New footage has for the first time provided a close look at a sixth generation air superiority fighter being developed by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation for the
I’ll never stop being mad that the pilot didn’t style on the balloon with an air-air gun kill. How sick would it be to open up with the machine gun like an old school wwii dog fight?
machine guns are old school, they will probably be ditched completely in 6th gen. It’s all about BVR (beyond visual range) missiles now. NATO can’t sell their overpriced hardware without stating that they are real world battle proven. A balloon kill is still a kill right? lol, just like the French Rafales selling point was that it is proven in real world combat. What was that real world combat? Bombing Libya and Syria, countries with very weak air forces and defence.
When the Rafale had its first and only real world aerial engagement with a peer competitor, it happened a few months ago between India and Pakistan. India’s French Rafales vs Pakistan’s Chinese J-10CE. The J-10CE scored 3 Rafale kills from over 200km away with Chinese PL-15 missiles. Funny thing is that Indian intelligence thought China had provided Pakistan with the export variant of the missile, the PL-15E, which has a shorter range of around 150km. China actually sent their own PL-15 version. Indian Rafale pilots thought they were in the safe zone when heading back to their airbase…
IIRC the missile was used because they weren’t sure if the balloon had self-sealing capabilities (theres no way that the skin would have activated the fuses on the 20mm shells) and they wanted it to come down quickly. I think collateral damage was a concern as well since it was over a fairly populated part of florida, could be wrong about that.
Makes sense considering f35 more for bombing than fighting. Still seems like the 15s are better than the 35s in everything except stealth but that’s less useful as IR gets better.
Only actual cool tech on the 35 compared to othet jets is the vtol part. But even that isn’t that useful compared to how much it hinders the rest of that versions capacity/capabilities.
Wasn’t the weather balloon shot down by an F-22 (also its first kill lmao)
I’ll never stop being mad that the pilot didn’t style on the balloon with an air-air gun kill. How sick would it be to open up with the machine gun like an old school wwii dog fight?
machine guns are old school, they will probably be ditched completely in 6th gen. It’s all about BVR (beyond visual range) missiles now. NATO can’t sell their overpriced hardware without stating that they are real world battle proven. A balloon kill is still a kill right? lol, just like the French Rafales selling point was that it is proven in real world combat. What was that real world combat? Bombing Libya and Syria, countries with very weak air forces and defence.
When the Rafale had its first and only real world aerial engagement with a peer competitor, it happened a few months ago between India and Pakistan. India’s French Rafales vs Pakistan’s Chinese J-10CE. The J-10CE scored 3 Rafale kills from over 200km away with Chinese PL-15 missiles. Funny thing is that Indian intelligence thought China had provided Pakistan with the export variant of the missile, the PL-15E, which has a shorter range of around 150km. China actually sent their own PL-15 version. Indian Rafale pilots thought they were in the safe zone when heading back to their airbase…
IIRC the missile was used because they weren’t sure if the balloon had self-sealing capabilities (theres no way that the skin would have activated the fuses on the 20mm shells) and they wanted it to come down quickly. I think collateral damage was a concern as well since it was over a fairly populated part of florida, could be wrong about that.
But yes, so much cooler with the gun.
Makes sense considering f35 more for bombing than fighting. Still seems like the 15s are better than the 35s in everything except stealth but that’s less useful as IR gets better.
Only actual cool tech on the 35 compared to othet jets is the vtol part. But even that isn’t that useful compared to how much it hinders the rest of that versions capacity/capabilities.
Another common F-35 Lightning II L