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> Why risk a human life when you can just send a robot to the battlefield instead? That's literally the point of the F35: to stealthily penetrate enemy airspac

> Why risk a human life when you can just send a robot to the battlefield instead? That's literally the point of the F35: to stealthily penetrate enemy airspace and act as a command and control combat platform for drones. It observes the battlefield with it's amazing "eye of god" sensory field, drones are sent into the battle space automatically where they are then taken control of by the pilot.

sudosysgen 5y ago
The ability to "stealthily penetrate enemy airspace" is only temporary. As VHF radars improve and dual guidance missiles proliferate the F-35 will only be barely more stealthy than what came before it. As it is right now Russian VHF radars can already guide dual-guidance missiles onto an F-35 close enough for them to detect the F-35 with their radars. The Chinese and Russians have set up VHF radars in Syria and use them to observe Israeli F-35s every day too, so the fog of war in their favour. The fact that stealth is only a temporary advantage has been known for a long time. It's part of the reason why the USSR decided not to pursue stealth aircraft development despite their lead on stealth design technology relative to the US - until the Soviet bureaucracy in it's classical ineptitude decided to declassify the algorithms they developed which Lockheed Martin happily adopted.
- Green_man 5y ago
  Is your argument that military technology could be described as an "arms race"?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    The F-35 was developed to be used until 2070. It was done so at a time where it was clear that stealth could not be relied on past 2025 at the most. Many compromises were made in the pursuit of an advantage known to become greatly diminished 10 years into a 50 year lifespan. I don't think this can be written off by the arms race argument.
    - Green_man 5y ago
      Sorry, my previous comment was probably overly dismissive. I'd argue that developers and users of the F-35 already understand that stealth gains are not permanent. Countries and military organizations that purchased the F-35 definitely hope that the stealth advances last longer than 2025, but they will pay for improvements, new planes, and new tech long before 2070. It seems comically naïve for them to take claims of "2070" at face value without verifying, but that's just conjecture on my part.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Is it? The B-52 has now been in service for 69 years. 50 years is certainly not impossible. The trade-offs made for stealth are beyond the plane itself, the entirety of US military strategy (and even diplomacy to some extent) is deeply affected by a stealth-focused air-power strategy. As for stealth advances beyond 2025, I don't see it personally. As long as your doctrine requires you to fly your planes over enemy radars, there's not much you can when the wavelength of the enemy radar is bigger than most features in your plane. It's a physical limit as solid as conservation of energy.
        Green_man 5y ago
        I don't work in radar/military stealth, but my argument isn't that you're wrong about any of your technical claims. Rather, my argument is that the F-35 was designed and purchased by people who are at least as aware of those technical details as you are. This is an assumption, but I don't think it's a huge one. As a nitpick, the F-35 may still be operational in 50 years, just as the B-52 is operational today. The question is whether its stealth will still be useful, not whether it can get airborne. Nobody is using the B-52 for its stealth anymore (happy to be proven wrong), and the decision to lean on the F-35's stealth capabilities for 50 years won't simply be "The B-52 has been running for 69 years, nice!"
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        The B-52 was never designed for stealth. If stealth isn't very helpful, why would you fly the slow and expensive F-35? I don't really understand it. I'm sure the people behind the F-35 were aware of these technical factors, maybe not the extent of Russian/Chinese investment though, but I don't think that their interests were anything beyond making as much money out of maintenance as possible. As for the people making the purchases, many of them do think that the F-35 made the wrong tradeoffs and a lot of them are pushing for a plane that would fulfill the same role as the F-35 was designed for but with a very different set of tradeoffs.
  - gumby 5y ago
    Clever analogy!
- SubjectToChange 5y ago
  Then why are Russia and China developing stealth aircraft of their own?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Because neither Russia nor China are planning to use their stealth aircraft over the airspace of another superpower. Good luck fitting a meter-wave AESA on an aircraft. Beyond that, neither Russia nor China are trading-off anywhere near as much as the US for stealth. Both of their designs are less stealthy but carry better weapons over a longer range with better kinematics at a lower cost.
    - SubjectToChange 5y ago
      Why does it matter whether you are over another superpower's land? As you said, these systems are deployed in Syria and anywhere else. Besides, China is certainly designing their planes to be able to fight to US navy. The fact of the matter is that if a country can afford it, they design stealth aircraft.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        The systems are not fully deployed in Syria. Israel routinely flies F-16s in Syria without much of an issue. They are in Syria in a pure intelligence capacity. Beyond Russia and China (and possibly Venezuela), there are no fully operational VHF capable air defence systems It's also incorrect to consider stealth as a yes/no. It's not a yes/no. It's a sliding scale with tradeoffs. Clearly China and Russia judged stealth to be much less important than the US did. The USSR could definitely afford stealth aircraft and had all the necessary technology to make it before the US, yet they didn't, and for a reason. As far as fighting the US Navy, the Chinese doctrine against the USN doesn't involve Chinese airplanes getting within VHF radar range of American large surface vessels before a crippling blow is already delivered.
        SubjectToChange 5y ago
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  >As it is right now Russian VHF radars can already guide dual-guidance missiles onto an F-35 close enough for them to detect the F-35 with their radars. Citation needed
  - mikewarot 5y ago
    >Citation needed This is close, and it's from 2014 https://news.usni.org/2014/07/29/chinese-russian-radars-track-see-u-s-stealth https://news.usni.org/2014/07/29/chinese-russian-radars-trac... VHF and lower frequency radars see right through any stealth coatings and bounce off the airframe, engines, etc.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Sure. Russian VHF radars have a detection accuracy of 100m range and 20 minutes of angle azimuth [https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/nebo-svu.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/nebo-sv...] At a range of 60km that means 350m inaccuracy in azimuth and 100m inaccuracy in range. 350m is within IR and optical range, so any IR-capable missile can be cued in. The 9M96 missiles are rumored to have IR/optical capability but this is just a rumor, while the 9M100 missiles do have that capability. As for radar missiles, the F-35 has a minumum RCS of 0.0015 sqm. Being generous to the F-35 and saying it must be detected by 1km, it means that any radar capable of detecting a 1sqm target at a distance of 25km can detect and F-35 at a distance of 1km. This does require estimation but 25km range against 1sqm target is realistic.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      I think it's a bit more complex than that. This is the accuracy of a point detection. For a SAM system, you need to shoot the missile roughly where the plane is going - it's moving pretty fast. So your estimate of velocity will be vastly lower quality than the point estimate of position. You also need to update the missile's course using updates on the plane's velocity changes - so again, you need even greater accuracy on the radar. Finally, because it's all a lot more nebulous, it is easier for the plane to take evasive action. It's generally a lot easier to detect a radar / missile launch than it is to detect the airplane. With radar countermeasures in place, the SAM radar really has an uphill struggle to overcome. I'm not saying it's not doable (though not too long ago I remember reading that these radars are just not accurate enough to guide a missile), merely that these dry numbers don't necessarily convey the full picture.
bradleyjg 5y ago
It wasn’t literally the point of the plane when it was being designed. It’s the fourth or fifth public justification. It’s actual literal point is to make a lot of people a lot of money. It does that very well.
- djrobstep 5y ago
  > It’s actual literal point is to make a lot of people a lot of money. Indeed. "The purpose of a system is what it does"
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    That's not a useful definition. It makes me think of when people say that there's no sense in debating if a supreme court decision was correct, because the supreme court is the highest legal authority. If they are correct by definition, then what are they doing to decide cases?
    - xref 5y ago
      Also the SC regularly overturns its own precedents. Similar concept to Papal Infallibility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
    - djrobstep 5y ago
      I'm not sure how that connects at all - "the purpose of a system is what it does" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...) isn't making any claims about correctness.
      - perl4ever 5y ago
        I would say that the purpose of something is what is proper or correct for it to do. I think the slogan should not be taken literally and means more like "don't let the (possibly many-faceted and disputed) purpose of a system blind you to what it does".
lumost 5y ago
Why do the drones need to be controlled by a pilot who's already flying an aircraft? Couldn't a drone sensor platform perform the same task with remote operators?
- kbenson 5y ago
  At least one reason might be backup communication when jammed. Line of sight might allow for direct laser communication (either to the piloted plane or a nearby relay to retain some stealth) in the case of radio spectrum jamming. Another might be latency, if under active control. I imagine the purpose of the F-35 as a drone platform is less about active control and more about being a coordinator node though.
  - irateswami 5y ago
    > At least one reason might be backup communication when jammed. Line of sight might allow for direct laser communication (either to the piloted plane or a nearby relay to retain some stealth) in the case of radio spectrum jamming. This is precisely why. Iran has shown that it can, on some level, interfere with long-range communications of drones. I'm sure the Chinese have even more such capability. Having a C&C platform within the same battlespace limits communication exposure.
jjk166 5y ago
That's not what the F35 does. It is a strike fighter. It is meant to stealthily penetrate enemy airspace and strike targets, as well as survive air combat after its strikes make it abundantly clear that enemy airspace has been penetrated. Airborne Observation and control is a job handled by AWACS and JSTARS. While an argument could certainly be made for a stealth JSTARS, that's not what the F35 was intended to be, nor what it is optimized for. JSTARS planes should be long endurance planes, not super maneuverable supersonic VTOL jets. A stealth JSTARS would resemble the B2, not the F22. The F35 does have an impressive set of sensors and communications abilities, but that's simply a consequence of being a more recently developed aircraft. It's really not too hard to appear impressive when your competition was designed to use core memory. A purpose built drone controller would put it to shame however.

sudosysgen 5y ago

The ability to "stealthily penetrate enemy airspace" is only temporary. As VHF radars improve and dual guidance missiles proliferate the F-35 will only be barely more stealthy than what came before it. As it is right now Russian VHF radars can already guide dual-guidance missiles onto an F-35 close enough for them to detect the F-35 with their radars. The Chinese and Russians have set up VHF radars in Syria and use them to observe Israeli F-35s every day too, so the fog of war in their favour. The fact that stealth is only a temporary advantage has been known for a long time. It's part of the reason why the USSR decided not to pursue stealth aircraft development despite their lead on stealth design technology relative to the US - until the Soviet bureaucracy in it's classical ineptitude decided to declassify the algorithms they developed which Lockheed Martin happily adopted.

Green_man 5y ago
Is your argument that military technology could be described as an "arms race"?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The F-35 was developed to be used until 2070. It was done so at a time where it was clear that stealth could not be relied on past 2025 at the most. Many compromises were made in the pursuit of an advantage known to become greatly diminished 10 years into a 50 year lifespan. I don't think this can be written off by the arms race argument.
  - Green_man 5y ago
    Sorry, my previous comment was probably overly dismissive. I'd argue that developers and users of the F-35 already understand that stealth gains are not permanent. Countries and military organizations that purchased the F-35 definitely hope that the stealth advances last longer than 2025, but they will pay for improvements, new planes, and new tech long before 2070. It seems comically naïve for them to take claims of "2070" at face value without verifying, but that's just conjecture on my part.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Is it? The B-52 has now been in service for 69 years. 50 years is certainly not impossible. The trade-offs made for stealth are beyond the plane itself, the entirety of US military strategy (and even diplomacy to some extent) is deeply affected by a stealth-focused air-power strategy. As for stealth advances beyond 2025, I don't see it personally. As long as your doctrine requires you to fly your planes over enemy radars, there's not much you can when the wavelength of the enemy radar is bigger than most features in your plane. It's a physical limit as solid as conservation of energy.
      - Green_man 5y ago
        I don't work in radar/military stealth, but my argument isn't that you're wrong about any of your technical claims. Rather, my argument is that the F-35 was designed and purchased by people who are at least as aware of those technical details as you are. This is an assumption, but I don't think it's a huge one. As a nitpick, the F-35 may still be operational in 50 years, just as the B-52 is operational today. The question is whether its stealth will still be useful, not whether it can get airborne. Nobody is using the B-52 for its stealth anymore (happy to be proven wrong), and the decision to lean on the F-35's stealth capabilities for 50 years won't simply be "The B-52 has been running for 69 years, nice!"
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        The B-52 was never designed for stealth. If stealth isn't very helpful, why would you fly the slow and expensive F-35? I don't really understand it. I'm sure the people behind the F-35 were aware of these technical factors, maybe not the extent of Russian/Chinese investment though, but I don't think that their interests were anything beyond making as much money out of maintenance as possible. As for the people making the purchases, many of them do think that the F-35 made the wrong tradeoffs and a lot of them are pushing for a plane that would fulfill the same role as the F-35 was designed for but with a very different set of tradeoffs.
- gumby 5y ago
  Clever analogy!
SubjectToChange 5y ago
Then why are Russia and China developing stealth aircraft of their own?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Because neither Russia nor China are planning to use their stealth aircraft over the airspace of another superpower. Good luck fitting a meter-wave AESA on an aircraft. Beyond that, neither Russia nor China are trading-off anywhere near as much as the US for stealth. Both of their designs are less stealthy but carry better weapons over a longer range with better kinematics at a lower cost.
  - SubjectToChange 5y ago
    Why does it matter whether you are over another superpower's land? As you said, these systems are deployed in Syria and anywhere else. Besides, China is certainly designing their planes to be able to fight to US navy. The fact of the matter is that if a country can afford it, they design stealth aircraft.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      The systems are not fully deployed in Syria. Israel routinely flies F-16s in Syria without much of an issue. They are in Syria in a pure intelligence capacity. Beyond Russia and China (and possibly Venezuela), there are no fully operational VHF capable air defence systems It's also incorrect to consider stealth as a yes/no. It's not a yes/no. It's a sliding scale with tradeoffs. Clearly China and Russia judged stealth to be much less important than the US did. The USSR could definitely afford stealth aircraft and had all the necessary technology to make it before the US, yet they didn't, and for a reason. As far as fighting the US Navy, the Chinese doctrine against the USN doesn't involve Chinese airplanes getting within VHF radar range of American large surface vessels before a crippling blow is already delivered.
      - SubjectToChange 5y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
>As it is right now Russian VHF radars can already guide dual-guidance missiles onto an F-35 close enough for them to detect the F-35 with their radars. Citation needed
- mikewarot 5y ago
  >Citation needed This is close, and it's from 2014 https://news.usni.org/2014/07/29/chinese-russian-radars-track-see-u-s-stealth https://news.usni.org/2014/07/29/chinese-russian-radars-trac... VHF and lower frequency radars see right through any stealth coatings and bounce off the airframe, engines, etc.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Sure. Russian VHF radars have a detection accuracy of 100m range and 20 minutes of angle azimuth [https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/nebo-svu.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/nebo-sv...] At a range of 60km that means 350m inaccuracy in azimuth and 100m inaccuracy in range. 350m is within IR and optical range, so any IR-capable missile can be cued in. The 9M96 missiles are rumored to have IR/optical capability but this is just a rumor, while the 9M100 missiles do have that capability. As for radar missiles, the F-35 has a minumum RCS of 0.0015 sqm. Being generous to the F-35 and saying it must be detected by 1km, it means that any radar capable of detecting a 1sqm target at a distance of 25km can detect and F-35 at a distance of 1km. This does require estimation but 25km range against 1sqm target is realistic.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    I think it's a bit more complex than that. This is the accuracy of a point detection. For a SAM system, you need to shoot the missile roughly where the plane is going - it's moving pretty fast. So your estimate of velocity will be vastly lower quality than the point estimate of position. You also need to update the missile's course using updates on the plane's velocity changes - so again, you need even greater accuracy on the radar. Finally, because it's all a lot more nebulous, it is easier for the plane to take evasive action. It's generally a lot easier to detect a radar / missile launch than it is to detect the airplane. With radar countermeasures in place, the SAM radar really has an uphill struggle to overcome. I'm not saying it's not doable (though not too long ago I remember reading that these radars are just not accurate enough to guide a missile), merely that these dry numbers don't necessarily convey the full picture.

bradleyjg 5y ago

It wasn’t literally the point of the plane when it was being designed. It’s the fourth or fifth public justification. It’s actual literal point is to make a lot of people a lot of money. It does that very well.

djrobstep 5y ago
> It’s actual literal point is to make a lot of people a lot of money. Indeed. "The purpose of a system is what it does"
- perl4ever 5y ago
  That's not a useful definition. It makes me think of when people say that there's no sense in debating if a supreme court decision was correct, because the supreme court is the highest legal authority. If they are correct by definition, then what are they doing to decide cases?
  - xref 5y ago
    Also the SC regularly overturns its own precedents. Similar concept to Papal Infallibility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
  - djrobstep 5y ago
    I'm not sure how that connects at all - "the purpose of a system is what it does" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...) isn't making any claims about correctness.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      I would say that the purpose of something is what is proper or correct for it to do. I think the slogan should not be taken literally and means more like "don't let the (possibly many-faceted and disputed) purpose of a system blind you to what it does".

lumost 5y ago

Why do the drones need to be controlled by a pilot who's already flying an aircraft? Couldn't a drone sensor platform perform the same task with remote operators?

kbenson 5y ago
At least one reason might be backup communication when jammed. Line of sight might allow for direct laser communication (either to the piloted plane or a nearby relay to retain some stealth) in the case of radio spectrum jamming. Another might be latency, if under active control. I imagine the purpose of the F-35 as a drone platform is less about active control and more about being a coordinator node though.
- irateswami 5y ago
  > At least one reason might be backup communication when jammed. Line of sight might allow for direct laser communication (either to the piloted plane or a nearby relay to retain some stealth) in the case of radio spectrum jamming. This is precisely why. Iran has shown that it can, on some level, interfere with long-range communications of drones. I'm sure the Chinese have even more such capability. Having a C&C platform within the same battlespace limits communication exposure.

jjk166 5y ago

That's not what the F35 does. It is a strike fighter. It is meant to stealthily penetrate enemy airspace and strike targets, as well as survive air combat after its strikes make it abundantly clear that enemy airspace has been penetrated. Airborne Observation and control is a job handled by AWACS and JSTARS. While an argument could certainly be made for a stealth JSTARS, that's not what the F35 was intended to be, nor what it is optimized for. JSTARS planes should be long endurance planes, not super maneuverable supersonic VTOL jets. A stealth JSTARS would resemble the B2, not the F22. The F35 does have an impressive set of sensors and communications abilities, but that's simply a consequence of being a more recently developed aircraft. It's really not too hard to appear impressive when your competition was designed to use core memory. A purpose built drone controller would put it to shame however.