>Basically in any reasonably capable enemy airspace, you need to fly with emissions control - ie. no radio, no radar else passive detection systems will find, t

>Basically in any reasonably capable enemy airspace, you need to fly with emissions control - ie. no radio, no radar else passive detection systems will find, triangulate and guide a SAM on you. A cruise missile on final approach don't need forward radars or datalink back to base, and the same goes for almost any kind if missile used since the 2nd world war. Just because remote controlled drones don't work under heavy ECM don't mean the military don't have robots that can. And some of the US's drone use a directed signal towards an satellite instead of omni directional RF signals for control. The Problem here is that stealth don't add a whole lot of value to the observe first then shoot kind of missions where you really do want an human in the pilot seat, so multiplying the cost pr air hour by a order of magnitude to get some level of radar stealth is the kind of economics that causes mission failures in real conflicts where real life supply problems dominate. For the F-35 with it's dependence on BVR missiles for defense going silent also means that if it can be spotted by a ground observer(which it likely can) it faces a high risk if the enemy have enough time to scramble an interdiction patrol into visual range, a tactic that was perfected by the RAF doing the battle of Britain(using radars that could probably see the F-35).