Frank Crebas 2018 Bluelifeaviation.com
2021-01-05 21:32
Regarding Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter, there has been a lot of news in recent years. According to public media reports, the total output of F-35 stealth fighters has exceeded 600. In addition to equipping the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy, it also exports a large number of them. Now several countries with good relations with the United States have purchased them. A large number of F-35A and F-35B fighters will all be delivered in the past 20 years. Regarding the combat capability of the F-35 fighter, there are many relevant news reports in the media. Since this fighter was planned to replace fighters, attack aircraft and carrier-based aircraft from many Western countries at the beginning of its development, there was too much balance in the design of various aspects of performance. Therefore, the final air superiority and ground attack performance, compared with some traditional fourth-generation aircraft, have some parameters that do not have any obvious advantages, such as maximum speed, maneuverability at low altitude and low speed.
From the perspective of air control performance, the F-35 stealth fighter has two biggest advantages at present. One is that with AN/APG-81 active phased array radar, EOTS and distributed synthetic aperture system, the F-35 fighter has more advantages. Strong battlefield awareness; another feature is strong invisibility. With these two advantages, the F-35 fighter will take the lead in air combat when facing the traditional fourth-generation fighter. Regarding the air control performance of the F-35 stealth fighter, its main weapon is still the US-made AIM-120C advanced medium-range air-to-air missile. The anti-air beast mode of the F-35A stealth fighter in the picture above. In the picture, you can see that there are 4 missiles in the bomb bay, and 8 under the wings, plus two AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missiles, a total of 14 can be hung. This number is significantly different from the latest F-15EX fighter, which can mount up to 22 medium-range air-to-air missiles.
In actual combat, the U.S. Air Force’s F-35A stealth fighter plane faces a powerful opponent, and it is impossible and daring not to adopt the so-called beast bomb mode, because after 14 air-to-air missiles are mounted, the fighter’s mobility will drop sharply. The stealth performance of the fighter will also be at a very poor level. Therefore, through public reports, the main weapon of the F-35 stealth fighter is four AIM-120C medium-range air-to-air missiles in the bomb bay. However, in actual combat, the F-35 stealth fighter has to perform more ground attack missions, so generally only two AIM-120C medium-range air-to-air missiles can be loaded in the bomb bay.
Due to the limitation of the bomb bay size, there is no side bomb bay for heavy stealth fighters. The internal bomb bay of the F-35 stealth fighter cannot mount AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles when 4 AIM-120C medium-range air-to-air missiles are mounted. In order to improve the fighter's self-defense capability, the F-35 stealth fighter had to hang an AIM-9X Sidewinder close-range air-to-air missile under each wing. It can be seen from the picture that the pylon of the AIM-9X short-range air-to-air missile adopts a stealth design. However, the shape of the AIM-9X Sidewinder short-range air-to-air missile is problematic. In air operations, this air-to-air missile will be a big one. Source of airborne radiation. The short-range air-to-air missile plug-in can be said to be an obvious shortcoming of the F-35 fighter.
Recently, the US media disclosed a news that the F-35 stealth fighter will use the British AIM-132 short-range air-to-air missile first in actual combat. The AIM-132 short-range air-to-air missile is a product jointly developed by multiple countries. The media is generally called ASRAAM, which is advanced short-range air-to-air missile, using infrared imaging seeker and thrust vectoring technology. Its overall technical level is almost equal to that of AIM-9X.
However, due to the aerodynamic design of the AIM-132 short-range air-to-air missile, its wing is smaller than that of the AIM-9X air-to-air missile. Theoretically, the air RCS is smaller than the latter. The US military plans to coat the AIM-132 short-range air-to-air missile with a wave-absorbing coating. Layer, in conjunction with the stealth pylon designed for the F-35 stealth fighter, theoretically, this combination can reduce the RCS of the short-range air-to-air missile in the air. Regarding the shortcomings of the F-35 stealth fighter, it is no longer realistic to redesign the bomb bay of the F-35 fighter. Although the effect of adding stealth coating through AIM-132 is limited, it can reduce RCS more or less.
Compared with the F-35 stealth fighter, the J-20 and F-22 stealth fighters of the US Air Force have more space and larger bomb bays than the F-35 fighters because they are heavy fighters. In the future, the unilateral bomb bay of our J-20 stealth fighter may be equipped with two PL-10 short-range air-to-air missiles, which will eventually have a certain firepower advantage in the air combat of the stealth fighter.
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