Reply to post: Re: and Pigs might fly a.k.a F-35

Re: and Pigs might fly a.k.a F-35

"They can modernise the avionics all they want, if the airframe design is 50 years old (as is the case with the Tu-22M and Su-24) then its stealth characteristics will be negligible. They'll stick out like a sore thumb on modern radar."

...

Stealth is well on the way to being obsolete. It was another 'technology to eliminate dogfights' silver bullet, something the technocrats, particularly in the casualty averse US, have been looking for since the F-4 Phantom, whose missiles were supposed to eliminate the need for a gun by killing all the enemies before they could get in range.

Stealth is only effective against certain wavelengths - those typically used by aircraft radars. Other radars, including modern air defence radars, operate in other bands, where only bombers are big enough to take advantage of many of the stealth techniques involving aircraft geometry, at least versus 2m radars.

Stealth coatings are quite fragile - at least one or two reports I have seen indicate that the F-35 can't fly through rain without damaging the coating. And then there are hailstones...

The F-35, in part because of multi-role compromises, is radar stealthy only in limited frontal arc. From the side or rear, not so much.

Stealth was developed in an era when high capability IRST (infrared search and track) was not fitted to aircraft. While IRST is still shorter range than some radars, depending on target, good IRST now has a range of 50+ km... rivaling radar in some situations... and the F-35 has a rather hot engine.

Integrated air defence systems also track targets by their emissions - which becomes a contest between defence systems and evasion capabilities of the networked communications that modern fighters use to integrate into their own tactical nets.

The defence integration also means that you are not just hiding from the enemy in front, you are hiding from ground based, often mobile, systems and the other enemy aircraft and drones that may be out of your radar stealth arc.

As well, stealth aircraft are more limited in armament (size and number of missiles) because external ordnance kills stealth.

The F-35 has little or limited supercruise, and cannot carry external fuel without breaking stealth. Many other fighters are faster. This means that opposing aircraft moving faster give enemy missiles more kinetic energy, speed, and range, so nominally equal missiles on a non-stealth aircraft may be fired from farther away, giving the enemy a chance to break off after firing. More missiles also means more and more diverse incoming missiles which complicates countermeasures and reduces chances of dodging missiles.

F-35 mission availability is currently hovering around 25%, and repair times are high, so the number of such aircraft actually available for use is much less than you would expect by comparing numbers of aircraft.

All in all, any of the three Euro-canards is probably a better choice.