Why the U.S. Military Misses the F-14 Tomcat: It’s easy to forget how important dedicated air-to-air naval fighters are until they’re gone
The service [Us Navy] has not had a dedicated air-to-air combat aircraft since it retired the Grumman F-14 Tomcat in 2006... Now, as new threats to the carrier emerge and adversaries start to field new fighters that can challenge the F/A-18E/F and F-35C, attention is starting to shift back to this oft-neglected Navy mission?, ?especially in the Western Pacific...
The report notes that both the Super Hornet and the F-35C are severely challenged by new fifth-generation fighter aircraft such as the Russian-built T-50 and China’s J-20. Indeed, certain current adversary aircraft such as the Russian Su-30SM, Su-35S and the Chinese J-11D and J-15 pose a serious threat to the Super Hornet fleet. It’s a view that shared by many industry officials, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and even U.S. Marine Corps aviators.
Both F/A-18E/Fs and F-35Cs will face significant deficiencies against supercruising, long-range, high-altitude, stealthy, large missile capacity adversary aircraft, such as the T-50, J-20, and follow-on aircraft...
Already, the F/A-18E/F faces a severe speed disadvantage against Chinese J-11 aircraft, which can fire longer range missiles at a higher kinematic advantage outside of the range of U.S. AIM-120 missiles.
Nor does the F-35C?, which suffers from severely reduced acceleration compared to even the less than stellar performance of other JSF variants, help matters.
Similarly, the F-35C is optimized as an attack fighter, resulting in a medium-altitude flight profile... The F-35C was never designed to be an air superiority fighter. Indeed, naval planners in the mid-1990s wanted the JSF to be a strike-oriented aircraft with only a 6.5G airframe load limit...
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-bu ... mcat-19347https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.hudson.o ... nflict.pdf
Corea del Sur e Indonesia inauguran la oficina para el desarrollo conjunto de su caza indígena furtivo KF-X/IF-X:
