Covid and the on going quarantine made me extremely bored so I thought I will ask a weird question for fun. The scenario presented isn't supposed to be fair or realistic, it just supposed to be a question about a hypothetical scenario.
The question design the best load out combination and tactic for a single F-35 to penetrate Type 55's air defense. By penetrate, I don't mean that you make F-35 (in stealth configuration) staying out of Type 055 SAM bubble and throw JSM in, because it is very easy to have antiship cruise missile with longer range than SAM and a stealth aircraft will have very good chance of detect the destroyer and attack it first. But the highly cutting edge air defense of Type 055 will have very easy time intercept only 2 missiles. So the main goal of my question is find out which load out have the highest chance (even if still very small) of passing through the defense and do some physical damage on the ship
Ground rules:
_ You are only allowed to use 1 F-35 and in 1 sortie, neither side has any third party support but they know vaguely the direction that the enemy will come from before hand.
_ You don't have to sink the cruiser, any physical damage on the ship count as a win as long as your aircraft doesn't get shot down
_ All equipment are assumed to work properly, nothing is broken due to poor maintenance
_ The loadout doesn't have to ensure penetration of the air defense all the time, it only have to be greater than 0%
_ You can combine weapons used by different countries as long as that weapon is or will be certificated to be used on F-35. So you can combine something like UK Spear 3 with Israel Spice 250 on the same aircraft. But not something like ASMP and Kh-31.
The current set up that I think will have the most success with is: 2 DASH-X + 12 SPEAR-EW + 2 AARGM-ER.
The 2 DASH-X is released early to locate the location of Type 055 with their ESM antenna. This will also allow F-35 to keep track of Type 055 even when the aircraft is below radar horizon. Once the location is fixed, F-35 will approach that location from low altitude (below radar horizon). At about 50-60 km from targets, SPEAR-EW are launched toward the bearing of Type 055. Once the jamming drones are about 30 km from the cruiser and the cruiser start to attack the jamming drone with HQ-9 SAM. Start open fire on the cruiser with your AARGM-ER. I tested this set up in Command Modern Operations and the result seem promising, I can penetrate the defense about 25-30% of the time. Though to be fair, my version of CMO doesn't have SPEAR-EW and DASH-X so I have to substitute that with 12 MALD-J launched from B-52.
I think ROCKS is also a strong contender to replace AARGM-ER in the set up above, because it has an optical sensor to avoid jamming from the cruise, it is faster (Mach 5) and it can dive from very steep angle
The question design the best load out combination and tactic for a single F-35 to penetrate Type 55's air defense. By penetrate, I don't mean that you make F-35 (in stealth configuration) staying out of Type 055 SAM bubble and throw JSM in, because it is very easy to have antiship cruise missile with longer range than SAM and a stealth aircraft will have very good chance of detect the destroyer and attack it first. But the highly cutting edge air defense of Type 055 will have very easy time intercept only 2 missiles. So the main goal of my question is find out which load out have the highest chance (even if still very small) of passing through the defense and do some physical damage on the ship
Ground rules:
_ You are only allowed to use 1 F-35 and in 1 sortie, neither side has any third party support but they know vaguely the direction that the enemy will come from before hand.
_ You don't have to sink the cruiser, any physical damage on the ship count as a win as long as your aircraft doesn't get shot down
_ All equipment are assumed to work properly, nothing is broken due to poor maintenance
_ The loadout doesn't have to ensure penetration of the air defense all the time, it only have to be greater than 0%
_ You can combine weapons used by different countries as long as that weapon is or will be certificated to be used on F-35. So you can combine something like UK Spear 3 with Israel Spice 250 on the same aircraft. But not something like ASMP and Kh-31.
The current set up that I think will have the most success with is: 2 DASH-X + 12 SPEAR-EW + 2 AARGM-ER.
The 2 DASH-X is released early to locate the location of Type 055 with their ESM antenna. This will also allow F-35 to keep track of Type 055 even when the aircraft is below radar horizon. Once the location is fixed, F-35 will approach that location from low altitude (below radar horizon). At about 50-60 km from targets, SPEAR-EW are launched toward the bearing of Type 055. Once the jamming drones are about 30 km from the cruiser and the cruiser start to attack the jamming drone with HQ-9 SAM. Start open fire on the cruiser with your AARGM-ER. I tested this set up in Command Modern Operations and the result seem promising, I can penetrate the defense about 25-30% of the time. Though to be fair, my version of CMO doesn't have SPEAR-EW and DASH-X so I have to substitute that with 12 MALD-J launched from B-52.
I think ROCKS is also a strong contender to replace AARGM-ER in the set up above, because it has an optical sensor to avoid jamming from the cruise, it is faster (Mach 5) and it can dive from very steep angle
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