It's especially difficult to have a conversation outside of the vault on what a 5th gen fighter should be able to do, let alone the inner-workings of the F-35.
This has been the crux of the issue with every public discussion about "new" fighter and bomber aircraft since about 1990 when the ATF and ATB programs came out of the darkness. It is most certainly a core problem in any discussions about the need/viability of the F-22 and F-35 these days.
The fact of the matter is,
ALL of the technical and tactical points that matter in these discussions are classified.
Let me state that again so nobody misses it:
ALL of the technical and tactical points that matter in these discussions are classified. The people that do know what these relevant points are can't/won't be discussing them and their relative merits, and the people that can actively participate in the discussion, unfortunately, don't know enough to actually have an educated opinion.
It isn't about
intelligence, mind you -- the JC membership isn't
stupid -- it is about knowledge and experience. Most of the JC membership doesn't have the knowledge or experience to be able to evaluate the "expert" opinions they see in the media. Every military pilot with access to a vault, and a 3-1, and a meager understanding of current fighter tactics knows that Pierre Sprey's opinions don't include knowledge of the last 20 years' worth of technical advancement and tactics changes in both friendly and adversary aircraft and SAM systems. To me, his opinions sound like the guy who is still arguing that cars don't need seat belts so occupants can be "thrown clear of the accident". But, to the layman, his background lends credibility to his opinion, and thus a civilian with no other benchmark is likely to give it credence. The same thing goes for "my buddy who worked at Rolls Royce"'s opinion, etc.
Over the last decade, I've loved seeing Congressmen and "experts" speaking out against buying the Raptor and Lightning. Most of the folks arguing that "Eagles and Vipers are good enough" don't have the faintest f'ing clue (or security clearance to learn) what the actual capabilities of the Eagle and Viper are, or what the actual capabilities of their likely A-A and S-A adversaries are. Nor do they have the clue, or ability to learn, what the capabilities of the Raptor and Lightning are with respect to the Eagle, Viper, and those rest-of-world threats. To the folks who DO have this knowledge, it immediately flags their opinions as invalid or inaccurate. To the "rest of the world", a Congressman or a so-called-expert talking head in the media MUST know something, right?
Without the relevant technical background AND knowledge of the ACTUAL classified capabilities of all the actors involved, it is just a bunch of virgins swapping sex techniques based on what they've read in Penthouse Letters (or, these days, what they've been watching on XTube...).
Thus, how we get to discussions like we've seen here on JC over the years about the Lightning, the Raptor, the A-10, the F-14, etc., including this thread. There's plenty of open source/unclassified information to discuss in these threads to make them a good conversation, but they never delve into the most important pieces of the discussion, which can never be discussed in this (or any other unclassified) media.
