And it's impossible to make replacement parts for the F-22 now. The US military paid Lockheed Martin to store all the custom tooling and manuals in case the production line needed to be restarted. A few years later that was attempted and the shipping containers holding all the tooling were empty!
I'm genuinely fascinated by this, but haven't been able to find more information. Was there an investigation? Did the tooling just get sent to the scrap heap? Who signed off on empty storage containers?
There is a semi-follow up article from the same source that says tooling was not lost.
>Moreover, the Air Force is auditing the Sierra Army Depot to make sure that the F-22 manufacturing tooling is secure—and thus far everything is in order. The audit is 85 percent complete and thus far all of the tooling has been found. Earlier, some Air Force officials had expressed concerns that the equipment had been misplaced—however, those concerns were unfounded as it turns out.[1]
Thank you. That's not nearly as exciting as all of it being stolen by Chinese spies, but "we looked in the wrong boxes at first" is a much more believable answer.
My interpretation of why the US still builds aircraft carriers is that it's some combination of bureaucratic inertia (so many careers invested in them) and industry lobbying. They are useful for projecting force against third-world countries, but against a country with a modern military, they'd probably be underwater in the first hour of any conflict.
The battleship has no remaining role. Blanket heavy shore bombardment really isn't needed much.
Every other capability - over the horizon engagement, force projection, command of the high sea could be handled better by the carrier. Thanks to the surface and underwater defence provided by the carrier group, a carrier is not yet as vulnerable as the battleship of old.
If the carrier within a group becomes too vulnerable, it sure as heck won't be replaced by battleships, vulnerable and increasingly obsolete since the 1930s. Just as certain to be underwater as any newly vulnerable carrier, even with a full scale carrier-like protection group.
What unique capability do you see they could bring?
What's the difference between a Battleship and a Destroyer? Are these defined per Country? Here in Australia we have the "Air Warfare Destroyer" but what exactly does that mean? Is it actually any different, or just a fancy name to obscure the fact that nothing has actually changed?
It used to be that these categories had very different roles. Nowadays, NATO defines these categories based on size. Well, technically the water displaced by the hull. The main difference is in how many missiles a given category can carry and how much a ship of that size costs.
Battleships only exist as mothballed reserves. A battleship was one of the largest ships in the fleet with massive guns and super thick armor. It was meant to fight in the major fleet vs. fleet battles. The name stems form "line of battle ship", because these ships were typically arrayed in a line starting back in the late middle ages. When WW2 showed that airplanes and missiles had made big guns and armor redundant, battleships were relegated to being giant anti-air plattforms that escorted the aircraft carriers. No one built any new ones since then, though "missile battleships" were studied for a while.
A massive step down in size are cruisers, who used to be ships that operated independently form the fleet. There are very few of those around nowadays and they tend to be the core of a fleet instead of cruising alone. You will often see them armed with hundreds of anti-ship missiles nowadays.
The next step down are destroyers, which are still fleet escorts (mostly against aircraft, hence Air Warfare Destroyer) in the major navies and have also taken up the role of going on independent operations. This is because smaller navies tend to not have any destroyers or bigger ships, so sending one destroyer armed with say 64 missiles can be sufficient. A destroyer used to be a relatively small ship that had the job of defending the fleet against other small ships like torpedoboats or submarines. The name stems from "torpedoboat destroyer".
The next smaller categories is frigates. These are the most numerous and are the workhorses of modern navies. They do convoy escort, but also defend bigger fleets from submarines. Many navies also send them on independent missions. They will tend to have 16 or 32 missiles, but won't typically have the big anti air radar a destroyer would. "Frigate" was the name used for sailing ships that couldn't stand in the line of battle. I.e. in say 1750 there would be only two categories: line'o'battleships and frigates.
Those categories are the major ocean-going combat ships. There are lots of smaller ships below that and a lot of support ships, too.
It seems you have a lot of knowledge of Naval ships and I was wondering if you could explain the practical difference between a Guided Missile Destroyer like the Arleigh-Burke class vs a Guided Missile Cruiser like the Ticonderoga class?
The difference was almost entirely the size. The US used to have very few cruisers during the 70ies, but the Soviet Union had a lot of ships that were much smaller than US cruisers, yet designated as cruisers. So the US simply redesignated all large destroyers (i.e. the entire Ticonderoga class) as cruisers, arguing that the larger size enabled them to e taskforce flagships. But the difference in size between the Ticonderogas and the first Burke's (build 15 years after the Ticos IIRC) was only roughly 1000 tons and by now the 3rd generation of Burkes is as large as the Ticos were.
At its simplest, displacement. A WW2 battleship was only a little less than a modern carrier at around 4-5x the displacement of a destroyer, and around 10x the displacement of a frigate, with even larger multiples of crew complement.
The least manoeuvrable ship of the fleet, typically the flagship of the pre-WW2 battle group with escort of destroyers sometimes also cruisers, frigates and support depending on what it was up to. A role that has been with the carrier in the post-WW2, increasingly missile world. I don't think any navy now retains any battleships, though most kept them around decades past their sell-by date.
The battleship (group) was the power that was used to project, and could be sent to far flung locations to bombard an inland target 25 or 30 miles away from the ship, conduct a naval battle or blockade a port well over the horizon. This is the doctrine of the late Victorian era and lapsed in the inter-war years. WW2 and Pearl Harbor very clearly put power projection with the carrier group. The job of the dozen 16" (18" in WW1, and Japanese WW2) and dozen or more 6" guns has been replaced post-war by air, and increasingly cruise and anti-ship missiles in the arsenal. A modern destroyer gets just 1-4 6" pea shooters with range only around 10 miles, but a decent selection of missiles, submarine and air defence that more than makes up for lack of gunnery.
Heavy shore bombardment is far cheaper by 16" capital guns than by missile, the last real instance being Desert Storm. In this role a battleship has no peer, it's less accurate than missile whilst flinging an awful lot more weight, but more accurate than heavy bombing. The modern era prefers precision by very expensive munitions. :)
A battleship didn't typically travel alone either. It generally had an escort of destroyers, sometimes cruisers and support vessels. Tirpitz had between 4 and ten destroyers escorting, yet was still mainly kept back.
I'm not trying to tout battleships. I'm just pointing out the insanity of investing heavily in carriers in this day and age. In a war against a real opponent, they're $20 billion target practice. I don't think the decision to continue developing and building them is based primarily on their effectiveness.
...defined in a way in which all the opponents we've fought real wars against in the last 7 decades are not “real opponents”...
The strategic nuclear triad tends to ensure that the opponents you consider “real opponents” are not our real opponents in the real wars that happen in the real world.
He's rather saying that in the asymmetric wars of the last decades the carrier did its job, and will continue to do so. However facing a symmetric opponent, whether its likely to happen or not, means that carriers aren't as useful, at least until you've ensured that you have accounted for all their subs as well as high speed missiles and rockets.
Facing a symmetric opponent that isn't holding back (e.g., to maintain deniability about their actual involvement), the US’s entire conventional arsenal is irrelevant (and, heck,even the tactical nuclear arsenal is mostly irrelevant.)
Of course, the same is true of the symmetric opponent, that is the way symmetry works.
I'm rejecting the idea that, for analysis of the utility of US military forces outside of the strategic triad, “real opponents” = “symmetric opponents”, and even casting doubt on the idea that, in the same context, “real opponents” ⊆ “symmetric opponents”.
The US hasn't fought any "real opponent" with anything approaching economic parity since WWII. As long as the US is beating up on countries like Iraq, Panama and Libya, its carriers are safe, as are its aircraft, etc.
Even against these weak opponents, however, it's still a big question as to why the US needs 10+ carrier fleets. Again, I strongly suspect the answer comes down to bureaucratic inertia and capture of the government by industry lobbies.
> Even against these weak opponents, however, it's still a big question as to why the US needs 10+ carrier fleets.
Because the Earth is big and ships are slow (and sometimes out of service), and also because deterrence can be necessary in a lot of places in close temporal proximity. (Whether this is the optimal use of resources considering non-military needs is another question, but there is a real purpose to the size of the fleet.)
They still have their place as there's little substitute for 50 aircraft brought to theatre. With increasing missile and sub effectiveness they may need to be kept back until the latter stages of a war, or used judiciously with an equivalent opponent. But that's been a discussion around capital ships that's come and gone ever since HMS Dreadnought brought in the very idea of a capital ship, and continued through WW2.
The interpretation I've found is after these battles (with US Carriers vs Japanese battleships in WW2) the tendency was to favor aircraft carriers and phase out battleships.
One big reason is how versatile and integral a carrier is in to a fleet. Carriers can send out scouts, attack, defend from hundreds of miles away from the carrier (where the ship is beyond the horizon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_horizon).
The weakness of a battleship is the target has to be tracked, and I think the best way to do that would be aerial recon. Battleships like Yamato then had pontoon type scout planes, but nothing like a carrier.
Without a carrier accompanying it, Yamato wouldn't be able to create a defensive perimeter of fighters to ward off dive bombers. I don't think it'd be able to effectively counter a fleet with carrier in the end.
They were certainly an extremely important platform in WWII. But since then, there have been enormous developments in rocketry which make aircraft carriers highly vulnerable. I've seen the arguments that anti-missile defenses will protect them, but I just don't buy it. This is today's version of "The bomber will always get through."
In that kind of conflict the carriers wouldn’t be in action. You might have some submarine and aerial stuff, but something that escalated that far would go nuclear.
Yes, but a large fleet of smaller ships is much more resilient than a small fleet of large ships. A carrier is a single, massively expensive and important target.
There are two types of radar for virtually everything air defense. The first type searches the entire skies and is for finding aircraft. Networked versions of this are much harder for stealth aircraft to hide from entirely however they have the radar signature of small birds. The S400 and upcoming S500 from Russia is an excellent version of this, but is itself vulnerable to electronic warfare countermeasures. Turning the sensitivity down low enough to detect small birds makes it impossible to use the radars from a practical sense.
The second type of radar has an extremely narrow beam and is for targeting. This is the radar that locks onto a plane to direct missiles at it to shoot it down. This is the one that stealth aircraft pretty much entirely defeat. So in short, they can see the planes on occasion, and try to lock, but can't get a target lock. When they try, the stealth airplanes will often release rf tracking missiles and blow them up.
I was a UAV (civilian term: "drone") pilot of the Shadow 200 TUAV in the US Army circa 2001-2005 and Iraq 2003-2004. The Shadow 200 TUAV was what was deemed "effective stealth" in that it had composite material with low radar signature and radar absorbing paint. The exhaust was dampened and came out about 1" from the propeller on the top so unless you were flying above, the thermal footprint was miniscule. We did some drills with our own Patriot air defense units and they said they had to set their radars so low they were picking up big birds. They also told us that simply wasn't possible to do in wartime.
Also, the S400 and practically all ground-based long range radar systems have electronic footprints that make them stand out on sensor platforms designed to detect radars like high powered flashlights in a dark room allowing them to be easily mapped (for avoidance) and targeted (for destruction, if necessary) from over the horizon and far beyond the range of the systems themselves.
Systems like the Sx00 are very useful if there are multiple rings of them surrounding a static high-value target and you want to defeat a fleet of B-52s (or certain types of ballistic missiles) that are approaching.
They are borderline useless against any adversary that has low observability aircraft and a modern suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) capability.
Israel has demonstrated this repeatedly, but Russian marketing is very good and (mainly Middle Eastern) countries are still pumping wasted dollars into buying air defense systems.
In years of conflict Israel has launched thousands (2,000 in 2018 alone) of missiles at Syrian targets, and a grand total of one (1) F-16I has been shot down, and that was because the pilots were cocky (both survived) and they were loitering at high altitude doing battle damage assessments.
In response to the shoot-down, the launchers that fired the missile were destroyed the same day. Not only do the Russian missiles keep missing, but Israel keeps using their anti-missile missiles to shoot down the Russian missiles before they can fall on populated areas after missing their targets.
Indeed! And form working with guys in the stealth/radar biz, there's a saying about trying to use radar to guide your missiles:
"He who lights up first gets smoked"
As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam. Same for a pilot if he tries to scan for a target.
>As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam.
" According to Lieutenant Colonel Đorđe Aničić, who was identified in 2009 as the soldier who fired the missiles, they detected the F-117 at a range of about 23 km operating their equipment for no more than 17 seconds to avoid being locked on to by NATO anti-air suppression."
Typically (at least in USSR/Russia) a couple of radar stations would take turns each staying on only for those few seconds.
Serbia in 1999 used modified microwave ovens as an Anti Radar missile honey pot. You light the sky with a decoy, the plane activates its defenses, and now the hunter is the hunted just having exhausted its defenses. Decoys are cheap.
There are passive ways to detect a tracking radar, it's the same principle is used in dashboard speed-radar detectors. The anti-aircraft batteries are going to have to send out the first ping otherwise they would never know the aircraft is there. Anti-Aircraft batteries are constantly searching the skies with powerful radar beacons and the moment it hits the aircraft the aircraft will know where it came from.
On airforce one, there is an active anti-missile laser-based system designed to send a high-intensity pulse into the optical/IR tracker on a missile warhead effectively disabling it. There's also one that uses an EMP pulse for missiles that use radar tracking instead of optical.
Modern US fighter bombers actually carry decoys that are themselves armed. The pilots literally push a button that deploys them and the decoys themselves can be armed. The "skyborg" project involves literal armed decoys that come out of an F35. The Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie is also no joke.
Suddenly, the hunter hunting the hunted becomes the prey :)
A couple of questions from a civvie: does one physically separate the radar from the (manned) station using it so you only get borked cheapish equipment rather than dead people and expensive ground-based station wrecked? And isn't faking a few radar 'lights' a good way to use up the opposition aircraft's missiles? Naive I know but it's not my area.
Excellent question, and it is standard operating procedure. We had ~100m cables for our actual dishes that we used to control the Shadow 200 and always kept them far away from where we were flying if at all feasible. Most nations do this, however some missiles are set to go towards the rf and then switch to visual identification of targets to say blow up the control station.
Russia's S-400 completely decouples radar from launchers. Both are highly mobile. Both work in networks.
A decoy RF source wouldn't make much sense. To be a viable decoy it would need to have a similar ERP to the real thing. And at that point it already costs almost as much as the real thing, so you might as well go all the way.
The radar is usually one of the most expensive components in the system. Yes, they're usually separate trailers from other components of the system, but losing a precious radar is still a big blow.
Similar to the logic of using artillery against a modern conventional army. Counter-battery radars can pinpoint a gun or ballistic launcher by tracking the shells/missiles, so you've got to either shoot and scoot with self-propelled guns or do like Hamas does and remotely fire missiles from an expendable launcher.
I don't agree with all the bashing of the S-400 here, but Russian performance has been "disappointing" in terms of demonstrating combat capability.
"The obvious question that remains unanswered is whether Russia chose not to engage S-400s, or was simply unable to, whether because of American nonkinetic capabilities impacting those system or some other reason. Given the pre-attack notice given by the Pentagon to Russian forces through a deconfliction line, as well as the fact that no strikes were targeted at the air defenses themselves, analysts lean toward the former."
In short, Russia has S400s in Syria. Russian government officials claimed Russia would shoot down the Tomawhawks. Russians knew the strikes were coming. Yet, they did not use the S400.
To me, there are no two ways about it - Russia did not have the capability to engage even the legacy Tomawhawk missiles.
Can't speak to the interaction with the Americans, but when it comes to Israel there is an agreement between Russia and Israel on spheres of influence in Syria; Israel doesn't interfere with Russian strikes on rebels in the north and east (which Israel doesn't care about), and Russia doesn't interfere with Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and Iranian forces in the south and west (which Russia doesn't care about).
The two countries just don't have a clear enough conflict of interest to want to get into a fight about it.
2. Russian government officials stated they would shoot them down.
3. Russia had NOTHING to lose by shooting down missiles in defense of an ally, e.g. no political risk.
4. Russia had everything to gain by demonstrating the capability to deter a NATO strike, especially given the context of using Syria to advertise its weapons.
Israel is a separate issue, if you want to discuss it. Very nice of Israel to get Russia's plane shot down by hiding behind it.
The point I was trying to get at is that everyone involved in Syria is perfectly capable of staying out of trouble when their core interests are not at stake. I would not read too much into the failure of the Russians to intercept well-telegraphed, highly-publicized attacks on non-Russian targets, just like I wouldn't read too much into the failure of Americans to intercept rare Russian airstrikes on their SDF allies.
The S400s were deployed in response to the downing of a Russian intel aircraft that got mixed up with Syrian aircraft and shot down by Israel. It was deployed to protect Russian aircraft, not Syrian bases. So the Russians had no incentive to expose the operational capabilities of the S400 systems to the West. Just as the US limits how it deploys the F-22 in the area.
"
Alexander Zasypkin, in comments broadcast on Tuesday evening, said he was referring to a statement by Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian chief-of-staff.
"If there is a strike by the Americans then... the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired," he told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.
"
I am aware of what the source is. This did happen though, and you can find more sources if you want. If Russia had no intent, it shouldn't have bragged.
The Arrow system has sufficient range to provide coverage over Syria it’s an expensive way to deal with the S400 threat but it can be used to provide additional protection.
Israel seems to be quite adept at beating Russian SAMs Russia doesn’t have enough assets in the region to risk engaging with the S400 because Israel would definitely target them if they are used as anything more than a scarecrow.
And last time Israel went on a mission to clear Russian SAM sites in Syria it didn’t end up well for the SAM site operators.
For the most part what Israel has been doing in Syria so far is a very limited engagement often not even from within Syrian airspace but rather using stand off munitions from Israeli or Lebanese airspace.
I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region.
At the end of the day if push comes to shove Israel can push 400 aircraft into Syria’s airspace and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia.
The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier.
"I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region.
At the end of the day if push comes to shove Israel can push 400 aircraft into Syria’s airspace and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia.
The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier."
This discussion has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with Russia not engaging US and ally Tomawhawk missiles, in which Israel is not involved.
"I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region."
Yea, but it can nuke Tel Aviv. And Israel can't nuke anything of consequence back, even with its illegal nukes.
It can also saturate all of Israel with conventional artillery. Even a fraction of its forces would overhwhelm the system immediately, and that's assuming it works against anything but SCUDs and slow moving toy rockets.
"and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia."
The last time Israel pushed "countless ground assets" into Lebanon to bomb their hospitals and destroy their tourist industry, Russian RPGs destroyed a number of Merkavas. Cry more about how those were "mobility kills."
In what magical world does an Israel vs Russia ground war "simply don’t favor Russia."?
"The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier."
Russia has the best ASMs in the world. This is widely accepted.
Your post is comical even before you consider that most of the technology Israel has is thanks to the USSR diaspora.
>This discussion has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with Russia not engaging US and ally Tomahawks missiles, in which Israel is not involved.
The US is the only nation to fire Tomahawks at targets in Syria, or anywhere else other than the US only the UK uses the system and it has never been use in combat.
Israel fires cruise missiles all the time at Syria from it's aircraft and the Syrians claim that their and their "allies" air defense systems shot down all the missiles however it seems that all those warehouses are still getting blown up so it doesn't seem that Russian air defenses are very effective at combating these threats.
>Yea, but it can nuke Tel Aviv. And Israel can't nuke anything of consequence back, even with its illegal nukes.
It can, it will however get a retaliatory strike; and ironically Tel Aviv is likely better defended against ballistic missiles than Moscow is.
>It can also saturate all of Israel with conventional artillery. Even a fraction of its forces would overhwhelm the system immediately, and that's assuming it works against anything but SCUDs and slow moving toy rockets.
From where? Syria? Syrian artillery would be defeated in hours, if Lebanon/Hezbollah would get into the conflict it would take days but Russia has no assets in the area to provide protection.
20 aircraft isn't enough.
>The last time Israel pushed "countless ground assets" into Lebanon to bomb their hospitals and destroy their tourist industry, Russian RPGs destroyed a number of Merkavas. Cry more about how those were "mobility kills."
What does this have to do with anything? Trophy was implemented due to the lessons Israel has learned in the 2006 war and according to Wikipedia out of 45 tanks hit; 5 were deemed destroyed/unsalvageable including 2 tanks that were blown up by IEDs large enough to demolish a building.
Are you really going to argue that outside of diplomatic pressure that would end hostilities Lebanon/Hezbollah are going to stand their ground against the IDF? I'm not saying that Israel isn't going to suffer losses but they can bomb Lebanon back to the stone age the same can't be said in reverse.
>Your post is comical even before you consider that most of the technology Israel has is thanks to the USSR diaspora.
You are conflating s400 with significantly older systems. Even with stealth, it's impossible to take down s400 without suffering heavy casualties. The system is decentralized, and highly mobile. You take down one command node, another one takes its place.
The L- and X-band radars used by the S400 are exceedingly easy to jam, and no matter what Russia says they have not figured out a way around the laws of physics that enables them to reliably target low-observable aircraft.
So yeah, if an F-15 blindly stumbles within the effective range of an S400 it will be shot down.
The fingerprint of the S400's radar are detectable from thousands of kilometers away and a nice little icon will be plopped onto the pre-mission overlays before the F-15 takes off.
You don't even have to detect the radar beam, you can detect the data link.
As for casualties, what casualties?
The only casualties a drone launching a glide bomb results in are those on the receiving end.
I am with computerex. Your explanations are extremely simplistic and biased. S400s can toggle on and off, share data, have Pantsir systems around them, etc.
You ignore the same problems with air platforms emitting.
Your claim about detecting the data link is absurd.
Everything he said makes sense to me, and I'm just a lowly software engineer with a single unit of RF background back at uni.
What part are you confused about?
There is no such thing as a perfectly directional antenna. Radiation profiles consist of multiple lobes which generally point towards a single direction on 3 axes, but there are always side lobes, like so: [1]. You can't hide these, therefore they can be detected and targeted.
There's a whole class of missiles that simply look for RF sources and head that way. The only way to avoid such missiles is to stop being an RF source. But if you do that, you're also unable to target the attackers or defend against those missiles. You also have to turn off your data link and lose situational awareness.
The S-400 is the best air defence currently fielded, but it is by no means magical or invulnerable.
All this makes the assumption that S400 is a sitting duck with no countermeasures. Which is far from reality. The entire point of a decentralized and mobile/distributed system like s400 is to make it difficult to target. It is ground based, therefore has much better detection capability than anything in the air. Its long range missiles have a greater flight envelope than any surface to air missile.
You don't think the s400 has any jamming capability and protection of its own? You don't think the system can detect when it's being targeted and locked on?
It can definitely be defeated but not without suffering heavy casualties. That's _why_ it's called anti-access/area denial technology.
Read up on SEAD tactics, it's pretty interesting. The nature radar propagation and reflection means that a plane will know a radar is active long before the radar can detect the plane. Planes can then fire anti radiation missiles that home in on the radar emissions source. Also, most radars are limited by the horizon. Low level flying can let planes get close without detection.
Now this doesn't mean destroying air defenses is easy. Factor in smaller SAM sites dispersed around th larger ones, as well as enemy air superiority fighter operating in the area and SEAD gets more complicated. SAM sites also sometimes turn their radars off until planes are close and ambush them. But SAM sites alone are not an impervious defense against air power.
>a plane will know a radar is active long before the radar can detect the plane.
The other bit of information that might be perhaps missing from some (other!) explanations is that this arises entirely because the ground station has to receive a radar reflection _of the original beam_ from the target. Given that power goes as 1/r^2, this means that in practice range drops off sharply for the ground-based station as 1/r^4. Meanwhile, the aircraft can just _detect_ some sort of blip-over-thermal power spectral density coming from somewhere. Given identical amplifier performance (which, with good designs, should be limited by physics) and you end up with the attacking aircraft "winning" from a back-of-the-envelope point of view.
This ignores the fact that it can be traditionally quite easy to confuse radar by "just" transmitting the "right" signals at the right time. There's a good 1960s video that explains a lot of the basic ideas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyFqaaqqph0
Detected by Radar Warning Receivers (RWR). These are passive sensors, they're listening to the radar emissions that other planes and Radar stations are emitting. Because the radar needs to send a signal that bounces off the plane and have enough energy for those bounces to travel back to the radar, whereas th RWR only needs to detect the emissions traveling from the radar to the plane the radar will be detected by RWR from much further away. Most modern aircraft carry RWR, not just AWACS.
1. Let's stop re-explaining how radar works as an argument, everyone gets it. For those who don't - radar works like turning on a flashlight, end of story.
2. Non-SEAD RWR is generally limited to "There is light shining on me." Not where it's coming from, let alone providing targeting information.
All modern (1980s and later) RWRs can determine the bearing of emissions. Heck, even the RWR in the Mig-21 (1950s plane) could determine bearing. With bearings known, all you need is two planes to determine location by taking the intersection of the two bearings. Most RWRs can also identify the type of radar, as well as whether it is searching or locked into a target. Planes can also equip targeting pods that have even more advanced passive sensors: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ASQ-213
The S400s you're referrint to are the ones that Turkey just bought from Russia (and which caused all the mess with Trump not being happy about it), right?
It doesn't have a thing to do with Trump being unhappy, it is the Pentagon that is hopping mad. It will give the Russians access to S400 telemetry of F22 and F35 planes, something we've been very coy in giving them a chance to get. It lets them figure out how to use their radars against any nation with F22 / F35 planes.
Didn't they already acquire them in Syria/Iraq? I bet Russians brought their latest radar tech with them when F22s were operating in the area, and now there is Israel with F35. They might be just observing and would be stupid to talk about it anyway and I doubt Turkey will get the same S400s, likely a dumbed-down export version. It's more like Turkey can't have all their tech obliterated instantly if they switched sides and US manufacturers will miss some projected profit.
There's likely a big difference between "we tested them out in an active combat zone against uncooperative planes" and "we tested them out in controlled circumstances with friendly subjects", though.
Yes Russia has been using Syria as a testing ground for detection of a variety of airplanes that Israel uses. If Turkey has the S400 and F35s it means they will have much much much more data for detection. Turkey would also have a platform for offense and defense in a bid for regional military supremacy which they almost have.
Depends on if the F-22 was operating in full stealth mode. Also depends on how their (the F-22's) radar was employed, what ECCM was used, etc etc. I doubt the USAF showed the Russians the full monty...
Not sure about F-22; however recently Israel attacked some targets in Iraq using F-35s in stealth mode, and those were likely monitored by Russians in Syria (or I would be very surprised if they weren't...)
That's the official Pentagon line, but it's not it. What are they saying, the S-400 are backdoored with a network connection to Russia? And Russia already has S-400s in Syria, with Israel and the US operating F-35s in the region...
The real reason is the US doesn't want to set the precedent for NATO countries buying weapons outside of NATO, and you can be sure the military industrial complex has a huge hand in that.
Well the concern has more to do with the purchasing of S400 coming with Russian technical advisors for the system, who you might say are backdoored with a network connection to Russia.
> It will give the Russians access to S400 telemetry of F22 and F35 planes...
Thx a lot - I now think that I understand the issue => it's once more a reminder for myself that often nothing is as simple as it is presented. Unluckily none of the news I read/watched about it mentioned this and I did not think about it.
Of course it's not. The news of today is facile, designed for ratings and clicks not actual analysis. Trump=bad is much easier than explaining about the F35 radar signatures to the layman.
Being cynical is easy, but there is plenty of fairly high quality reporting on this issue in the mainstream media.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-trump/trump-sa... - “Turkish operation of the two systems together — and more specifically, when it is in stealth mode — would allow the S-400 to acquire intimate knowledge of the F-35’s radar signature,” Karako wrote.
“Such insights would almost immediately find (their) way back to Russia, and the capability of F-35s around the world could thereby be degraded.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/world/europe/us-turkey-ru... - Ellen M. Lord, the Defense Department’s under secretary for acquisition and sustainment, said the S-400 and its radar systems could compromise the F-35’s stealth capabilities and jeopardize the fighter jet’s long-term security.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/trump-turkey-s40... - 'The S-400 poses a real threat to US national security, analysts said. The Russian system is built to defeat US stealth technology, leading officials in Washington to worry that if Turkey took delivery of F35s, the Russian system could be used to collect valuable information about the fifth-generation fighter jet.'
Can't Russia already fairly easily eavesdrop on F22s and F35s during military exercises from ships or by just renting a room / camping van somewhere nearby?
It depends on your branch as all things do. By 0311, I'm going to assume the Marine Corps riflemen, the equivalent of the Army's 11B.
Part of an 0311's job is kicking in doors and detaining bad guys. When there are bad guys sniping at them on the roof, they have a bad day. The UAV above them tells them "sniper on the SSW (south south west) quandrant of building 3, hit them" and then does instant BDA (battle damage assessment) to let them know the threat is neutralized or not. Those infantryman came back to the FOB that night and thanked us profusely. We helped them all come back alive.
The most boring part of the job is probably road searches. On the way out to every mission and the way back (as you're flying to the mission coordinates handed down to you by the mission commander) you just look at the main roads. For every 10 hours of looking at roads, you'll see 1 guy digging a hole and emplacing an IED or burying wire under the road. Those "side quest" missions save a lot of soldiers. Additionally, we tend to fly ahead of most convoys if the timing lines up and give them a heads up of upcoming situations. From ~7500ft above sea level, we could roughly read a license plate a mile away. We gave them situational awareness on neighborhoods to go out of their way and just avoid. Things like that.
For every 100 hours of relatively mundane stuff, you get a few really special missions. One of those special missions was when a Kiowa scout helicopter took an RPG to the tail rotor and crashed in Tal'Afar. Most missions I was the AVO (Aerial Vehicle Operator aka pilot), but this was one of the few where I was the MPO (Mission Payload Operator aka camera dude). We saw this as a literal clone of the most infamous Operation Gothic Serpent (Blackhawk down) and all said, "Not on our watch!". And in the end, they made our video a lot less clear and put some parts of it in a Military Channel Special: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0845577/
TL;DNR: UAV Operator is nothing at all like an 0311, but they love us because we do a dang good job of saving their lives. In return, they watch our backs.
>For every 10 hours of looking at roads, you'll see 1 guy digging a hole and emplacing an IED or burying wire under the road. Those "side quest" missions save a lot of soldiers.
Is this something that could be helped by all the recent machine learning computer vision advances? Maybe they can delegate side resources to having automated scanning for flaggable behaviours appearing on screen.
They protest that too. Dragonfly got nearly as much employee resignations & protests as Maven did.
(More to the point, this is conflating parts with the whole: Google management is in favor of working with both the US armed forces and Chinese censors, while Google employees are against both.)
I mean it's just a guess from watching google talks on self driving cars and the constant splurging of academic research on machine learning. Two minute papers is a horrifying youtube channel because of the pace of change it is showing.
There have been a whole bunch of talks about AI in warfare already, so anybody who is interested in the industry can put 2 + 2 together way better than I can.
Using an AI as a 4th dimensional filter to look for things like "birds flying at highly un-natural speeds" or to at least filter out the ones plausibly flying at natural speeds seems likely to be a current topic of current or already completed defense technology. It seems obvious enough that I feel like every competent military has already considered it.
> An aircraft-mounted control unit sends the specific signals to the decoy over a fiber-optic line. Once at the decoy, those signals are translated into radio frequency emissions. [...] For instance, the decoy can first try to generally jam a radar that is in search mode, then it can try to attack it directly to break its lock once it locks on. Then, if a missile locks on in flight, the decoy can instantly turn into a juicy target, or even targets, misdirecting the missile away from the aircraft.
This is probably not really in your area of expertise, but do you know why they can't design a system to pick up everything larger than a sparrow and going faster than 50 mph? What about wartime makes this harder? Thanks much.
Sure it can be designed, but to achieve that at a useful range takes a large, sensitive antenna panel with a very high power output. So it's going to be expensive and difficult to transport. Filtering based on speed is challenging because different techniques are needed depending on the target's relative course. Plus with the sensitively dialed up so high they're going to get a lot of random false positives. It's impossible to automatically filter out some random returns.
No. Not a F-22 or F-35 are unlikely to actually be invisible. A B-2 bomber has a better chance.
The talking heads from the military may talk about 'invisibility', but they are full of shit. Just propaganda for the tax payer.
The problem is the physical size of the jet. In order to absorb the radar the material needs to be the proper size in relation to the wavelength. A B-2 bomber is large enough to absorb useful radar frequencies, but F-35 or F-22 isn't.
What the F-35/F-22 stealth does get, however, is invisibility in the XHF and higher frequency ranges, which is what is used for radar guided missiles. So they will have a major advantage against ground and air launched long range missiles.
The F-22 also has good infrared suppression, which protects it against infrared guided missiles. F-35s have a large IR signature, so they are probably not much better then other US jets. Traditionally speaking it's IR weapons that have caused losses for USA airplanes in modern times.
At VHF and lower frequencies the F-22 and F-35 can be detected, but those radars don't offer enough resolution to make them particularly useful for missiles. People suspect that with multiple angles and computer algorithms it may be possible to target a jet that way, but who knows.
So if you were Russia and you detected something with VHF long range radar and then you pointed a shorter range XHF radard at it... and nothing shows up then you can be reasonably certain that it's a American stealth fighter jet. That doesn't mean they can do much about it, though.
To combat this it is suspected that Americans use a technique that involves 'ghosting' commercial airliner traffic to mask the signatures of their jets against the lower frequency, longer range, radar.
> Americans use a technique that involves 'ghosting' commercial airliner traffic
You mean flying under commercial traffic? That's what was likely the cause of French jets downing a civilian plane over Italy in 1980 - while trying to hit a Lybian MIG "hidden" under it. Reportedly, Lybian planes routinely did that in order to reach their servicing bases in Yugoslavia.
> That's what was likely the cause of French jets downing a civilian plane over Italy in 1980
Note that the event is heavily disputed. The British Air Accidents Investigation Board claims that a missile strike does not match the wreckage analysis; instead stating a explosive device in the rear bathroom was the only possible cause.
It's highly disputed because the original allegation is not just France, but rather a French-led NATO joint force that included Britain. It's assumed that the British investigation can't be trusted.
The other investigations also doesn't explain the wreckage of a Libyan fighter jet, close to the wreckage of the airliner.
Multiple Italian soldiers were also found guilty of concealing evidence about the event, allegedly by the request of NATO.
Investigations from NATO sources simply cannot be trusted. They are not independent. The only supporters of the bomb scenario left, in Italy, are ultra-right-wing people who refuse to accept the fact that Italian autorities of the time lied.
It was even admitted by the Italian then-PM (later President) Francesco Cossiga, almost 30 years later, that he was told right away it had been a French jet. This was confirmed later by multiple sources, among them a retired US seaman who was stationed on the Saratoga and feared for his life (a lot of key witnesses have died in suspicious circumstances, including suicide). And the secret-war scenario is the only one that can explain a Lybian MIG crashing in the same area on the same day, which was kept hidden for weeks by Italian authorities.
The historical truth has basically been ascertained, it will simply never be admitted by the involved parties because it is still inconvenient (Lybia still being "in play" between France and Italy).
I did not know about this case, but good luck to the justice to know the truth. It might be a french or american airplane according to wikipedia.
The french army is called in France "la grande muette" for a reason: it never speaks or admits anything (e.g. Bugaled Breizh ship).
American also used this technique to fly military aircraft above french airspace while France was not part of NATO, it is only in 2007 with Sarkozy that France entered NATO (one of his many stupid move if you ask me)
France was always a member state of NATO since 1949. France was just not taking part in the integrated military command between the mid-60's to 2007, but did participate in all NATO mission (for instance Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia, etc.).
Indeed French authorities actively obstructed the search for truth over the decades, but to be fair, Italian and American authorities did exactly the same (or worse). Nobody wants to admit letting it happen, even if it was a mistake.
> The talking heads from the military may talk about 'invisibility', but they are full of shit. Just propaganda for the tax payer.
I think a distinction needs to be made between proverbial "invisibility" and stealth, and the technical definition. If general conversations included, say, backscatter coefficients you'd start seeing glazed eyes. Or perhaps area equivalence (square-footage? square-metrage?).
Yes, but that merely limits the damage to a small degree. Fighters need vertical stabilizers because they require higher maneuverability than flying wings. And current aerospace design capabilities can't overcome it, though bendable (wing warping technology) wings might eventually.
Yup, thrust vectoring will help add control authority. But vertical stabilizers don't necessarily contribute to the amount of G's an aircraft can pull. It depends on how they're measuring it. With an aircraft lacking VS, you could simply pull/push up down to get high G, or roll and do the same.
To combat this it is suspected that Americans use a
technique that involves 'ghosting' commercial airliner
traffic to mask the signatures of their jets against
the lower frequency, longer range, radar.
That sounds fascinating. A quick Googling bore no fruit for me. Can you elaborate, or point me in the direction of more information?
They can change their radar signature since the true signature isn't much of anything. They can mimic the signature of other planes and even move the signature making it seem like the spoofed aircraft is closer or further away than it really is. If you move the spoofed signature much closer to a radar installation, they might fire off a missile from another location that was previously hidden. Make the spoofed signature large enough and they may not see the anti-radiation missile heading towards them. There are also expendable versions of this tech that can be dropped from a plane like chaff, further increasing the distance between the spoofed signature and the true one.
Its a cat and mouse game between airplanes and radars.
Radars are usually arrays of small radars now that can move the beam without even moving, chirp the frequecy and do all sorts of weird things. I wrote OS software to help control them years ago, which was interesting.
A much more probable scenario would be of its airfield being blown up by something like Tochka or Luna even before most of the planes will have a chance to sortie.
This is why there is a natural scepticism of airforce centric warfare: a tank will not fall out of the sky the moment its logistic supply is cut.
According to Wikipedia, most recently shot down aircraft have been helicopters falling to small arms, or course Wikipedia is dependent on what people write, but as far as I can tell there aren't that many jets being shot down by IR missiles.
USA hasn't really fought people capable of shooting down jets in a while. So the latest is generally the early 1990's with the combat in Iraq.
The only stealth plane shot down that I am aware of was a F-117 shot down by short range SAM in the Kosovo war in 1999. It was a older 1960's missile design. Probably due to a large part of combination of dumb luck on the side of the SAM operator and the Airforce being lazy and having the jet fly predictable routine routes.
I wouldn't call that 'luck' per se on account of the Americans apparently flying like that habitually, as well as sticking to predictable flight plans. It's not like the Serbs fired into the blue on a whim and were shocked when they hit something.
It was not dumb luck. He placed his site where he knew the doors were more likely to be open and hence increase the signature, and waited for that moment to switch on the radar and fire the shot.
Most recent combat environments (Iraq war post-invasion, and Afghanistan) were not contested air space. The US has always had air superiority over those regions and the ability to fly AWACS planes, Predators, Reapers, Global Hawks and a whole bunch of other stuff around with very little risk of getting shot down.
Aircraft operating low to the ground and on approach to small airfields, and helicopters, are of course vulnerable to short range rifle fire and MANPADs. There have been losses to that in Afghanistan.
Modern NATO-equipped militaries haven't really encountered a semi modern air defense system since the brief bombing campaign against Serbia, in which they did manage to lose a F117 to a SAM.
Interesting how many of the fixed-wing shootdowns since the Gulf War were shot down by equipment made by the same geopolitical block (either NATO-on-NATO or Soviet-on-Soviet), either in the sense of literal friendly-fire accidents, or two regional combatants both being supplied by the same superpower. Turkish F-16 shot down by Greek Mirage 2000.
British Tornado shot down by U.S. Patriot. A-10 shot down by Iraqi Roland. Georgian Hermes-450 shot down by Russian Mig-29. Russian Tu-22 shot down by Georgian Buk-M1. Ukrainian Su-27 shot down by Russian Su-27. Ukrainian Mig-29 shot down by Buk. That's practically all of the combat jets on the list.
That may just be a factor of modern warfare being largely one side with near-absolute air superiority in an area pounding on largely defenseless ground troops.
The first Gulf War saw nearly half of coalition casualties being from friendly fire.
Imagine you are out at night with a flashlight. Trying to detect a car driving towards you.
One car is painted like a fire truck with reflectors. The other is matte black/gray.
The first one you will be able to spot much earlier and determine things like speed/direction much more clearly. Not to mention that the driver of both cars will see you and your flashlight before you detect them.
It is not that planes are invisible to radar. It is that they can make it much more difficult for that radar flashlight to detect them at long range and/or determine their exact speed and heading.
Detection isn't the issue as much as determining what is clutter and what isn't. When you reduce your signal to the level of noise, you can go undetected a lot of the time.
It is not about being confused with a bird, but simply about the fact that things that are less reflective (whether due to size, material, or geometry) are able to get closer before crossing the signal:noise threshold.
True, but if your enemy is expecting you to send a plane one random day in August, streaming constant noise on EVERY day in August is going to cost them resources and make it easier on the day that you pick.
Primary radar is bad at determining speed, especially when the aircraft is not flying directly towards or away from it and even more difficult with a reduced radar signature.
(ATC relies on secondary radar - that is, transponders)
Why is there no mention of IR (heat) radar? As far as I know, its impossible to hide a jet engine heat signature. Thermodynamics 101. This is especially true when you are looking up and the thermal background is pretty much black space.
> Why is there no mention of IR (heat) radar? As far as I know, its impossible to hide a jet engine heat signature.
The heat signature of what, the exhaust? That's very low density, so emissions from the exhaust itself will be negligible.
The plane itself will emit black-body radiation, but that is based on the skin temperature, not the temperature of any interior engine parts.
In the meantime, all of this is for passive detection, so at a distance you'd be asking for the detector to pick an at-best-tiny signal out of the entire sky. Moreover, clouds are opaque.
The heat signature of the engine, which in part is connected to the entire plane. Burning that much jet fuel produces a tremendous amount of energy. You literally have a glowing ball of energy streaking thru a vast void of no to low energy. Clouds have heat, but not at the huge concentration a fighter jet has.
I guess you have flares, but now its an "AI" problem of choosing the right target.
I'm no expert at this but I think the efficacy of infrared detection would depend entirely on the elevation of the plane and its size in arc seconds. What's the resolution of your detector? Is the time it takes for the plane to move from one pixel to the next shorter than the time it takes for photons to gather on the sensor above threshold?
Don't forget the inverse square law of light, by the time the energy reaches a detector on the ground, the signal has weakened considerably.
Skimming wikipedia for infrared stealth gives me "Infrared Search and Track" systems which are plane-mounted, which makes a bit more sense to me -- if you're closer to the targets altitude and velocity you'll get much cleaner data
It's possible. The heat signature is well-hidden on the B-2, YF-23, F-117, and A-10. Yes, from the perspective of ground-launched IR-seeking missiles, the A-10 is actually stealth. The tail wraps around the engines as seen from many angles on the ground.
Generally, it also helps to fly toward the enemy. This is a bit of extra incentive to not wimp out and flee. :-)
The F-35 is a bit of a failure with the heat signature. The tail heats up from the engine exhaust. There are prohibited maneuvers that damage the tail due to heat.
Aircraft don't have to be perfect about heat signatures. They aren't in a cold vacuum, and the enemy isn't flying the James Webb Space Telescope.
It is effective against missiles that are equipped with very small radars. Since new aircraft like the F-35 are equipped with strong ECM and no longer require dedicated jamming support aircraft you also cannot use the much wider radar of the aircraft to guide the missile. This means we are back to using infrared missiles which can be avoided by flares.
The point is not to hide "always" but to hide until enemy SAM is in range of your air-to-ground missiles/bombs and they don't see you yet. It is only one of the factors in whole picture and it does give certain advantage.
I've heard certain types of radar can detect everything nowadays. Nothing is truly stealth and it's just a gimmick. This was from that guy who completely criticized the F-35, Pierre Sprey.
I'm not an expert. I really want to hear the opinions of experts on this topic.
You won't find these kinds of experts on this particular forum. Maybe go find an aviation or military specific engineering discussion group?
Hacker News is the worst place for this kind of topic. Have you noticed that no-one applies formulas and calculations of any type in this particular discussion yet? Physically you can calculate the radar profile of all of these types of planes, and there are engineering spec sheets (albeit some are classified, but there's enough data out there for educated estimates)
But everyone is talking in terms of "like a bird" or "almost like background radiation" etc.
I'd suggest going elsewhere to engage experts on this topic.
Sprey, for all his accolades is also the person who thought the F-15/F-14 were mistakes (the former arguably the most successful jet fighter ever created), and didn't want the F-16 expanded into a multirole fighter.
This is likely moot nowadays with drone technology, stealth drones, and modern cruise missiles. They're far more likely to be deployed to take out anti-air defenses before even these aircraft come in.
This is false. The US military still does SEAD missions with manned fighter bombers. We have no stealth drones capable of this yet. We also don't have hypersonic cruise missiles (yet), so modern cruise missiles aren't great against advanced air defense. A tomahawk flies a lot slower than an F22 as an example and isn't stealthy at all. Any near peer adversary, or one using near peer anti-air (so anything from Russia or China or imported from either) can knock out most of our cruise missiles provided we don't confuse it with ELINT / jamming.
I often think about what use the modern fighter jet is. I'd be interested to know exactly what role they really play and why a F22 would be deployed risking a pilots life vs. a drone. Maybe the F22 has a bigger payload or more precision?
Situational awareness, jamming and reaction/ping times spring to mind immediately as being areas where having meat in the seat will remain advantageous for a while to come.
I think situational awareness will remain very important to small to medium size air forces. I can't help but think of the Swedish Air Force. The idea was to be able to strike very hard if absolutely necessary. Otherwise, the air force would not be deployed at all. We never expected to operate in air superiority conditions. It was always about inflicting maximum damage to an invader. In such a situation you are already accepting heavy casualties and higher risk to the pilots seems more palatable if that means more room to improvise to achieve the objective.
I'm convinced it is less and less possible (for countries using modern tech). Long range radars maybe still don't get high precision reading but short range ones can definitely see enough to get a lock.
I don't see how. Surely there are multiple ways to look for these aircraft. They disturb the air as they fly. They do give off some heat. They do reflect some radar. A combination of sensors/radar should be able to find them.
Doesn’t look like the actual airframe is degrading, it’s the nose it’s likely the composite RADOME that is degrading, if it’s even material degradation the damage looks almost like a bird or an object strike.
The description of the internal structure also seems to be quite similar to other RADOME even marine ones.
Over the last decade or so I've gotten the chance to use a number of antenna /accessories made of uwave RADOME plastic from a few different vendors and in all cases the plastic was cracked, crumbling, taped together, etc. It seems like a systematic problem.
I bet there are a bunch of polymer chemists who know exactly what's going on.
I have a feeling that it's a combination of two things.
1) The plastics might need to be made out of a very specific material which might not be very stable in the long term.
2) RADARs get freaking bloody hot and even a few % of absorption might be enough to essentially make them into a microwave oven.
I'm guessing some combination of the material, pure heat and radiation might be the cause of these plastics breaking down but I'm not a material engineer however this is something that I've also encountered.
I have had experience with SAR pods and their RADOMEs have had to be constantly replaced due to degradation as well.
In fact in spot/strip mode it wouldn't be uncommon to see actual discoloration of the RADOME after a few flights.
Most of the crumbling RADOME material I've seen has been on receive-only antennae, because that's what I deal with regularly, so I don't think it's purely a power thing.
My working hypothesis is more in line with your (1), that plasticizer is the major absorbing component of the plastic, so to make RADOME plastic you just leave out the plasticizer and live with crumbly plastic. But I'm no polymer chemist, so that's really just speculation.
> flying this aircraft is extremely expensive with an average flight hour cost of about $60k
This made me wonder how many disposable small drones could be mass produced for that price. Like in the "slaughterbots" video, or the "hated in the nation" bee drones.
Less than you might think.... Drones are (over)priced like jewelry (because they can!)
For example, the drone shot down by Iran last month was valued at 85 mil.
Sounds like what we've been used to from the military industrial complex. Over promised, over budget, under delivered with huge maintenance contracts and terrible shelf life.
It used to be the defense industry produced equipment worth having, just wastefully. Now we can't even produce properly designed planes.
And what about what looks like rust smears around the rivets?
This doesn't look like the master of the skies to me. It looks like decadence of the military industrial complex, and bad use of $400 millions of taxpayer money. It looks like the most inefficient way of financing jobs across a country ever...
Huh? The F-22 is the most capable manned fighter that exists on the planet, not even US adversaries dispute it being the master of the skies. It allows missions that would be otherwise impossible. Yes, the price of that is high.
These "source" requests are tiring. What about you do some googling? If this is obviously false it won't take too much time to disprove it, right?
I would be surprised if any credible source claimed that there was something better than the F-22. The possible competitors are either not in the same ballpark or not really ready for anything other than airshows.
You are mistaking Hacker news for reddit. The burden of proof lies on the person making fantastic claims. I obviously have sources saying the contrary that's why I disagree with your sentiment. That's why I'm interested to see the sources claiming the contrary.
Maybe you should do some googling yourself and you'll find footage of French Rafale wiping the floor with the raptor in a simulated dogfight.
The point of the F22 is that you don't get into a dogfight in the first place, you blow the adversary away from beyond visible range. The Rafale is a very good plane, but is not as stealthy as the Raptor.
In any case, it will be years before we can say which is the superior plane, since all the good stuff is classified.
Americans have been saying that wvr combat is over for like over 50 years. Even the US airforce doesn't believe this otherwise they wouldn't be drilling for wvr combat.
The point is, no one has enough data to claim that the raptor is absolutely the most superior and dominant fighter jet. Making that claim simply based on stealth is foolish.
Pilots train and will continue to train on wvr combat because those are the basic piloting and combat skills required regardless of what you're flying. They're going to continue drilling wvr even if they had a hypothetical perfectly stealth unobservable plane just because those are the drills that make a fighter pilot.
Spend a couple days learning a flight combat sim like DCS and it will become crystal clear that stealth is not only an advantage, it is almost unbeatable by a 4th gen fighter without additional support. If you're in a 4th gen fighter, your offensive options are pretty much nonexistent against a low observable fighter. The best thing you can do is dodge the first 1/2 fox-3 it throws at you, turn off your radar, and get out while you still have a plane. We're not even talking about standoff weapons yet.
Even if you somehow got into a wvr dogfight against an F-22, you'd still lose because it's one of a handful of fighters capable of supermaneuverability. [1]
There are 187 operational F-22, they've been in service for 14 years, and they've had zero losses. Go ahead and try to find anything that comes even close.
"The F-22 achieved Full Operational Capability (FOC) in December 2007, when General John Corley of Air Combat Command (ACC) officially declared the F-22s of the integrated active duty 1st Fighter Wing and Virginia Air National Guard 192d Fighter Wing fully operational.[151] This was followed by an Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI) of the integrated wing in April 2008, in which it was rated "excellent" in all categories, with a simulated kill-ratio of 221–0.[152]"
Given the fact that there have been 0 losses and those planes haven't been sitting idle in storage for the past decade, it's a pretty good bet that their real world perf is better than the simulated 221-0.
F22 hasn't seen combat vs a capable airforce so its hard to take the aforementioned "kill ratios" seriously. Basing your reasoning on a video game is also not the best source of information.
The airforce drills for wvr because history has shown that dogfighting is inevitable. That's the basis of Russian airforce program and that's why the flanker airframe is still the most agile and will run literal circles around the raptor.
Right because personal attacks are not drivel /s. You are making completely baseless assertions with nothing to back them up. And you are resorting to personal attacks because you have nothing credible left to say.
Yes, the F-22 is the one that works. It works well enough the US is not selling them to its allies, but they are selling the F-35 (to anybody stupid enough to buy them).
You mean many of the elite militaries on the planet? Israel for example is not known for buying non-working trash as a primary to defend its skies with. Over time the majority of the best militaries will all fly the F35.
Turkey must be a joke according to your premise, that's why they're so eager to get their hands on the F35. No, in fact Turkey has a top ~20 military in capability.
"Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom currently are in formal partnership with the United States on the F-35 program. Israel, Japan and South Korea have made orders through the foreign military sales process. Belgium also recently signed on to purchase platforms." [1]
The F35 is the second best fighter that can be purchased, behind the F22. Its technology platform is superior to the F22 and far beyond anything anyone else has. Russia can't get their 5th gen planes to operate properly or get them into volume production (despite numerous failed declarations of such, and 20 years of development). China hasn't demonstrated that capability yet either. They're both two decades behind the US in 5th gen planes. The other European powers aren't even on the map when it comes to producing domestic 5th gen, they can't step up to that level at all.
Over time the majority of the best militaries will be shooting F35s out of the sky with 40-year-old fighters. That's assuming the F35s can even take off, given how they need an ALIS download before they can fly, and that's dependent on a working Internet, and assuming they don't break up in flight due to excessive G-forces, and assuming the pilot doesn't have to eject, because lightweight pilots have a 23% chance of dying during ejection because of the heavy helmet. And assuming the F35 didn't run out of fuel before the battle, because it doesn't have enough range for real missions.
So yeah, I'm saying all those militaries buying F35s are either stupid or desperate.
Turkey won't be buying F35s because they bought missiles from the Russians. This is going to be a very good thing for Turkey's national security in the long run; they just don't know it yet.
If the following reports are to be believed, the F35 is overdesigned, overpriced, doesn't work, and cannot be made to work. It's a piece of absolute crap. Are all these reports wrong?
ALL new military hardware has flaws. All. Pick any and I can guarantee there were some "major" flaws.
Let's take the beloved A-10.
> When A-10 full-rate production was first authorized the aircraft's planned service life was 6,000 hours. A small reinforcement to the design was quickly adopted when the A-10 failed initial fatigue testing at 80% of testing
> Fatigue testing for the new target quickly discovered serious cracks at Wing Station 23 (WS23) where the outboard portions of the wings are joined to the fuselage. The first production change was to add cold working at WS23 to address this problem. Soon after that, the Air Force determined that the real-world A-10 fleet fatigue was more harsh than estimated, forcing them to change their fatigue testing, introducing "spectrum 3" equivalent flight-hour testing
> Spectrum 3 fatigue testing started in 1979. This round of testing quickly determined that more drastic reinforcement would be needed.
This BS went on for a while.
> A fourth, even more drastic change was initiated with aircraft #582, again to address the problems discovered with spectrum 3 testing.
582 aircraft built and they were still fixing major problems!
Let's take another one. F-16.
> Its actual first flight occurred accidentally during a high-speed taxi test on 20 January 1974. While gathering speed, a roll-control oscillation caused a fin of the port-side wingtip-mounted missile and then the starboard stabilator to scrape the ground, and the aircraft then began to veer off the runway. The test pilot, Phil Oestricher, decided to lift off to avoid a potential crash, safely landing six minutes later.
> One change made during production was augmented pitch control to avoid deep stall conditions at high angles of attack. The stall issue had been raised during development, but had originally been discounted. Model tests of the YF-16 conducted by the Langley Research Center revealed a potential problem, but no other laboratory was able to duplicate it. YF-16 flight tests were not sufficient to expose the issue; later flight testing on the FSD aircraft demonstrated there was a real concern. In response, the area of the horizontal stabilizer were increased by 25% on the Block 15 aircraft in 1981 and later retrofitted to earlier aircraft.
F-16 seems to have been more smoothly than most as it was designed to be cheaper to build and maintain, smaller and simpler than other aircraft used at the time.
I will not include the F-14 because this would turn this comment into a book. Even the F-4's classic look is due to issues they discovered during wind tunnel testing.
So chill out. When you are trying to design a system thats way more capable than the predecessors you are bound to run into issues noone has encountered before. Same thing when you are trying new designs (see the Osprey).
You may complain about the costs, and if you are a taxpayer that's fair. It doesn't mean that it's crap. It definitely isn't. The radar alone is worth it.
In the article "Clearly, performing at air shows doesn't require any stealth at all. In fact, the jets wear bolt-on radar-reflecting lenses so that their radar cross-section appears large on air traffic control radars. "
I'm sure that within the scope of meetings and trailing incompetent upper-management, that many tech companies don't look like they should make as much money as they do from the inside, yet somehow they remain among the most profitable companies worldwide.
It's all about context. Find a stealth fighter that can best an F-22, until then, it's the top of the top.
The ideal modern SEAD combo is the F22 flying ahead to designate targets and using the F35 as the "gun truck" to launch missiles at targets the F22 sends it.
Seems like it would be cheaper to have non-stealth F-22 coatings for training, and then only apply the costly stealth coatings if doing actual missions?
It's mentioned several times in the article that there are various readiness levels that have different requirements for stealth coatings. It mentions that roughly a third of the fleet is not combat coated, etc.
A reasonable answer, I think. But that requires more engineering and training and cost (perhaps it'll net out as savings in the end, but not up front).
Sure I'm naughty but not in this case. That's how you link to an individual comment in a thread, scroll down (with javascript enabled) and you will then see the comments about this 'damage' not being new and speculation about what it could be about. I don't benefit in any way if anyone follows that link, but others might from the discussion in those threads at the end of the article there.
Being a Hollywood star may help. At least the Blue Angels would take you for a ride. Not sure if the F-22 is available for fun rides but a F-18 or F-16 should be good enough for most of us.
He owns the Fulcrum, he just has been refused an import permit. Lots of private companies own warplanes, but the ownership by individuals is problematic in the US.
What on earth made you think I was implying it wouldn't have? It was a joke about an imaginary f-23 ghost having schadenfreude. Sorry to everyone I've offend who down-voted this. LOL. XD
How much is UV factored into the design of materials in outer surfaces with regards to aircraft is my initial thought here.
Given the effects of UV can be most damaging and aircraft would as higher elevation be at an increased risk of higher UV levels than you would at ground level.
I don't get it. Why not just keep a smaller part of the fleet with radar absorbent skin in top notch condition (and barely use it outside mission, thus keeping it in a good condition) and keep the other part of the fleet entirely without this feature, for usage in scenarios where it's not needed?
The F-22s are already a small part of the U.S. air force fleet, which need to be saved for scenarios that require their unique capabilities. There are 187 F-22s, while the air force has e.g. 473 F-15s and 1,245 F-16s.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/solution-americas...
I'm genuinely fascinated by this, but haven't been able to find more information. Was there an investigation? Did the tooling just get sent to the scrap heap? Who signed off on empty storage containers?