[kaizendad]

Although a significant cause of the kill ratio issue over Vietnam was restrictive rules of engagement, which prohibited beyond visual range engagement with missiles such as Sparrow, which the VPAF had no counters to whatsoever. These rules of engagement effectively required these turning dogfights, but would not have been present in a large-scale shooting war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

This does, of course, beg the question: how well would an F-35 do in a conflict with restrictive rules of engagement, such as might be found in future US-Iraq/Afghanistan-style conflicts.

[smacktoward]

Well, Sparrow had problems of its own, namely absolutely dismal reliability and the need to maintain continuous radar lock on the target during the missile's entire flight time (e.g. no "fire and forget" capability). But that doesn't invalidate your broader point about dogfights being more likely under restrictive RoE.

The thing is though, if history is any indication, wars so total as to have completely permissive RoEs aren't the wars that we actually ever fight. Even if you imagine a war with a full-on peer competitor like Russia or China, it's not hard to imagine scenarios where RoEs are restricted in an effort to keep the scope of the conflict from widening -- an important consideration when both sides have nuclear weapons!

So I think the general point still stands. If the balloon ever goes up on World War III, we probably won't see a lot of dogfighting. But there's a whole spectrum of conflicts underneath that, and building an air force entirely around fighters that can't handle the rest of that spectrum at least competently is going to be a problem.

[openasocket]

Also consider the massive improvements in avionics since Vietnam. You don't have to close to visual range anymore to confirm the target is a jet fighter and not a passenger plane.