Do you realize that the $1.5T estimates are for the lifetime operation of the entire fleet? In other words, if we had decided that this F-35 idea was a bad idea, and we just wanted to replace our existing fleet 1-for-1 with new builds of the same fighters, we’d spend most of that $1.5T anyways. It covers things like pilot and ground crew salaries, jet fuel, replacement parts, etc.
We have no idea if Russia and China can already detect the US stealth aircraft or not since we’ve never gone up against them. The nighthawk was publicly revealed in 1988 so they’ve had 27 years to work on the problem and a pretty strong motivation to do so. Amazingly enough they haven’t told us if they’ve solved it or not, why would they?
Here is an article claiming that Russia’s S-400 missile system (which they have sold to China) can detect and shoot down an F-35:
http://in.rbth.com/blogs/2015/03/11/how_russias_s-400_makes_the_f-35_obsolete_41895.html
By the way, coremelt, I read an interesting blog post this weekend about the PAK-FA (the 5th gen Sukhoi aircraft) and its troubles. Unfortunately, I can’t find that blog now, but I found something similar that you may find interesting given your earlier perception that Russia is quickly closing the gap on our technology:
The above article also links to another one from the same website which says that a replacement engine is already being developed because of problems with the existing engine.
Let’s just remember that the Russian defense industry is a shambles. Their most advanced sea launched ballistic missile failed in nine out of 13 early test launches through 2010, but finally was declared operational late last year. The brand new T-14 Armata tank, which everyone is abuzz over, broke down during the Victory Day parade. I’m not sure if Russia’s one supercarrier still has to travel with tugboats to tow it back to port if something happens, but it did for a notable amount of time.
Are we really going try the “Russia can’t do anything technical argument” ? While there is no doubt the US has a vastly larger R&D budget there is some areas where Russia is ahead. For one thing the Soyuz is superior to anything the US can currently launch.
No one here knows the details as both the exact details of stealth coatings and Russia / Chinese anti stealth measure are all classified, so this is all speculation, but the sensible response to the US public reveal of stealth in 1988 would have been to put a lot of money into advanced radar, optical, infrared and UV methods to bust that. There’s also good reason to believe that Russia and China have been sharing research on this since 1988, why wouldn’t they?
Underestimating your enemy is a serious mistake.
So is over estimating them. The Russians spend something like a tad less than $100 billion per year on their military, and that budget has to stretch to include paying their troops, their Ukraine adventure, basic maintenance on the metric butt load of old Soviet era crap they still are using as well as R&D. There is simply no way they can keep up or move ahead of the US in any substantial way, at least not while the US annual budget for our military is over $600 billion per year, and we had a substantial tech edge even before the old Soviet Union went tits up. China, who is spending something between $200-300 billion per year (now) has a lot of catching up to do, and also has a huge military and huge amount of old Soviet era (or worse, Soviet era knock offs and copies) crap to maintain as well. Even pooling those two nations resources completely and hand waving aside the fact that the US is probably a decade or two (at least) ahead technologically they still aren’t able to match our funding, even leaving aside that they have basically local defense forces that can project said force regionally (maybe) while the US has global commitments. You don’t have to understand all the nuts and bolts to see that $100 million plus $200-300 million does not equal $600 million+ (and this leaves aside the huge amount of corruption in both the Russian and Chinese military establishments which draws off a huge amount of that funding).
I’ll believe that the Chinese and Russians have a stealth killer tech when I not only see it demonstrated but they show they can actually produce and deploy the tech on any sort of scale to matter…and when they start giving that away to the other countries we are actually likely to be fighting in the next 20+ years. Until then, it’s like the magic carrier killer missile/torpedo or the new Chinese carrier menace…and, of course, completely ignores the vast amount of money the US gives to DARPA every year to play with gods know what or what is on our own drawing boards for the future (or what our allies, especially those crafty Brits are working on these days).
If you concentrate all your resources in one area you can achieve a lot, and both Russia and China have had a huge motivation to develop SAM that can target stealth aircraft for the last thirty years.
More articles:
http://archive.defensenews.com/article/20141004/DEFREG03/310040023/China-Touts-Anti-stealth-Radar
I’m sure they have. As your first article says, the Chinese are using the basic plans from an older Soviet design (which was abandoned by the west). The thing about that article is that all of the assertions come from the Chinese, and it sounds like a lot of BS to me, especially when they claim they can track stealth aircraft (what did they use to test this I wonder?) at long ranges and without the pilots or anyone else being able to detect that they are being tracked. From your article:
I looked up the DWL002 (there are a ton of articles on it), and it doesn’t seem that China has too many of them. It’s possible capabilities are also widely debated. Here is a wiki on the tech used:
I’m sure the Chinese (and Russians, and basically everyone else, including the US) are working on anti-stealth measures at this point. No doubt about that. And if they focused all their R&D funds on that alone, they could probably crack it (though my guess is the US is ahead on that as well, since we’ve actually had the tech for over a decade and can play with it as well as with ways of defeating it…so have many of our allies)…eventually. And they have to put that into production and into the field, which isn’t instant, especially since as I noted they have to pay for all that other stuff as well. But they can’t focus all their R&D on that one thing because that isn’t the only trick up the US’s sleeves…and they also have to think about who ELSE besides the US they might potentially confront in the future (which probably won’t be the US, even in Russia’s case). I don’t think there is going to be a magical bullet that renders the US stealth fighter fleet ‘obsolete’ any time soon, and our air craft actually have a lot of scale in them as well as adaptability. I mean, come on…we are STILL freaking re-using and updating the B-52 for the sake of the gods, and that air craft/air frame is even older than I am. 
It would be a disaster for the USA and China. This is to be revealed as a threat, in cse the USN decides to evict China from the Spratlys, for example.
The US Navy isn’t going to be evicting the Chinese from anywhere. :rolleyes: Good grief. The reason I asked was to make sure you understand that if China decides to do all that grim stuff you were spouting it would mean their own economy (currently very shaky) would completely crater and they would rather spectacularly melt down. We’d be in no great shakes either. Which is why it’s pretty unlikely that China and the US would duke it out over basically anything.
You make good points, but the facts are that we don’t know if China / Russia can detect stealth aircraft or not, that article is about a publicly revealed radar, who knows what they have they they haven’t revealed?
The current stealth force is good for going up against underdeveloped countries with 40 year old radar tech. Against a near peer state, the outcome is a lot more uncertain.
We test the things against OUR radar tech, which is hardly 40 year old (and when I say ‘we’ I mean pretty much all the western ally countries including Japan, South Korea and all of Europe, Canada, Australia, etc etc). While it’s possible that China and Russia have far surpassed our own tech (they would have to in order to so outclass us that their own radar can do something our collective tech can’t) I’m going to have to say that this is unlikely. As you say though, their own stuff is secret. The thing is, I’ve seen a lot of examples of both the Chinese and Russians over blowing their supposed tech (to the point of mocking up fake fighters, making wild claims about missile and torpedo tech that they supposedly have, and, of course, their claims that our stealth is ‘obsolete’)…which, to me, says that they really don’t have it. Because, frankly, if they did I’m going to guess they wouldn’t say anything about it, and since they can supposedly keep such great secrets we’d never know until it’s too late. YMMV of course on your assessment, and let’s both hope to the gods that we never need to put it to the test to find out, because frankly I’m not real keen on a military confrontation between the US and either China or Russia.
They have the laws of physics on their side. 27,000 kg of metal flying through the sky at mach 0.8 can’t be invisible.
• It is emitting infrared, even with efforts to disguise that, it still has to get rid of heat somehow.
• It occludes the background behind it, so optical sensors can potentially detect it
• They can detect the signals transmitted from the stealth aircraft back to command and control
• Advances in using real time computer signal processing on low frequency radar may make weapons level targeting possible. See here:
This is how they shot down an F117 over Kosovo. Rumor is that both China and Russia obtained pieces of the skin of the F117 for analysis.
We have the laws of physics on our side as well (as well as the dudes that invented radar, those crafty Brits :)), and all the things you’ve brought up have been brought up before and tested with our own equipment and systems. Thus far, to the best of my knowledge neither we nor any of our allies (many of who are lining up to buy F-35’s and probably would buy F-22’s if anyone could afford the damned things) have rendered it ‘obsolete’.
As to the F-117 that was a first generation stealth attack craft and when it was shot down it was at the end of it’s life in service…and basically it was hit by a series of bad luck and circumstance on par with a golden-BB. It probably WAS obsolete (it certainly is today) when this all happened, and it’s still the only one that we ever lost in combat. If anyone is basing their ability to defeat stealth on that example then they are several generations behind the times.
Like I said, it’s possible they do have something, or are on the path to get something that will mitigate the effectiveness of our stealth down the road. But there is very little chance, IMHO, that they have something today (or in the next 10 years) that will render it ‘obsolete’, since such a tech would far surpass our own, being as WE don’t have something that does that, and we have the stealth to actually test against, which neither the Russians or Chinese have as yet (not the current generation of it…they probably or I guess possibly have first or maybe second gen stealth available to them I’d guess)…and they still have to put whatever it is in production on a fairly limited budget. I’m guessing that the sooper stealth killer tech won’t be something that’s cheap and easy, since if it was I’m reasonably sure we’d have figured it out ourselves.
how do you know? If the US does have advanced radar / optical techniques that can target their own stealth fighters it would be classified Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information need to know only. If only because it would tank sales of the F35 to allied nations. The US has had 30 years to work on anti-stealth tech as well and I am fairly confident they have something, but haven’t shared it with allies.
I don’t, of course. So I have to resort to logic and Occam. To me, if the US HAD developed such a technology that would render the current generation of stealth ‘obsolete’ it makes no sense to build extremely expensive air craft around that tech in the hopes that keeping it secret would do much of anything. For one, if the US invented it then it’s more than possible some of our allies, who also have stealth air craft to play with can too. And I seriously doubt we’d hold something like that back from our allies, since a tech that rendered stealth ‘obsolete’ while both we and they are buying air craft with that same stealth puts a huge hole in all our battle plans for it’s use. For another, if we have it then there is a non-zero chance that the Chinese, Russians etc could simply steal it from us, since this has happened numerous times in the past. And while the US military establishment is a lot of things they aren’t completely stupid…they would have to factor that into the equation on whether to continue to pursue the tech and buy extremely expensive air craft using it that they are planning to have operations for decades to come. Lastly, of course they (the Chinese and Russians) could stumble onto it themselves, though it’s hard for me to believe that they could do that without having examples to test with of the current gen of stealth. It’s always possible, though going from that to a production system that you can deploy in sufficient numbers AND keep secret is going to be a challenge I expect.
I’m confident that the US has some experimental tech that could mitigate, somewhat, our current gen of stealth. But that’s far different than a production system that can be deployed in numbers to really counter the stuff. And I doubt that even if China or Russia has stolen whatever we have (a distinct possibility) that THEY have such a system in production either, nor do I think they will for much of the lifetime of the air frames in question. And the US continues to develop this tech, so a new generation of stealth is undoubtedly being worked on as we, er, type. If it’s a new coating then there is nothing to say that the current air frames couldn’t be refreshed with or retrofitted with the new tech.
If stealth is outdated, overpriced, junk technology, why are countries like Israel and South Korea – two countries that are literally ready to go to war at any time – signing up to join the F-35 program? Neither one was in on the program in the beginning, but have signed up with substantial buys in recent years.
Can you explain why these two countries who are at real risk of big wars on a near-continuous basis so misinformed, but you know better?
(Note: I just read that the Israelis do not intend to call the F-35 the “Lightning II.” They are calling it “Awesome.” Link. Not sure how I missed this tidbit earlier.)
In a broad sense, stealth technology is the radar equivalent of wearing camouflage uniforms and painting your equipment in camouflage patterns.
It’s unlikely to totally render anything invisible, but it’ll definitely make the job of detection and actually engaging harder, and even if it’s not 100% effective, it’ll still do that second job, and as a result, is better than the alternative.
Look at it this way- a 1960s era attack jet is more or less the radar equivalent of a tank painted in a neon pink scheme. It’s very visible on radar. Stealth aircraft are something more similar to painting the tank in a very terrain and distance appropriate camouflage pattern. It doesn’t render the tank invisible, especially if he’s moving, but it does make him harder to spot, and harder to gather any other information about him, such as size, direction or anything else.
Stealth is similar, in that while it doesn’t render the F-35 invisible, it makes its radar cross-section much, much smaller (i.e. closer detection distance), and it makes it extremely difficult for tracking radars to actually guide missiles in on them. Even if that’s imperfect, it’s still better than just saying to Hell with it, and letting the planes reflect willy-nilly, just for the sake of being good at something (dogfighting) that pilots and air combat planners desperately try to avoid.
Exactly. So, anyone claiming that they have tech in production that renders it ‘obsolete’ has got a a hell of burden of proof to display before they can be taken seriously.
Ditto. Stealth is not cheap, but it might mean the difference between being detected at 200 miles in a fourth generation fighter, or a fraction of that in a fifth generation fighter. But what is important is that if the fifth gen fighter can get within range to launch weapons (like maybe a JSOW), then the investment is worth it.
I don’t believe that F-35s at full-rate production will be much more expensive than current “4.5 generation” fighters, if at all.