a much enhanced guaranteed no escape zone since it can be throttled up as it gets closer to the target and a combination optical\/infrared seeker and AESA seeker ( the latter of which the Japanese have already deployed on one of their new missiles). In other words, it is a combination of mature technologies. The U.S. will soon have a very long range (mach 4+) missile, that is practically impossible to spoof because of its multimode seeker, with vastly improved terminal performance compared to the already superb AAMRAM. The LREW is a multi-stage air to air missile that will likely outrange any air to air missile ever conceived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only real air to air deficit for the F-35 is total missile carriage capacity; even that is being remedied.. the internal missile capacity of the F-35 is (supposedly) getting enhanced to six AMRAAMs during the block 4 upgrade from its current capacity of 4. If that still isn\u2019t sufficient, there is also another new class of missile, called the SACM which may jump the internal carriage to 12. SACM is a program of record that will result in a hit to kill missile akin to Lockheed\u2019s Cuda concept, which is significantly shorter than an AMRAAM, with similar range and seeker but no explosive warhead. The shorter, lighter, missiles allow for double carriage. While these will not be as sophisticated as the LREW or AIM 260 they will certainly complicate an enemy\u2019s plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, how would a typical engagement go between the two planes? Well, Russian ground-based VHF radar may very well warn a squadron of Su-35\u2019s sitting on alert that stealth fighters are inbound though it can not track them or target them precisely (there is a lot of electronic interference). The squadron of Su-35\u2019s launch to intercept. Within minutes the VHF radars in the area go down. After all, they must be on in order to see F-35\u2019s and if they are on, the F-35\u2019s can also see the radars and will lob standoff missiles at them. F-35\u2019s are excellent wild weasels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now the newly airborne squadron of 12 SU-35\u2032s use their IRST pods to search the sky for F-35\u2019s. But these don\u2019t help. For starters, IRST has a very narrow field of view and are highly impacted by environmental conditions like humidity\u2026 Pilots equate it to looking at the sky through a straw. Meanwhile, the F-35\u2019s have some of the most powerful AESA radars ever mounted on a fighter aircraft (and Su-35\u2019s are perfectly visible from more than 100 miles away), a supercomputer and millions of lines of code also tell the F-35\u2019s exactly how many and what type of planes they are up against and the first F-35 aircraft that detects the Russian flight seamlessly shares that information across the entire squadron, heck the F-35\u2019s powerful computer might even be able to identify the squadron to which the enemy planes belong. And the F-35\u2019s aren\u2019t alone. They have MALDs with them, which are basically cheap drones designed to mimic stealth fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sukhoi\u2019s are flying to the last known location that they were directed to by the high-frequency ground radar before it went offline. Suddenly, one of the Su-35\u2019s believes he\u2019s gotten \u201clucky\u201d when he sees a bright spot on his IR sensors. He\u2019s found one! A single-engine fighter! What he has actually detected is a MALD, which he believes to be an F-35 and immediately the squadron of Sukhois begin to engage. More brights spots appear. The MALDs take evasive action and the Sukhois bleed energy engaging. It was a trap of course (the F-35s had plenty of time to prepare). As the Russians begin to engage the dummy targets, their missile warning lights pop on. Before they have sufficient time to react several explode. Hey, but at least they downed two drones! The remaining Su-35\u2019s turn tail and run. But F-35\u2019s were anticipating the retreat, and like good shepherds driving their sheep to the slaughter, the American fighters ran the Russian planes directly into more missiles launched by other F-35\u2019s. BAM, BAM, BAM. No more SU\u2019s. How many F-35s were there in the wolf pack? Who knows? It might have been six, it might have been 20. Within minutes the reserve Russian fighters on the airfield begin to explode as Small diameter bombs take out every target worth hitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s basically the reality of what a Su-35 vs F-35 fight would look like. The SU-35\u2019s would never know how many there are, they could never be sure of their targets; meanwhile, the F-35\u2019s can pick how they want to engage and when they want to engage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stealth vs. nonstealth is like a game of Marco-Polo in an Olympic sized swimming pool where the hunted (the Marcos) are allowed to keep their eyes open and throw tennis balls at the hunters (the Polos) to eliminate them. The hunters (Polos) meanwhile have to keep their eyes closed and don\u2019t have any tennis balls to throw and must instead tag the Marcos in order to get a \u201ckill\u201d. Sure, they can occasionally detect the Marcos by screaming out and listening for the callback \u201cPolo\u201d.. but that fleeting hint doesn\u2019t stop a tennis ball knocking them in the head and eliminating them. Even if they do catch a \u201cMarco\u201d it most likely was just a fake Marco. In other words, it doesn\u2019t matter if the Polos are faster swimmers can hold their breath longer or are really good at listening, the game is entirely played on the Marcos\u2019 home court because eyes and tennis balls are more important for this version of the game\u2026 just as stealth, sensors and missiles are more important in the fighter game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
J.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyone who thinks the Su-35 would win falls into one of three distinct categories: first, he could be a Russian bot (yes there are tons of them, along with a fair number of Russian sympathizers who love to post); second, he could be a person who is very poorly informed (most likely reliant on hopelessly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":774817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[846],"tags":[4150,10771],"class_list":["post-775041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-f-35","tag-su-35"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}