Eurofighter Typhoon Beats F-35 in Dogfight Over Germany!

A German Air Force pilot, assigned to the German Air Force Weapons School, conducts strafing runs with a Eurofighter Typhoon in conjunction with US Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controller assigned to 2d Air Support Operations Squadron identifying targets on the ground at the 7th Army Training Command’s Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, June 9, 2021. (US Army photo by Gertrud Zach) Public domain

Imagine you are a US Air Force fighter pilot who flies the F-35A Lightning II — America’s preeminent, fifth-generation, multi-role combat aircraft.

You’ve just been handed a slip of paper with nothing but a location (somewhere over Germany) and an altitude and told to fly there and engage whatever you see.

You won’t know who you’re fighting until the merge.

As you approach the merge, you can feel your anticipation build — like most fighter pilots, you are incredibly competitive and, like any professional, you’ve learned to channel that nervous energy into focus and concentration.

Then you see it.

“Oh boy, there’s a Eurofighter.”

Just a disclaimer: even though I wasn’t a pilot in the US Air Force (I was a radar nerd), I am fully instrument-rated on Microsoft Flight Simulator 1995. Ahem…

Now, it’s worth mentioning that simply because the fourth-generation Eurofighter beat the fifth-generation F-35 in this single engagement does not mean this is a definitive statement of the F-35’s quality.

First, pilot skill really matters. Mario Andretti could drive a minivan and beat most regular drivers in racecars at Nürburgring.

Second, the F-35 isn’t really a dogfighter. What I mean is that if an F-35 finds itself in a dogfight, then the pilot is already having a bad day.

But before we get into that, what happened in the dogfight?

In a video released by the US Department of Defense, German Eurofighter pilot 1st Lt. Alexander Grant and US F-35 pilot Capt. Patrick Pearce broke down their head-to-head dogfight at Ramstein Air Base.

The two pilots, one flying the European-made Eurofighter Typhoon and the other piloting the American F-35A, used paper planes to demonstrate their in-air maneuvers, sharing a rare glimpse into NATO’s top-tier air combat capabilities.