The New F-35 Is So Stealthy, It's Harder To Train Pilots (airforcetimes.com) 343
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Air Force Times: The F-35 Lightning II is so stealthy, pilots are facing an unusual challenge. They're having difficulty participating in some types of training exercises, a squadron commander told reporters Wednesday. During a recent exercise at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, F-35 squadrons wanted to practice evading surface-to-air threats. There was just one problem: No one on the ground could track the plane. 'If they never saw us, they couldn't target us,' said Lt. Col. George Watkins, the commander of the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. The F-35s resorted to flipping on their transponders, used for FAA identification, so that simulated anti-air weapons could track the planes, Watkins said.
As PE said (Score:4, Insightful)
don't..don't believe the hype!
A very troubled, costly program trying to generate some positive spin.
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Nope, no hype or spin here.
Re: As PE said (Score:5, Insightful)
It is only "stealthy" if the radar transmitter and receiver are co-located. The Russians and the Chinese are well aware of this limitation, and are already building offset radar. So it is only stealthy if we assume that our adversaries are idiots. This is a good assumption if we want the funding to continue, but a bad assumption if we actually expect it to be effective. The F35 has way too much inertia and sunk costs to be cancelled at this point ... and please don't say that "sunk costs don't matter". That may be true in business, but is not true in politics.
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Probably. USA wouldn't export a really stealthy airplane (F-22) even though several countries would rather buy that than F-35.
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I too expect exaggeration. The aircraft has numerous external hardpoints so if it were a problem all you'd do is mount something reflective on one of those.
The fact that they're claiming this is a "problem" suggests to me they weren't trying very hard. I expect Russia and China will be a little more enterprising.
Even the US Navy is beginning to make noises [navytimes.com] about backing away from stealth, and that may be because they've been studying the problem of detecting enemy stealth aircraft. Some people believe th
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Mounting something reflective means that's something extra the missile can track, negating the whole point of evasion training. The idea is that the pilot learns the effects of various tactics while a missile's tracking them.
They'd need something the SAM launcher can track to give the missile an initial lock, without altering the missile's characteristics. A transponder they can turn on (for the initial launch) and off (once the missile sees them and starts tracking) would do the job nicely.
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It does not make sense to disregard evidence of stealth based on program cost overruns. Stealth is one aspect of the F-35 that has gone well. Keep an open mind and make decision based on data, not hype or preconceived biases.
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Sure, one way to see it. Another way is to say; the game has changed. It;s about who attacks first because the latest stealth tech cannot be defended against.
Expensive in the short run, yes. And good (Score:2)
The program HAS been expensive in the short run. A lot of money has been spent om R&D.
People who are less interested in facts and more interested in rooting for or against their team or idea then decide "I don't like it, so it sucks in every way." People interested in objectiveness and facts learn that spending all that money allowed some pretty good stuff to be developed. I won't argue that ot was worth every penny, but we did get something for that money.
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They all are.
Remember when the F-22 was a ridiculous boondoggle that nobody would ever use? Or the Abrams turbine engine burned so hot that it created an exhaust plume that was highly visible on IR and kilometers long? And ridiculous ceramic armor that was inferior to good old boring steel everywhere but the imaginations of ponsy British scientists? And that the Marines actually refused to use them in Gulf One because the previous tank (the M-60) was clearly superior?
The thing about $Trillion programs is th
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Amen. Without knowing what kinds of constraints the SAM crews were under during the exercise, it's pretty much impossible to tell whether this was a realistic exercise or not.
Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Informative)
So you're saying that there's no truth to this story? Where's you're evidence? You have none? Then why should I believe your negative spin?
Always a clever tactic to demand an explanation and then triumphantly declare that the other person has none before any time has passed for replies to be made. Here, let me help you with that "missing" evidence. Have you missed the news for the past eight years? The F-35 program has been dogged at every step by cost overruns, test failures, design-by-committee creeping features, etc.
I could go on all day, but you get the idea. Just google "F-35" + "waste" + "failure".
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It should be noted that turning, climbing, and running aren't terribly important if the other guy can't find you, target you, or shoot at you.
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For quite some time now, I've been thinking that missiles with computer vision are the future. Although packing the computational process into a small-enough power envelope is going to be interesting (ASICs?).
Bring back project pigeon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Except the f_35 is supposed to be a close air support plane as well. If you can see it you can hit it no matter how small the radar cross section is.
That is the problem with the f-35 it isn't the a,b,c version.. but it is trying to do roles it can't do well
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If you can see it you can hit it no matter how small the radar cross section is.
That would be true if the enemy had sci-fi phaser blasters or something, but they don't. You can't aim at an aircraft with your eyes and a projectile. It is not practicable.
You read on the internet, before the thing was even built, that it was awful at all those roles. You failed to understand the comments; it was just some guy saying "in his opinion, it will end up sucking at those things." If you had remembered it was a prognostication, you'd have been ready to reserve judgment as to the actual capabiliti
Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:4, Interesting)
What utter nonsense; of course you can. It's true, you better be damn good at leading your target to have any success with a SINGLE PROJECTILE. But that is a stupid visualization. Close air support is extreme low level. Close air support is brought down by filling the air in the vicinity with fire. Lots of Mustangs were brought down by multiple free-fired ground machine guns. Can you avoid a hailstorm by flying fast but directly toward the target at low level? Of course not.
WWI CAS was under 100 knots. By WWII it had risen to 200-400 knots. Today it is very little faster; 350-500 knots; no matter if the aircraft is capable of supersonic dash or not, that just isn't how you strafe ground targets. It's not that much harder to hit something at 500 knots than it was at 400, especially when it's much bigger now.
The F-35 is an utter piece of garbage at close air support as well as at dogfighting. The only role it could be any good at is flying high, engaging enemy aircraft at long range with missiles. And it's complete overkill for that. Not to mention that no air force on earth outside of the US, Europe, Russia, and Israel has the slightest competency whatsoever at air to air combat.
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Bugger off. No Marine platoon pinned down under heavy enemy fire wants to see air support arrive in the form of goddam toy airplanes, blundering and pussyfooting around. They want to see A-10s, driven by seasoned pilots, well experienced in CAS. They want to hear that BRRRRRRRRRRP of death shredding the enemy.
IE Boelcke vs Boyd (Score:2)
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1999, actually. US F-16 vs a MiG-29. The F16 won. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/... [thefreelibrary.com]
But you are correct in general: Dogfighting is not as important as it used to be. It still matters, just not as much.
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Then why have planes at all? If you can just shoot a missile, you can shoot a missile from the ground or a boat half way across the world. Besides having a few missiles, planes are usually depicted as flying machine guns. Or perhaps the methods of fighting have changed so much that we're just building swords only to see the enemy coming at us with tanks.
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Which makes sense since we've hit a point with technology where air action is either going to be based on using stealth tech to blow up things on the ground that don't have time to respond or using sensor tech to launch intelligent weapons at other jets that are still over the horizon from you.
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That works just as long as the opponent really is a "stupid fucker". Toward the end of WWII, a hell of a lot of Fw 190 pilots, poorly trained kids fresh from the farm, were on fire and going down before they knew they were under attack. The Mustang pilots marveled how they flew straight and level, not even looking around, even after bullets had started to strike them.
A competent opponent is trained to be aware at all times, and not to fly predictably. He will spot that missile from miles away, and just outm
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Well, the F22 is stealthy, and it can turn, climb, and run. A pig is a pig.
Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:4, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, a few years back it was considered a terrible waste of money and everyone thought that it should be canned and replaced with F-35.
It's amazing how the perception of a weapons system can change among English/Journalism majors when there have been a few years to work the bugs out.
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It should be noted that turning, climbing, and running aren't terribly important if the other guy can't find you, target you, or shoot at you.
Exactly. The F35 will be fine as long as we assume that our adversaries are completely incapable of innovation. The Chinese would certainly never think to stick a $5 optical camera and an ANN in the nose of a SAM and track using visible light.
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In a pig's eye will we ever acquire 2443 of these gold-plated overpriced pieces of shit. That's la-la land. As of March 2016, only 171 had been built, and the program is HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars over budget.
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You got a visual sensor that can tell a 10m by 16m triangle-shaped thing at 441 km from a seagull's tail at 350 km?
From a single static image? Unlikely. From a series of images at 60 FPS? Very likely. If I was building such a system, my first attempt would be a recurrent convolutional NN, 6 or 8 layers. I would need a server farm (rentable by the hour from AWS) to train it, but then it could deployed on a cheap commodity GPU or maybe even an on-die GPU for extra reliability during high-G turns.
Keep in mind that the SAM/drone/whatever that first sees the F35 would not be the only one in the sky. They could communic
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we're getting thousands of them [wikipedia.org] (680 Navy and Marines, and 1,763 for the Air Force).
No we aren't. In a couple years Hillary (or maybe Mike Pence) will face a choice of slashing this order, or painful cuts to Medicare. The first choice will lead to fewer aircraft that are increasingly seen as a white elephants, while the second choice means giving up any chance of reelection. Guess which will happen?
Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:4, Interesting)
It also turns out that when you program the computer to run in extra-safe mode... it turns, climbs, and otherwise runs slower. That's the thing that was based on something real.
Too bad Mr Deep Eyesocket didn't actually read any of his own links, he might have learned something.
The quote about turning, climbing, running slow was from RAND corp, from 2008, and not based on anything real or even from the military; they programmed a war sim themselves. Using non-classified (read: fake) data sources. And indeed, they managed to program it so that in the simulation, the thing with the label "F-35" did indeed suck. Not sure that means what some of these people think it means. Gosh, scary thought, but what if these morons also believed everything else that RAND Corp said?! Yikes!
Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Informative)
Huge amount of group think going on here.
The F-35 May have been made invisible to the EMF spectrum used by radar, but there's far more frequencies that it will show up on.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
http://aviationweek.com/techno... [aviationweek.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I like this one. Clutter can be solved with good software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And this one is gold:
a series of in-field modifications carried out by the Yugoslavs further reduced the frequency of the 1960s vintage P-18 VHF acquisition radar under Dani’s command, which enabled his men to detect Zelko’s F-117 at a distance of 30 to 37 miles (50-60 km).
*In-field modifications* That's bad-ass.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/08... [thediplomat.com]
Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Informative)
I recall reading a more detailed account, and the last one is wrong. He later admitted that he was using stock hardware. His secret was in the fact that he had very well trained AA battery teams, who followed strict discipline when it came to things like time for which fire control radar would illuminate the target and had very high morale as they were the most successful AA team in the entire nation.
The biggest problem for Serbs was the sheer volume of strike craft and the fact that you couldn't paint anything without being quickly targeted and destroyed by the plane itself or its allies because of it. Dani's people were trained to illuminate the target only for 20 seconds at a time and then shut the radar down and rapidly relocate no matter what. That meant that HARM based counter-strikes that killed so much AA hardware were ineffective against his batteries. It also meant that his people quickly understood that they weren't being under severe threat of getting randomly killed by air fired missile, which created significant amount of morale and bravery needed to put your neck out to spot, identify, target, paint and shoot at numerous aircraft that all really hate you, want to kill you and have weapons that are specifically designed to kill you.
That got US pilots in the area used to the fact that they were only in danger for ~17 seconds. His shoot down of F-16 later on involved him breaking his own rule and telling the fire control people to keep the radar illuminating the aircraft, pilot of which expected to just jam off the missile once more powerful radar on the ground would turn off and decided to take a HARM shot to see if he could score a kill. He didn't and plane got shot down
I recall similar thing was done to F-117, in that it was killed in a very specific window during which it could be tracked accurately enough for missile to stand a good chance of actually hitting the aircraft. I recall that he said he used a moment when F-117 opened it's bomb bay to get a tentative radar return that this is indeed his target, and then he just directed his powerful fire control radar to illuminate the spot with as much energy as it could pump. You can be stealthy enough to prevent a weapons grade lock on from fire control radar, but when you get bombarded by a fire control radar that already knows where you are because you flashed yourself for it to low quality lock on because spotters took their time to analyze the tactics used and know where to look, missile's logic has a good chance of estimating the range correctly and detonating close enough to kill the aircraft when aircraft is as slow and unmaneveurable as F-117.
According to the leaks, for F-35 the moment when it's "low observable" rather than "stealth" is pretty much any time it's above and ahead of ground radar. It's stealthiness is mainly in the front hemisphere of the aircraft, and rear is far less stealthy. Which means that if it runs into a well trained team like one that Dani led, it's going to have a decent chance to get killed in a similar fashion. And that's when it's in the stealth configuration, which can carry almost no payload. When carrying a proper strike package, it's about as stealthy as most aircraft around, simply because of signal returns from the payload itself.
Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Funny)
he had very well trained AA battery teams,
Imagine what he could've done with C, or even D cells.
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The P-18 VHF is an early warning system with a range of 155 miles (250 km). If the F-117 can only be detected at 30-37 miles on an early warning radar, this seems li
Re: Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Interesting)
You may have stepped in some strategic misinformation. Like "carrots improve night vision," which is still being taught in schools even thought the Germans already know about radar.
Low-frequency radar is a great tool. And it can indeed detect stealth craft. The problem is, you need a giant powerful broadcast, and you don't get location data. You just detect, "gosh there is something out there." It isn't what Serbia used to shoot down a plane; they used regular AA radar, the plane wasn't stealth even though it was a stealth model, because it was operating in wet weather where it looks normal on radar. It has to be dry to be stealthy. They took a chance, and got hit.
You thought vintage radar would detect stealth tech? Seriously? That's like... W T F level stuff.
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You may not be impressed, but everyone seems to forget the enemy really is another intelligent human like themselves bent on the others destruction and will use all the resources available which would include testing every idea.
What I hate most about group-think is the assumption that the enemy will fight the way we want them to, while using the best possible scientific solution that we know everything about.
The first day stuff, actually we're so good at that it isn't even a challenge.
The first enemy to surprise the shit out of us is going to have a field day.
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"Claims" be stuffed. The REALITY is that the vaunted long range Sparrow radar homers were SHIT. They NEVER hit ANYTHING. The small, cheap Sidewinder infrared homers were a lot better, but they were short range. Fact is, if a highly maneuverable fighter with a good pilot sees that almighty giveaway smoke trail of a missile coming for him, ANY type of missile which is nothing more than a pointy stick with rudders and elevators on the end, but no airfoil up front, he stands a damn good chance of outmaneuvering
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All five of the kills which Steve Ritchie (the only US Air Force pilot ace in Vietnam) got were done by AIM-7 Sparrows. For two of those kills he was flying an F-4E which had a gun. Here is a description of his fourth kill, "The first MiG had also turned back and was attacking the last F-4 in Ritchie's flight from behind, an often fatal consequence to US aircraft employing the then-standard "fluid four" tactical formation. Ritchie made a hard turn across the curving intercept of the MiG, again coming out a
Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:4, Insightful)
Always a clever tactic - to erect a strawman and subsequent to demolishing it pronounce the other person a fraud.
It's either that, or you have serious reading comprehension problems - because the grandparent's question wasn't "prove the program is a failure". It was "prove there's no truth to this story". Something that, despite claiming "victory", you have signally failed to so.
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While a popular meme by some people it isn't generally true. Proving negatives is done all the time, the simplest way to do it is to enumerate all possibilities and check them all.
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Proving negatives is done all the time, the simplest way to do it is to enumerate all possibilities and check them all.
That only works for positives and not for negatives.
Hence: you can not prove a negative.
Or: please prove that God does not exist. Or assuming, he does not exist: prove he does.
Or: prove unicorns don't exist, in case you are religious and God is a hot topic for you.
Your parent is right, you failed at basic math and logic.
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Proving negatives is done all the time, the simplest way to do it is to enumerate all possibilities and check them all.
That only works for positives and not for negatives.
Hence: you can not prove a negative.
Or: please prove that God does not exist. Or assuming, he does not exist: prove he does.
Or: prove unicorns don't exist, in case you are religious and God is a hot topic for you.
Your parent is right, you failed at basic math and logic.
Thank you, angel'o'sphere (note the 5-digit UID) [slashdot.org], for correcting the troll.
For those that don't know, Megol's claim that "it is a popular meme by some people" is nothing more than trollery. The concept underpins the discipline of Scientific Research. Well, err, science itself.
Oh, also: My first "-1" Comment! Why did it take over a decade to achieve such an honor? Darn.
Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the F-35 absolutely can dogfight [defensenews.com] - for whatever that's worth these days.
Also, all of these financial comparisons completely miss the point, as if the US wasn't going with the F-35 program, they'd be going with a different program instead. It's not like the US is just going to say, "Meh, I think our fighters are good enough, even though all of our potential adversaries keep advancing theirs..." And they would have again sought to go big, since there's a lot of aircraft to replace, and the more they produce the smaller the unit cost.
Yes, the F-35 is estimated at $1,5 trillion. Total through 2070. Aka, $28B per year, versus the Pentagon's $580B budget. And not all go to the US, there are many international orders as well. Procurement is only a fifth of that $1,5 trillion, or under $6B per year.
Again, yes, you could spend that money on, say, college education for people instead. If you're willing not only to let your adversaries out-tech your airforce, but also to scrap the current airplanes you're with that the F-35 is designed to replace, since that money also pays for ongoing operations costs that you'd have to pay for either way. You might be willing to scrap a large chunk of your airforce. Most Americans would not be, I'm sure.
Is it worth mentioning that many of the design decisions of the F-35 are designed to reduce operating costs, such as large production runs, a single engine design, etc - even though the unit cost is high? Again: production is only a fifth of total costs....
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Is it worth mentioning that many of the design decisions of the F-35 are designed to reduce operating costs, such as large production runs, a single engine design, etc - even though the unit cost is high? Again: production is only a fifth of total costs....
And I had the impression that several of the allies and early signers for the F-35 program had either cancelled or reduced their orders because of astronomical operating costs compared with the alternatives.
Something like how you could fly 10 sorties with a Jas Gripen or 5 with a Eurofighter for the cost of one with an F-35...
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To haul comparable payload in stealth mode, you're actually going to need about four or five times as many F-35s.
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If the F-35 had been developed just as an F-16 replacement, it would have been a much better-managed program and would probably meet, or even already have met, the goal respectably. The problem is that a jack-of-all-trades is inevitably a master of none, and the F-35 grew into a massive boondoggle. In addition to the F-16, it also has to replace:
- Most of the F-15s, because the air force stopped building the F-22 too soon.
- The F-22s that were supposed to be built, but weren't.
- The F-14; the Super Hornet
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> Basically, the only thing it has going for it as anything more than a 16, non-super 18, and Harrier replacement is stealth. If anyone figures out how to break that, it's boned
Or if they can break the bank of the military using them. Programs like the F-35 are so grossly overbudget, and so expensive to equip and maintain, that they genuinely cut into the funding for "boots on the ground" to occupy territory. And the F-35 still remains reliant on grossly expensive replacement parts after _every mission_,
Re:Can't turn, can't climb, can't run (Score:5, Interesting)
This is simply not correct. The F-35's operating cost is nearly as low per hour [breakingdefense.com] as the old, much less advanced F-16, which has had nearly half a century to refine. See the line item above for maintenance, $10k per flight hour? The F-22 by contrast takes $33k maintenance per flight hour. Just the maintenance line item alone for the F-22 costs more than all O&S costs for the F-35 combined.
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Pick a less biased party (like the GAO) and you'll find those operating costs are MUCH higher than $10k. In short, breakingdefence.com is completely full of shit.
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design decisions of the F-35 are designed to reduce operating costs
And that would have been a good idea... if it had worked out. But it didn't: the F-35 has massively higher operational costs than other modern fighters it competes with.
We don't know it has higher operating costs. Pundits have speculated as much, but experts with knowledge keep saying it will reduce operating costs. Your whole meme about "if it had worked" isn't even a thing. Let me explain to you how it actually reads: you say already decided it sucked, before you had data, because pundits. Then when new information came out later, and the program was succeeding, you refused to listen because you already had decided it was a failure. Done explaining.
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It's interesting you're quoting media reports from English/Journalism Majors in an evaluation of technology. This does not speak well to your critical thinking skills.
No shit, a plane specifically designed to be impossible to find can't dogfight. I'll bet the next thing you tell me is that a dude with a cavalry sabre can hack every pilot in the squadron to death if he's managed to sneak into the officer's club while their drunk and totally unarmed. Hell, given the state which most flyboys keep their firearm
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Its a pointless story on a pointless topic, because this is the fourth stealth aircraft operated by the USAF which would have been tested against modern SAM systems, so its not as if they only just discovered a problem with the training process.
Turn on the transponder or hang external ordnance off of pylons on the wings, both would be enough to raise the RCS enough to make it hairy for the pilots.
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Where's you're evidence?
I see no evidence that he's evidence.
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They decided a few years ago that the airplanes don't work, so any news of them being the next generation and more this, and more than, and better at the other thing, that just doesn't matter to them. They can't see the words, because it would mean they were wrong in the past. Instead, they'll just be wrong forever.
It is hilarious, but useful. If nobody can even talk about the thing online without an army of stupid popping up, it will be harder for the enemy to prepare. Maybe.
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Most sources put the F-35's stealth at worse than the F-22. According to one article, the USAF stated that the F-22's RCS is "is the equivalent, for a radar, to a metal marble. The less stealthy (and much cheaper) F-35, is equal to a metal golf ball. The F-35 stealthiness is a bit better than the B-2 bomber, which, in turn, was twice as good as that on the even older F-117."
It was hard to keep the F-22's stealth to that level, however. It's also a bigger plane, which makes it more vulnerable to low freque
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But in a more serious vein, the money does eventually trickle down, albeit very unevenly. It's not like the money spent on the F-35 goes up into space never to return. It enriches an industry and companies, true, but it certainly benefits the economies that the many people who work on the program (all the way down to the smallest sub-contractors) live in. But by the same token we could argue that money spent on entitlements also has a similar effect, perhaps more-so.
In the Sprawlmart parking lot . . . (Score:5, Funny)
So the F-35 pilot exits Sprawlmart, and looks around for his plane.
I know I parked it here . . . but I just can't see it anywhere!
Re:In the Sprawlmart parking lot . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Here it is! [artsaviationwebsite.com]
Pointless hype (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Lower the undercarriage.
2) Many low signature aircraft have corner reflectors which either bolt on or are hidden behind doors and which greatly increase the radar returns. They are used to hide the true signature when flying somewhere where someone may try to measure your radar cross section. I have no idea if the F35 has such a feature, but I would be surprised if it doesn't.
3) Fit external stores. I don't know if the F35 supports this option.
So, a story about something that isn't a real problem and instead suggests a badly planned training exercise re-cast as an opportunity to say how great their aircraft are.
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Yes, well maybe the aircraft's signature was too low for the threat system to engage them, but if you want to increase the signature of the stealthy aircraft there are lots of easy ways,
...snip...
So, a story about something that isn't a real problem and instead suggests a badly planned training exercise re-cast as an opportunity to say how great their aircraft are.
If we take the story at face value, yeah this is a good thing. OTOH, we've had stealth fighters for some time now, I would have thought we'd worked out procedures for training with them a long time ago.
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Flipping radar transponder switch sounds much easier ..
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"Flipping radar transponder switch sounds much easier ..
THANKYOU. Unfortunatly my mod points expired yesterday.
Why this guy got modded up for suggesting more complex solutions to a problem that was already solved is beyond me
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We're not training the missile ops to use their radar, though.
We're training the pilots on how to use their plane's stealth to evade missiles. Undermining that stealth capability doesn't help.
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If you're simulating something, can't you just do that in middleware? Why would you want to engineer hardware?
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Which greatly limits the performance of the aircraft and thus provides much less than optimum training for the missile operators.
[[Citation Needed]] - not only that such things exist, but that the F-35 has them.
It does (I know this because I'm not too l
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The F-35 does not support external stores and opening the bay doors or lowering gear degrade the aerodynamics, making evasion maneuvers that they were practicing very difficult. Turning on the transponder makes a lot of sense in this case.
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Absolutely ... WRONG.
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Lower your undercarriage so that you can be tracked whilst pulling high-G missile evasion manoeuvres?
Great idea, assuming you don't plan to land the thing again afterwards.
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if you want to increase the signature of the stealthy aircraft there are lots of easy ways
You missed: open the weapons bay doors, which the F-35 has to do every 10 minutes or so [popularmechanics.com] if it wants to avoid cooking it's munitions. Quoting that link:
Wait, so the F-35 is good for something? (Score:3, Insightful)
With everything I’ve been reading lately, it sounds like the F-35 has just been a total bomb, inferior in every way to earlier planes, but for some reason I could never figure out, the air force was forced to buy them.
Why is this the first I’m hearing that it has really good stealth?
Re:Wait, so the F-35 is good for something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you've been reading sources focused on bashing the F-35? Which might explain the seemingly "inexplicable" interest by other parties who don't read exclusively efforts to bash it?
Re: (Score:2)
Well it's not really great since if it wants to take out the radar source it will have to open the weapons bay doors which will greatly increase the radar signature so that it will probably show up on radar. The article didn't mention anything about trying to attack the sources, just evading. The US may have the F-22 to take out SAM sites but other countries like Canada or Australia won't. And when it comes to encountering other aircraft it's going to be a disadvantage.
Really good stealth vs US radar. (Score:5, Interesting)
All they are saying is that the F35 has very good stealth vs the US AA radar, which is a high frequency radar and that makes sense, since it was a big priority of the design. In fact, it was a priority over other aspects, so the F35 has many disadvantages. But yes, it has that advantage.
Now, the problem is that Russia and China are building low frequency radars to which the F35 has no stealth capability. The difficulty is getting a good enough lock for weapons targeting - something that is thought to be hard with low frequency radars (i.e. you can see the F35 fine, but it exact location & vector are harder to get). If they succeed in making them good at targeting using low frequencies, then the F35 loses its main advantage and several disadvantages will start coming into play.
Personally, I'd have thought the US would have already built radars that can "see" the F35, mainly to anticipate the others doing so, in order to prepare on facing them (perhaps tweaking the plane, or seeing the limits of low frequency radar technology, or developing strategies etc). But of course they wouldn't announce it, so this fluff piece would be published anyway.
Re:Really good stealth vs US radar. (Score:4, Informative)
Low frequency radar has been around for a long time, and no there is no country using that instead of higher frequency radar.
They use that in addition to. And the thing about actual low frequency radar; yes it can detect stealth technology at a higher rate than regular radar. But it doesn't give you a specific position. You're basically using an intermediate radar that is less like a combat radar, and more like a weather radar. It isn't new. In the ancient past they didn't both with that, because they cared mostly about getting an accurate reading to guide missiles. You don't guide missiles with low frequency radar. It is an early warning system, so that when none of your regular radar is showing anything, and something blows up, you know "was that an air attack, or a ground attack, or an accident, or what?" You want that extra tool when the enemy has stealth. You want the command center to be able to have the generals get in the bunker when the stealth bombers invade, even if you can't shoot at them.
Different frequencies of radar have real, physical differences in what they can tell you. There isn't a magic anti-stealth beam yet, sorry kids.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not inferior in every way to earlier planes. Most ways, but not all. Whether the ways it's superior (stealth) can completely make up for the ways it is inferior (climb rate, maneuverability during dogfights, payload, loiter time, low airspeed performance for close air support, sustained turn rate, cockpit visibility, range, survivability vs combat damage), remains to be seen. Many people doubt it. It's a one-trick pony. Defeat that trick, and you are SOL.
I think a large concern isn't it being a one trick pony, but that it is a duck-billed platypus, and the result of design by committee. Every investing party demanded that it had a feature, be it bombing, or STOL, or stealth, or ability to be crippled remotely, or the machine that goes ping. Attempting to cram all the different uses into a single machine made it a jack of all trades. You still have to pay for all those features, though, both in costs and in performance trade-offs in other areas.
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Although since the Russian economy isn't great, their pilots wont get the same level of training airtime and will likely struggle in an early-conflict combat situation.
There's a reason the UK keep winning conflicts despite seldom being the best equipped army out there.
Salesmanship (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, longer-wavelength radars can indeed detect stealthy aircraft. Warships with sea-sweeping radars can often spot such aircraft. The problem is they can't hand off an accurate location and track to the anti-aircraft missile radars which need to be much higher frequency to determine the aircraft's position to within a few centimetres so they can actually hit it. Those missile system radars are what the stealth profiles and skin coatings are designed to be near-invisible to and they do that job very well. A
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...That, my friends, is a modern long wavelength radar. That thing sees "stealth" planes just fine.
You mean like was discussed here a while ago? Long-Wave Radar Can Take the Stealth From Stealth Technology [slashdot.org]
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From 40 miles out, it is enough time to get your fighter planes in the air to combat the stealth planes.
By the time you've merely communicated the command to take off, the vector and the altitude, half of those 40 miles have already been covered by an attacking aircraft.
These are military attack aircraft, not pushbikes.
Better Hide Because it Can't Fight. (Score:2)
What we are not hearing about is the pilots had said it can't dogfight, just like the F4 Phantom.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it hard to believe (Score:2)
They would even think about flying F-35's in training missions without RCS enhancement. One heck of a gift to any adversary looking to probe/defeat US stealth advantage.
Interview questions (Score:2)
"What is your greatest weakness."
"I am just too honest."
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Re:Sounds like .... (Score:4, Insightful)
25 years of combat, my ass. 24-1/2 years of mugging helpless savages and maybe 1/2 year of combat.
Re:Sounds like .... (Score:4, Interesting)
More like 25 years of avoiding conflict. After the USSR showed they could shoot down a U2 by actually doing it, US has had a policy of avoiding engagement with anyone who has competent defence.
Re: (Score:2)
I used to think like that when I was younger, but I don't any more.
Guess I've listened to enough of people feeling genuinely hurt by that kind of name calling - eventually, I decided to stop. I don't feel like it's cost me anything.
Re:The next great military technology? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The next great military technology? (Score:5, Funny)
Stop posting FUD, the F9¾ stealth project was a stunning success! Here's a whole squadron of them being proudly displayed [imgur.com].