nah. as sensor packages and missile technology advances, so do countermeasures, while the good ole bullet is harder to fool.

"The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter proponents’ riposte has been that the AIM-120 is a 100% reliable and 100% kill probability missile, so each F-35 carrying four AIM-120’s will account for four Sukhois or MiGs. This is a dangerously naive assumption. Operationally, the AIM-120 has achieved 10 BVR kills from 17 shots – a Pk or “kill probability” of 0.59 (59 percent) against benign or “dumb” targets. The AIM-120 has been tested in over 200 test firings, with a reliability of about 85 percent, so statistically speaking, about one of those four AIM-120s will be a dud." > http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-070109-1.html

also, once the 6-10 aa missiles you carry are spent, if you aren't faster than the enemy you cannot just disappear.

>'Operationally, the AIM-120 has achieved 10 BVR kills from 17 shots – a Pk or “kill probability” of 0.59 (59 percent) against benign or “dumb” targets.'

Fyi, frequencies are not probabilities. That was one of the points that, as he neared the end of his life, lead Ronald Fisher to say that mass confusion over stats would be the downfall of the next set of nations:

"We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and highly intelligent young men out into the world with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. In this century, of course, they will be working on guided missiles and advising the medical profession on the control of disease, and there is no limit to the extent to which they could impede every sort of national effort." Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274. http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher272.pdf

Here is another good paper from him on that: http://www.phil.vt.edu/dmayo/PhilStatistics/Triad/Fisher%201...

Chapter 9 here also covers it from a different perspective: http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html

ikr, but there is no much more operational data beyond that. also, not my quote, and the point was just that at some point you need a fallback weapon

I had never seen evidence of the "guided missiles" part of Fisher's prediction before. In medicine it is obvious...so maybe I am just not familiar, is there mass confusion in weapons research too?

don't know about missiles but if we include rocket science in general there is plenty literature on how they cheated statistics to get the shuttle going https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roge...

> The AIM-120 has been tested in over 200 test firings, with a reliability of about 85 percent, so statistically speaking, about one of those four AIM-120s will be a dud.

I didn't realize it's that bad. I guess action and sci-fi movies make you believe military equipment is much more reliable than it really is.

well don't take my comment as a slam to miltech, it's actually quite good once you consider it's gonna need to work at supersonic speed with all the forces entailed, targeting and intercepting a supersonic target, while being subject to all kind of electronic countermeasures, starting from beyond visual range and flying for an extended time before target acquisition via remote radio controls.

>The dogfighting scenario is pretty much extinct.

That's been a common theme since the advent of the air-to-air missile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogfight#Balkans_conflict

F-16 is far from irrelevant.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, we routinely get a lot of Asian air forces over here on exercise (in Australia). I go to their open days all the time and talk to the pilots and take photos of the planes.

Interestingly, the Royal Thai air force has the older Block 30 airframes, whereas the Singapore Air Force as the newer Block 50 airframes fully fitted out with ECM packs etc. They almost look like two completely different aircraft models if it wasn't for the iconic under fuselage intake.

> The dogfighting scenario is pretty much extinct.

This is oft repeated but not true. As advanced as missiles are, counter-measures are equally advanced. When two equally sophisticated planes engage each other, there's always the possibility that neither will shoot down the other, and they'll wind up in a dogfighting scenario.

Of course in recent history warfare has been highly asymmetrical, with advanced militaries only engaging weaker forces.

NATO air forces still fly the F-16. The Su-27 and newer models are large planes with a long range (similar to F-15) and would be expected to fly into NATO territory to hunt NATO refuelers and AWACS.

The F-35 was scheduled to take over those roles.

The F-16 is massively exported and now many countries have them, so that's why I was speculating about a variation.

This particular dogfighting scenario is pretty much extinct, but there's a line of thought that "stealth" aircrafts would in fact bring back dogfights. It's pretty logical: if you can't detect an aircraft from far away, that leaves only one place to meet it: up close.

I beg to differ. Even without mentionning "exotic" manoeuvers such as what you can perform successfully in flight simulators (that may not be as easy to do in reality), the electronic war superiority demonstrated recently by Russians would let me believe that they could easily approach any US target. And let me tell you, it's very difficult to hit a close target when you only have long range missiles...

> the electronic war superiority demonstrated recently by Russians

Do you have any references on that?

I think he's referencing hype news pieces produced by RT and alike about their 'accomplishes' in Syria where they've 'bested US and NATO' forces.

Should take that with spoons of salt though.