It's a high performance fighter with a gun and SRMs, so...

talldayo · 2024-09-29T00:43:08 1727570588

...so you turn around and go home long before you're forced into a gun fight.

Sure, the F-35 is a multirole fighter aircraft with a gun - so is the F-15E, but that doesn't make it a dogfighter. If you're in a position where a guns solution is your only kill option in an F-15 or an F-35, something has gone terribly wrong. Pretty much everything about both jets is designed to operate in a theater with extremely high levels of air support and friendly materiel. It is assumed that they won't get into a dogfight because it is extraordinarily rare for an F-35 to exhaust two AIM-120s in a single sortie, let alone the 6 it can carry in stealth mode or the whopping 12 AMRAAMs that the F-15 can lug along.

Even as far back as the Vietnam War, forcing a missile truck like the F-4 into a dogfight with a MiG-15 was a death sentence. You don't need a very active imagination to suppose how an F-35 fares in a guns-only dogfight against an Su-27.

the__alchemist · 2024-09-29T11:49:36 1727610576

FYSA, F-15Es and F-35 squadrons train to BFM all the time, and it happens in exercises all the time. The enemy gets a vote, and fog of war is real. I suspect the key piece you are missing is: If an engagement happens when you're in a stern WEZ, you may have to go to the merge.

Also, you are not carrying that many MRMs on an eagle unless it's the new one with quad packs.

jcgrillo · 2024-09-29T14:43:46 1727621026

F35s (I believe from the 134th fighter squadron of the VT Air Guard) train over my house regularly and I can confirm they do quite a lot of slow, close quarters dogfighting.

EDIT: I believe I've also seen F22s but I have no idea where they're from.