Understanding the F-35: It's about information warfare.

My hypothesis (I have no expertise in this area) is that the public is blind to fundamental changes in (aerial) warfare, much like people in the 1930s might have criticized aircraft carriers for poor guns and armor. The articles below revolutionized my perspective: Warfare is now (or will be) information technology warfare. The article at the end is best, but first a few excerpts:

1) Instead of focusing on individual planes, squadrons, or "strike packages" executing a particular mission, the new concept looks at all the deployed aircraft as a whole, linked together by secure wireless networks into the "combat cloud." This cloud would be enabled by "fifth generation" aircraft — specifically F-22s and a substantial number of F-35s — and their ability to connect electronically both to each other and to legacy aircraft. [1] This combat cloud shares data in a sort of mesh network, so instead of a pilot seeing only their own plane's sensor data they see the combined sensor data of all planes in the cloud, and share that with units and command on the ground.

2) Another way to describe it is that the fifth generation aircraft are primarily forward-deployed nodes in a network (fighting an enemy network across an air gap); there's even talk of their pilots operating fleets of drones. [2]

3) The sensor data's UI is much improved, with a massive impact (something HN readers will appreciate): "In my fourth gen airplane, I was the fusion engine, the pilot was the fusion engine. I took the inputs from the RHWG, from the Radar Homing Warning Gear, from the radar, from the com, multiple radios, from my instruments. I fused that into what was happening in the battlespace, all the while I’m trying to do the mechanical things of flying my airplane and dodging missiles and all these sorts of things," he says. / Combine the fusion engine, the ISR sensors, the designed-in stealth, the advanced helmet, and the eight million lines of software driving what it can do ... "What we’ve done with the fifth generation is the computer takes all those sensory inputs, fuses it into information. The pilot sees a beautiful God’s eye view of what’s going on. And instead of having to fuse three pieces of information and decide if that’s an adversary or not, the airplane is telling him with an extremely high degree of confidence what that adversary is and what they’re doing and what all your wingmen are doing. It’s a stunning amount of information," [from the article in #6]

3) Stealth: In this new perspective it's information warfare defense, hiding data (your position, etc.) from the enemy, or sensor defense.

4) A leak said that F-35's could conduct cyber attacks on radar systems, effectively hacking the radar's computers via their sensor inputs (based on my limited understanding of limited info). [I can't find a good link at the moment]

5) Background: This combination of information warfare components (sensors, stealth, computers) are part a cohesive plan developed in the 1970s, the Pentagon's second "Long Range Research and Development Planning Program" or "Offset Strategy". A third is beginning now; some interesting background at the links. [3][4]

6) The best overview I've seen of the F-35 and the new form of warfare:
http://breakingdefense.com/2014/06/a-gods-eye-view-of-the-ba...

[1] http://breakingdefense.com/2013/01/why-the-air-force-needs-a...

[2] http://breakingdefense.com/2014/12/pawlikowski-on-air-force-...

[3] http://breakingdefense.com/2014/11/hagel-launches-offset-str...

[4] http://breakingdefense.com/2014/12/dod-to-silicon-valley-vcs...