I have seen comments over and over saying traditional dogfights are over, but don’t most pilot training programs still emphasize dogfight training? The F-35 is also still very much an agile plane. If dogfights are in the past, why are modern stealth fighters not just large missile/bomb/drone trucks built to emphasize payload?
In: Engineering
I mean, the quick and dirty answers;
>why do pilots still train for it
They don’t (sort of).
>and why are planes still built for it?
They aren’t (kinda).
The whole question of the irrelevancy of dogfighting was brought up as a result of Vietnam. The US was wrong back then to think that dogfighting was a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean the general concept that dogfights could be rendered obsolete isn’t correct.
>The F-35 is also still very much an agile plane.
It actually…isn’t…kinda? The best of the 4th gens are actually more impressive than the F-35 from a maneuverability standpoint, but it also doesn’t *need* to be a better dogfighter.
Granted, its big brother the F-22 is *obscenely* impressive and agile, but it’s also arguably inferior to the F-35, entirely due to the aspects of the F-35 that allow it to essentially sidestep dogfighting.
Latest Answers