F-35 Busting Myths Episode 4

>>31438577
first Vietnam part was a bit long and could have been more punctual on making it's points more apparent, really liked the ejection explanation was frankly fantastic and very detailed. overall fantastic work my dude.

>>31438577
>dat top gun footage

you sneaky glorious bastard

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>>31438577
Good work. Solid explanation on the ejection seat, especially with the helmet weight details I didn't even know.

As for the Vietnam A2A explanation, it was very solid for a complex topic which could take 20 minutes all on it's own. For those that haven't read Revolt of the Majors or any other solid papers on the matter, it should be a good eye opener. You might want to consider linking (annotation or in comments?) some further reading and sources on that, especially some of those primary/secondary documents you showed. I didn't recognize one of those tables, so even I'd be interested.

>>31438870
this revolt of the majors is fantastic tbqh

>>31438904
For such a dry, serious topic, it's an interesting and well-written narrative.

You don't find those very often when you're looking into things like the history of military aviation procurement, training paradigms and political/media forces on direction of change.

It doesn't have everything in it, but for anyone looking to begin to get a serious understanding of why our air forces do things the way they do today, and why they train and fight the way they do compared to the Soviet style, I always point them to that.

If they bitch about how long it is, they weren't ready to learn. You can't put anywhere close to all the pieces together on such a complex system of systems without a few hundred pages.

>>31438904
>>31438969
It's also really frustrating when you recommend it in debate and the clearly misinformed/possibly troll side refuses to read it and actually expand their knowledge.

>>31438904
And he makes his (justified) contempt for Sprey completely transparent too, it's almost kind of hilarious.

>>31439054
The entire "fighter mafia", really. But when you get down to it they were effectively a bunch of know-nothing wannabes who had zero expertise and no functional alternative to everything they hate on. And Sprey's later bullshit is just hilariously bad.

>>31439108

that's a bit extremist. at least EM theory gave us a quantifiable way of comparing and analyzing fighter performance rather than the old "just do something and see what works" method. fighter aviation is both highly analytical and highly instinctual. it's the former that's Boyd's greatest gift: the tools of analysis, even if the results of his use of it didn't quite bear the test of time.

>>31438577

>text to speech

Put some fucking effort.

>>31439148
eh. Bothers me now less than it did. He's already said he think's he's got a wack voice and wants to focus on the data and argument rather than how goofy he sounds. This being youtube, I can't blame him.

Or did you think he was going to shell out moolah to pay someone to do it for him?

>>31439136
>that's a bit extremist. at least EM theory gave us a quantifiable way of comparing and analyzing fighter performance
Even then all Boyd did was bring pre-existing math and theory under a unified mathematical computer model.

It should also be noted that Boyd wrote the 4-ship formation doctrine that blinded the F-4 to rear attack and caused a massive number of losses.

>>31438870
Added sources - they're on a linked thread on Reddit because YouTube formatting sucks, but it's not as if you need to create an account or anything.

much ado about nothing in this totally statistical & theoretical neck issue.

Solution: Give them some neck exercises to do

>>31439602
Or go to the gym and stop being a manlet.

>>31439602
>Solution: Give them some neck exercises to do
That's like telling new mothers they don't need to put their babies in carseats as long as they do some curls and rows at the gym.

>>31439618
Thats the statistical part of this
Working your arms, legs, and core doesn't do anything to strength your neck. Just because statistics say that people who weigh more tend to have stronger necks doesn't mean that eating more will automatically give YOU a stronger neck, if before you were some 130lb skinny manlet.

>>31439621
yes because its babies flying the f-35 huh?

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>>31439653
>Just because statistics say that people who weigh more tend to have stronger necks
You completely missed the point.

It's not that larger people have stronger necks. It's that the instantaneous force is less in all phases of the ejection with a heavier body. More inertia means the energy is spread out over more time as the chute opens, reducing the violence of the act. Even then, ejecting inherently causes at least muscle sprains in the neck in even heavy pilots.

If the pilot does not weigh enough, the instantaneous force in a higher-speed ejection is far higher, meaning more violent head motion, meaning higher chance of catastrophic neck damage.

>>31439653
>yes because its babies flying the f-35 huh?
The point, my physics-illiterate friend, is that in the violence of things like automobile impacts and aircraft ejections, human muscle power is about as relevant as saying a big fat June bug slows a car more than a mosquito does when it gets smashed on the windscreen.

>>31439457

and that's not an insignificant contribution. i can attest firsthand that EM theory guides how the AF instructs and evaluates (HA)BFM/ACM/DCA/OCA(the last two to a lesser extent).

>>31439786
It's important, but Boyd's contribution wasn't as significant as he or his buddies made it out to be. Which was "Boyd is the greatest fighter pilot ever and if you don't listen to him you'll lose."

>>31439730
And how much does the seat weigh? 100 lbs?

I highly doubt 20 extra lbs makes some massive difference more than say, strengthening the spine & muscles.

If so they could easily just add some ballast to the light pilot.

>>31439653
You ain't getting it. It has nothing to do with muscles or strength.

First, the human neck and spine is beautifully engineered to handle the stresses of running, jumping, fighting, working, moderate falls, everything that happens on the scale of muscle-driven events. But at the end of the day, it's a flexible 6" moment arm with an 11 pound weight at the end of it.

When you take the overall energy and force involved in an ejection, we're well over one, getting toward two orders of magnitude the force levels of what the body is designed to cope with. Then we've added another 1.5 times the weight at the end of our flexible moment arm, which further heavily increases the angular momentum.

Two major factors:
>lighter helmet means less angular momentum to counter
>riser net and delayed drogue spreads the force out a little longer to avoid hyper extension

It's more pronounced because the pilots are lighter, thus the parachute opening decreases velocity more abruptly. Again, muscle has nothing to do with it.

>>31439730
this is coming from something i vaguely recall reading once, but i'm pretty sure most pilots are stripped of their wings after 2 or more ejections due to spinal injuries. not plane losses so keep that in mind.

>>31439841
>And how much does the seat weigh? 100 lbs?
Anon. Jesus. Watch the fucking video. It happens after the seat is already detached, as the fucking chute is opening.

If you're going to argue like a fucking moron, at least know what you're arguing about. At 130 pounds, call it 150 with full flight gear, 20 pounds is 13% of the total mass.

So, yes, it's pretty fucking significant, especially when they were already concerned with helmet weight during an ejection.

>>31439830

i'd say that "Boyd was a good fighter pilot, who gave us an important method of quantifying and analyzing fighter performance and fighter pilot performance, was instrumental in getting the Lightweight Fighter started even if it didn't end up like how he envisioned, and the author of some theories that really only were tried in the Gulf War"

>>31439863

there are plenty of non-ejection seat jets you can fly.

>>31439890
stripped of their wings as in not allowed to fly fighter jets anymore

>>31439901

that's not what "stripped of their wings" means.

and there's waivers for everything.

>>31439890
>"Boyd was a good fighter pilot, who gave us an important method of quantifying and analyzing fighter performance and fighter pilot performance, was instrumental in getting the Lightweight Fighter started even if it didn't end up like how he envisioned, and the author of some theories that really only were tried in the Gulf War"
You're going to completely skip the part where the tactics he helped develop and codify in 1965, including the standard 4-ship formation, got a shit ton of pilots killed in Vietnam? Are we going to pretend that he knew anything at all about BVR combat, even WVR missile combat (energy envelopes, etc, for firing)? Are we going to retroactively say he was a founding father of modern aviation, as your thoughts seem to suggest, when he was really an early jet aviator who had trouble moving beyond a completely WWII zoom and boom with guns mindset?

Boyd is who he is, and he did do some positive things for USAF aviation. But let's not pretend his legacy is not mixed.

>>31439915
I would be very interested in any sources on a double Martin-Baker Club member who can pass a flight physical. Because if he exists, I sure as hell haven't met him.

>>31439856
>It has nothing to do with muscles or strength.

It of course has everything to do with that... what do you think stops the neck from breaking normally??

>>31439930

i was only listing his positives. given how many times i've been told about rate vs radius fights, and had EM diagrams on posters in BFM briefs, i'd say his contribution is pretty fucking important. i'm not saying he's right about everything. your criticism are spot on.

but to say he's totally irrelevant today is wrong.

>>31439944

"the standard answer is: it depends"

>>31438577
Thanks, OP.

>>31438748
Vietnam part was spot on, thorough-yet-succinct.

>>31439949
>what do you think stops the neck from breaking normally??
Not subjecting the neck to massive amounts of strain in a short amount of time.

>>31439890
>Boyd was a good fighter pilot
Flew a bit over a quarter of a tour in Korea, never used his weapons in said flights, and during the most pivotal period in the Air Force's history was a desk jockey going against the progression of actual combat experience.

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>>31439949
>what do you think stops the neck from breaking normally??
Dumb fuck. Listen up. It's not "normally". It's fucking "car wreck at 60+ miles an hour". That's what a canopy deployment at 400+ knots is, the kind of instantaneous force we're talking about here. If you think the extra neck muscles you might build in a gym have jack shit to do with whether or not you break your neck in a car collision at those speeds, you're a completely uneducated fucking moron.

>>31440019

and the last man in the Air Force who shot down an enemy aircraft retired as a 4-star general a few years ago.

doesn't mean we're not training to fight against bad guys with various BVR missiles.

>>31440076
Except that up until Red Flag (the same year Boyd retired) was implemented the training for fighter pilots was basically nonexistent and combat experience in Vietnam was a critical turning point in Air Force culture. Post-Red Flag all AF fighter pilots had more equivalent combat experience than Boyd.

>>31440076
>and the last man in the Air Force who shot down an enemy aircraft retired as a 4-star general a few years ago.
I find this very difficult to believe, considering an F-16 shot down an Iranian UAV over Iraq in 2009. That was only 7 years ago. Plus all the pilots in their 50s now who got A2A victories in Desert Storm.

>>31440149

and this is relevant to Boyd's legacy how?

>>31440158

if you can find a pilot with an A/A kill to his name who's active duty, then i'd be impressed.

i know guys who've unloaded the entirety of their missile loadouts in the Gulf War.

>>31439863
I thought that was meant as implying your comrades will break your spine if you keep trashing expensive aircraft.

>>31440179
>and this is relevant to Boyd's legacy how?
Boyd was a supreme bullshit artist with "stopped clock" syndrome who managed to get one thing right, and never learned anything of value from Vietnam because he was too far up his own ass.

>>31440193
hah, i like the image of that. your fellow pilots come out with a bunch of torque wrenches and royally fuck your shit up once you get off medical leave.

>>31440237

it was a pretty fucking huge thing to get right.

the fact that he codified basic shit like "how do you think through shit" = OODA loop and "how do i max perform my jet to kill best" = EM Theory is a massive legacy, considering how before it people thought you couldn't analyze something as dynamic as an air-to-air engagement. but what do i know, i only flew an ACM ride yesterday.

that he discounted the importance and change in tactics of new advances isn't wrong. but the basic framework he gave us is still useful and relevant today, even if i spend most of my day worrying about a PL-12 defensive timeline instead of what a no-respect lead repo buys me/how to stuff him by putting the lift vector on until he bottoms out.

also there's the whole issue of the Gulf War.

not saying he's perfect. he's due less credit than the public gives him, and more than /k/ gives him.

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>>31438577
>I feel a bit meh about this next episode, but we'll see what the public thinks; I'm probably just a bit jaded on having it sitting around for months.

It was well done, especially the ejection seat explanation. I think you are just unsatisfied because there was less covered than you had intended.

>>31440291
He also advocated to the nebulous concept of "maneuver warfare" while horribly mischaracterizing US doctrine as "attrition warfare" while pushing for a procurement policy that was straight-up attrition warfare concept (cheap in mass numbers which was the goal of the Red Bird concept).

And it's notable that E-M as Boyd combined into a computer sim capability is basically gone now in 5th Gen, as the things the Critics hated - technology - are rendering it less important as information is the most valuable resource, not engine power.

>>31440291
>"how do you think through shit" = OODA loop and "how do i max perform my jet to kill best" = EM Theory is a massive legacy, considering how before it people thought you couldn't analyze something as dynamic as an air-to-air engagement.
It should be noted that in both these cases, Boyd was instrumental only in actually codifying thought that had long since been in actual use. While his contributions should be recognized, as in many things, just because his name was on it does not mean he was the central figure behind the philosophies entailed.

The practical concepts and skills behind energy fighting were in extensive use back in WWII. Just look at Hellcat/Corsair/etc. tactics against Zeros for an extreme example. While Boyd was the first to really work at gathering all the concepts in one place and use a mathematician to help define the terms and bound the discussion, he did not invent the concepts.

The above dynamic applies even more obviously and directly to the OODA loop. Yes, he put a good name on it. Yes, he put the best of breed concepts in one package. No, he most certainly did not invent something new. He just came up with a snazzy and memorable way to get it across. The concepts themselves can be found in nearly every major philosophy of thought or warfare work going back to and before Clauswitz's On War, Musashi's Five Rings, Sun Tzu's Art of War, arguably even the Bible/Torah (think about how Moses' struggle with being chosen to lead the Exodus is written, for instance).

Boyd was a good marketer with an excellent sense of how to bring high concepts into use at a basic level. I'm just not sure he was any sort of genius.

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>>31438577
How effective will the F-35 be in an air superiority role?

A lot of people seem to think it's terrible and will get rekt by Flankers etc but would it's stealth and sensors not help it hold it's own despite not being dedicated towards it?

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>>31441612
Pretty damn well; it's not as fast or as agile as something like an F-22 or Su-35 or Typhoon, but it's more agile than people generally assume; it can pedal turn (yaw/turn at high alpha largely via rudder) at a sustained 26 degrees per second for example (see the last link for source). Besides that, it's roughly on par with / in some ways superior to the F-22 for stealth, has one of the best, if not the best IRST system of any fighter, has excellent EW / cyber capabilities, has one of the best radars on any fighter, etc.

As far as combat training exercises go:

>0 losses in 8 dogfights against F-15E Red Air
https://theaviationist.com/2016/06/27/f-15e-strike-eagles-unable-to-shoot-down-the-f-35s-in-8-dogfights-during-simulated-deployment/)

>The 33rd FW (F-35A squadron) scored over 110 kills against “enemy aircraft,” supported a surge of 138 sorties and dropped 24 GBU-12 bombs during Northern Lightning.
https://www.dvidshub.net/news/208740/f-35a-completes-largest-deployment-date

>Not a single F-35 was “shot down” during the joint-force Green Flag exercises testing the jet and its pilots’ prowess operating it in a contested air-support role in the Western U.S. this month, according to U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Cameron Dadgar, head of the exercise and leader of the 549th Combat Training Sqdn. at Nellis AFB, Nevada. This is notable because A-10s and F-16s were defeated in the same conditions, operating in an environment with hostile aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, he said.
http://aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-unscathed-hostile-fire-green-flag

>Pilots selected the F-35A 100 percent of the time in beyond-visual-range situations and over 80 percent of dogfighting situations where energy and maneuverability are critical to success
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/08/operational-assessment-of-the-f-35a-argues-for-full-program-procurement-and-concurrent-development-process

>>31440674

being able to write all that down into a easy to digest manor is a big deal. again, you're underestimating how important it was for these concepts to be codified. even if it was simple ideas that have been in the ether for a long time, somebody still needs to put pen on paper why turning into a one circle fight with a Zero was a bad idea.

again, OODA Loop and EM is foundational to how the AF flies

>>31440365

while the odds of a F-35 shooting a AIM-9 at somebody are extremely low other than at WSEP/Combat Archer, EM is still of relevance in the BVR arena. imparting smash and loft to the missile is still important to maximizing FLO and missile endgame available G which determines if it's a HP or MP kill, and the skills you learn on 6k and 9k perches about aircraft control are still valuable here (and on basically all other aspects of flying the aircraft.)

Dragon threads are the best because they leave zero room for chicom/vatnik shenanigans.

>>31441884
There's nobody saying the pilot's skills aren't valuable, but they literally don't matter as much as the data that being fed to him to make those decisions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxK6O5--9Z0

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>>31438577
Question.
if the neck breaking while ejecting is so problematic why pilots don't use these braces like in pic related like drivers in F1 use?
They allow full neck movement while making it rigid as fuck since its supported by the shoulders and the occipital bone.

>>31442692

It's not full neck movement, they can't look directly back or look down. Mostly they just took to the side and through their rear view mirrors, which isn't enough for a fighter pilot. Especially that DAS is giving them the capability to see through the floor.

>>31442875
It obviously can be improved since that version is specifically designed for car cockpit not an aircraft.
The idea still stands as better than modifying whole seat and helmet in order to increase chances of survival when this type of thing can be almost always effective no matter the size of the pilot.

>>31442692

Sometimes the way to do it is to actually lay your head over against the canopy/headbox. Kind of weird to think about but if you're engaged left 2C and fairly neutral, touch the back of your head to your right shoulder and look up and left. Gives your neck some relief and makes it easier to keep sight.

>>31442925
to be fair the "cheapest solution" would just to ban underweight pilots, but that would put a wasp up the ass of femnazi's and faggot white knight senators.

>>31444160

It's not that the pilots are underweight. JHMCs is heavy as shit.

>>31445389
they clearly are. they are seeing damage below 136lbs not above. if you are under 136lbs eat a fucking sandwich or fuck off. hell they used to have height requirements so I see no problem with this

>>31445980
It's just female pilots basically. Even shorter men will probably break 140lbs.

>>31446014
The only pilot affected so far was male.

>>31445389

JHMCS isn't in the F-35. their helmet's another thing entirely.

>>31441884
You've made your point, but I think you're missing the reason why you're getting so much resistance here. Boyd did make some good contributions, but they were pretty much eclipsed by his failures, mistakes and shortcomings. And they weren't small ones either.

>>31446036
This. Not every guy weighs 136lbs and up. A lot of folks are just, well, small. Plus, the modifications they're making seem to be very cheap and simple solutions, such as the netting behind the head.

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>>31441863
Great answer, thanks.

>>31438577
nice vid subbed

>>31446640

not if you ask the AF at large today.

once again, OODA Loop and EM Theory are foundational. as in, taught at IFF, UPT/UCT, and in your military science classes before you commission.

as i've said, /k/ gives the man too little credit, while the AF/society gives him too much. we can't criticize him for being dead wrong on the impact of technology and realistic training without acknowledging where he's right and immensely influential.

>>31446793
You have to keep in mind the AF is likely only looking at what remaining influence Boyd's legacy has. Meanwhile, /k/ is looking at the whole damn history from head to toe. Of course he looks like a complete and utter moron to /k/. His mistakes and failures, when looked at in this manner, really do eclipse his positive contributions.

Though, remember that I'm givingg you my opinion on why he gets all the flak.

>>31446976

or because it's the internet and we love shitting on things.

>>31446993
t. William Lind

>>31445980

The 136 pound minimum is the same on the NACES seat. Why is it suddenly a problem on the F-35?

>>31446508
Okay. Still a heavy ass helmet.

>>31447038
t. LIGHT RAIL ENTHUSIAST

ftfy

>>31447265
The F-35's seat has a 103lb minimum; the ejection fatality issue is largely only for those between 103lb and 136lb.

For the JSF they wanted a wider pilot range so that they can get certain pilots that may have all the skills, intelligence, etc needed, but are otherwise just too short or thin (I knew a guy who became a WSO who was / still would be right on the line of too lightweight - he was very fit and ate a shit ton, but he just had a very fast metabolism).