Navy Doesn't Seem to Care That the F-35 Can't Dogfight

In trials off the California coast in January 2015, a 1980s-vintage U.S. Air Force F-16 repeatedly defeated one of the flying branch’s brand-new F-35A Joint Strike Fighter stealth jets in mock dogfights. “The F-35 was at a distinct energy disadvantage,” the unnamed JSF pilot wrote in a scathing five-page brief that War Is Boring obtained.

But the U.S. Navy — the third-largest purchaser of F-35s — seems unperturbed. Indeed, in recent planning the Navy describes the JSF less as a traditional fighter than as radar-evading, flying sensor and communications node.

The Navy apparently doesn’t care that its F-35C version of the stealth jet — as well as the Marines’ F-35B model — is a poor performer in raw kinetic terms. In the sailing branch’s evolving battle scheme, the JSF will focus onfinding targets … for older F/A-18 fighters and missile-armed warships to shoot down.

In addition, the JSF comes with the Northrop Grumman AN/AAQ-37 Distributed Aperture System, a bank of six infrared cameras scattered around the airframe that automatically detects heat plumes from incoming missiles and other threats. Finally, the F-35 boasts BAE Systems’ highly-sensitive AN/ASQ-239 electronic warfare suite, which listens for enemy radar signals.

Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker, the Navy’s top aviator, called the JSF’s sensor combo a “game-changer.” “Suck[ing] in all that information,” an F-35 can paint “a great, clear picture of who’s good and who’s bad.”

And that can help solve one of the Navy’s biggest problems — identifying targets at long range inside enemy lines so that surface ships and non-stealthy F/A-18 fighters can bring to bear their SM-6 and AIM-120 missiles, which can travel farther than the shooters’ sensors can see.

Indeed, the Navy is building an entire battle plan around the F-35’s sensors and its ability to share sensor data via radio data-link, all while avoiding detection by enemy forces. “The F-35 will lead the way ashore, disabling information nodes and grids, while providing the air-ground task force with unprecedented awareness of opposing challenges,” the Navy explained in itsNaval Aviation Vision planning document from 2014.

“The F-35B/C will integrate various active and passive sensors from multiple aircraft into the F-35’s operational picture,” the document adds. “This process automatically formulates weapons-quality tracks for each target that can then be shared with other aircraft and ships, enabling them to engage the target.”

The Navy has a name for this battle plan — “Naval Integrated Fire Control — Counter-Air,” or NIFC-CA. There’s actually a lot more to it than just F-35s, F-18s and destroyers. At its heart, NIFC-CA is actually an expanded version of the Aegis system that equips all of the Navy’s cruisers and destroyers.

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By itself on a warship, Aegis combines radars and missiles to detect, track, target and destroy enemy planes and rockets. NIFC-CA extends the Aegis system via a network, so that multiple ships plus E-2D radar planes, drones, EA-18G airborne jammers, fighters and even Army airships can all feed sensor data to shooters in the air and on the surface.

“The NIFC-CA operational view extends the battlespace, increases survivability and provides maximum engagement capability in the air and at sea,” according to Naval Aviation Vision.

Critically, the F-35 is the only stealthy contributor to the NIFC-CA network that the Navy acknowledges — so it’s arguably the best sensor platform for gathering data for the network even when enemy radars are scanning and enemy fighters are patrolling. With its radar-absorbing coating, the F-35 might be able to sneak past defenders without firing a shot. For an F-18 to do the same thing, it’d first have to fight its way through opposing forces.

If it’s sneaking and sensing instead of merely fighting, a JSF might not need to be a superior dogfighter. That’s why, to the Navy, it apparently doesn’t matter that an F-16 turns faster than an F-35.

The first Marines F-35B squadron is on track to declare “initial operating capability” in July 2015. The Navy’s F-35C should be combat-ready sometime in 2018. The sailing branch fired the first test missile using NIFC-CA in 2013 and deployed the network for the first time with the USS Theodore Rooseveltcarrier battle group in March 2015.

This article originally appeared at War Is Boring.