(Newswire.net — July 1, 2015) — The pentagon’s F-35 has cost US taxpayers more than a trillion dollars since work on it began, which made it the most expensive weapon in history. The project plane recently got brutally overpowered in a dogfight simulation against the ‘old timer.’
The document marked as “Official Use Only”, was released on the “War is Boring” website. The document describes the mock air battle between new generation F-35 stealth jets and an F-16 which entered the US Air Force in the 1970’s.
According to the document, the simulation was staged over the Pacific Ocean in January 2015, near Edwards Air Force Base, California.` The mission was to test the F-35’s dogfight abilities at the 10,000 to 30,000 foot range. The F-35 pilot was to fly his jet hard, turning and maneuvering to “shoot down” the older F-16 jet, whose pilot would be doing his best to evade being hit, and trying to attack the F-35.
Reportedly, the test pilot’s five-page brief said that despite the F-16 being weighed down by two drop tanks, and with the F-35 jet carrying no weapons, the F-35 “remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement.”
The test allegedly revealed the aerodynamic problems, such as “insufficient pitch rate” for the jet’s nose while climbing. Also, the F-35 pilot’s helmet packed with electronics, which allow the pilot to see by even beyond the visual range, is allegedly too big, so the pilot couldn’t comfortably move his head inside the jet’s cramped cockpit.
“The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft,” said the report. Reportedly, that allowed the F-16 to approach undetected from F-35’s rear, in a ‘perfect kill’ position.
The F-35 pilot tried to target the F-16 with the jet’s four-barrel rotary 25-millimeter cannon, however, the smaller F-16 easily dodged the fire. The document cited the F-35’s test pilot, who said the stealth jet “performed so dismally that it had no place fighting other aircraft within visual range.”
In one maneuver, the F-35 was able to perform decently at rudder reversal at slow speeds, but this used a lot of the aircraft’s energy, leaving the aircraft vulnerable to attack, test pilot said.
In April, Congress learned the software system for maintaining the fighter jet was giving false-positive readings 80 percent of the time, which along with other problems could keep the F35 from being operational until 2019.