Full-featured stealth aircraft haven't been employed - so far as we know - in an offensive capacity inside a peer's air defense system, which is the "high threa

Full-featured stealth aircraft haven't been employed - so far as we know - in an offensive capacity inside a peer's air defense system, which is the "high threat" regime. The 1999 F-117 shootdown was accomplished with a 1961 S-125 (NATO SA-3 Goa) missile system, attack mass, some good tactics, and good old fashioned American overconfidence. 1961 vintage - even in 1999 - is definitely not a peer air defense. Current thought today is that - with enough stealth - you can enter even very highly defended zones. Speaking personally, I'm skeptical of stealth's utility against a peer power. Automation, very smart software, and cheap electronics will just be too dense, and the attacking platform is too expensive for the elevated level of risk. Some stealth is useful, to break locks . . but I think the ceiling of usefulness might be lower than we suspect. Whatever the real answer is, my own hope is that the powers-that-be will be capable of changing their minds in the face of accurate reports and analysis. "Being able to change your mind quickly" might be the best skill for a peacetime military to have. On that front, I'm not filled with confidence. This all smells a little bit like the precision bombing advocates of the interwar period (1920-1943). There are many who, to this day, maintain that the pre-1943 daylight precision bombing campaigns were effective in their stated mission, in spite of all findings to the contrary. Pre-1943 (before the H2X "Micky" radar groundmap bombsight) we were extraordinarily lucky if a bomb hit a point target (not helped at all by the near-fraudulent behavior of Norden and the NBoO), and even if it did, it didn't disable it, because factories are pretty tough and enormous. If we can't talk about something after seventy years, how likely are we to see truth of something happening right in front of our faces?