by TIM ROBINSON

On June 29, 2015, we saw what seemed like a fairly damning flight test report leaked to War Is Boring — where a F-35A test pilot was unable to triumph over a ’70s-era F-16D with two external tanks in a close-in mock dogfight.

In the report, the unnamed pilot noted the F-35’s lack of energy maneuverability and its restrictive flight control software led to it being unable to turn the tables against the Viper. He also criticized the aircraft’s lack of rearward visibility.

The story — as might be guessed — sent ripples through amateur and professional air warfare experts — with critics claiming that it is yet more evidence the aircraft is an expensive disaster. Proponents, meanwhile, lined up to defend the fighter.

The news story, picked up by other outlets, moved the F-35 Joint Program Office to rebut the report saying, “The F-35’s technology is designed to engage, shoot, and kill its enemy from long distances, not necessarily in visual ‘dogfighting’ situations.”

The JPO also noted that the aircraft involved, AF-2, was a flight test prototype and thus lacked its stealth coating, mission, sensor and weapon systems that would have afforded off-boresight missile shots.

Crucially, however, it did not dispute the authenticity of the report nor the test pilot’s comments about agility.

Simulating more representative air combat

While the JPO rebuttal may have not addressed the elephant in the room as regarding the F-35’s unimpressive kinematics — it is correct that a one vs. one fight, with a non-production version F-35 stripped of its advanced sensors might well be an unrepresentative test.

Even in World War II, most kills by the top aces were achieved without the victim being aware they were being bounced, rather than the aerial melee seen in Top Gun and elsewhere.

With this in mind a curious, impartial mind might ask — how well might a F-35 do in a more operationally representative scenario? Beyond manufacturer’s slick marketing videos and pithy soundbites about “gamechanging” fifth-generation technology, it is difficult for an outsider to evaluate the F-35’s potential — especially in the air-to-air arena. Is it true revolution in air combat or an overpriced lemon?

Fortunately we now have a publicly available tool to take an informed look at least some of the claims made for the fighter.

To this, we turn to Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations — a hyper-realistic tactical PC simulation/war game which models sensors, stealth and other factors in great detail.

Having won plaudits from amateur and professionals alike in its detailed modelling, it’s set to move into the professional military and defense world through a co-operation agreement signed with BAE Systems. The game features a Jane’s style database of aircraft, ships, weapons, sensors and missiles from 1945 to 2020 with the whole world modeled and country-specific equipment lists.

Of course, simulations have been used before with the F-35 — with a famous RAND study concluding the jet would be “clubbed like baby seals.” However CMANO is a substantial advance on Harpoon-era simulations — with a more detailed, higher fidelity air warfare model.

For instance, it models the kinematic effects of aircraft losing energy dodging incoming missiles or SAMs — making salvos more important against highly-agile targets. The probability of a missile kill, or a “Pk,” is influenced by many factors — including seeker generations, range to target, agility of target aircraft, target aspect, countermeasures and pilot skill — making for a deep and complex simulation.

The A.I., too is clever enough to evade and try and “beam” incoming missiles — making for a highly realistic BVR simulation. In the older Harpoon, for example, missiles could be fired rearwards from fighters, the air combat modelling being far more abstracted.

While actual stealth performance is still highly classified, CMANO does provide a more detailed “educated guess” modelling of low-observable platforms like the F-35 — beyond just assuming they are “invisible” to the enemy in game terms. Frontal, side and rear visual, IR signatures and RCS (radar cross section) detection ranges are calculated — and the RCS is even split into two sets of radar bands. In this simulation, stealth is an advantage — but platforms can still be detected at close range.

In this test we are role-playing the “battlespace commander” with a top-down view of the air battle rather than the individual pilot — but in reality the F-35 is likely have this level of information provided to the pilots themselves in the cockpit — thanks to datalinks and sensor fusion.

How, then would it model the F-35 in an air combat scenario?