5 ms·

F-35 Got Hit

28 points by xrd 6mo ago

verdverm 6mo ago
I was thinking about this vis a vis China 1. Their quantum radar can detect stealth objects, but cannot lock 2. Their missiles are rapidly improving, I believe they have the longest range A2A missile [1], the PL-17 nearly doubles the best the US and Russia have, though I think the US announced something in that range recently (but not fielded) 3. Quantum to get close, thermal for terminal guidance [1] https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close-look-longest-a2a-pl17 https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close-...
- fsh 6mo ago
  "Quantum radar" is a toy experiment with zero practical applications. The experiments achieved a "quantum advantage" by using entangled photons which only works in the single-photon regime. Since microwave photons are pretty small, this implies incredibly low transmission powers. With the typical return loss of an airplane (stealth or not) detected by a radar antenna, one would have to average for centuries to detect something (assuming the airplane stays there for said centuries). This assumes perfect entanglement with no other imperfections.
  - verdverm 6mo ago
    We can probably remove the quantum hype and still arrive at the same circumstance. Stealth does not make you invisible, just insufficient for locking on. In theory, it is supposed to make the jet indistinguishable from a bird or similar small object, but it's a cat & mouse game like anything else. It could likely be possible to fire a loitering A2A into the general vicinity of a stealth craft and it thermally finds targets of opportunity.
ceejayoz 6mo ago
We've had IR missiles for a long time (the Nazis were playing with them in the 1940s). It's why military planes have flares. The USAF has had them since 1956: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-4_Falcon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-4_Falcon I'd imagine small computers have made them more effective in the last decade or two, but that probably applies to detection and countermeasures in the victim aircraft as well.
- pimlottc 6mo ago
  I was waiting for the article to address this. IR tracking is not a new idea. Surely the designers of the F-35 were aware of this. Why is this practical now and not earlier?
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    It was always practical, and we were always gonna lose some aircraft in real combat. Especially when flying them at low altitude; we've seen footage of American aircraft definitely in MANPADS range during the search for the F-15 crew.
    - pimlottc 6mo ago
      The author is acting like this is some big game changer though, are they just blowing it out of proportion?
      - ceejayoz 6mo ago
        They are, yes.
- kitd 6mo ago
  The article implies that this new one uses an IR image rather than just IR point sources, so can detect the shape of the aircraft among a cloud of decoy flares. Pretty simple and probably quite effective if true.
  - ceejayoz 6mo ago
    That's not new tech either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure) > The newest generation of the FIM-92 Stinger uses a dual IR and UV seeker head, which allows for a redundant tracking solution, effectively negating the effectiveness of modern decoy flares (according to the U.S. Department of Defense). This stuff is a constant back-and-forth of tech improvements.
randyrand 6mo ago
The author writes this as if heat seeking missles are new tech. They’re not. The designers of the F-35 developed it knowing they exist and made whatever tradeoffs they decided to make. That’s just engineering.
- franktankbank 6mo ago
  So what is it that happened? They got extremely lucky? The missile has a seriously reduced profile? How did the guy land? Almost sounds like a cannonball hit him.
  - dmix 6mo ago
    It's been speculated the F-35 detected the missile and deployed it's towed decoy behind it which the MANPAD missile hit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ALE-50_towed_decoy_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ALE-50_towed_decoy_system
    - franktankbank 6mo ago
      So got hit indirectly.
      - dmix 6mo ago
        Possibly with fragments, which is the best outcome considering how dangerous MANPADs are. The US and Israel didn't lose a single pilot over Iran after 15,000+ sorties which is saying something on their capabilities.
  - burnt-resistor 6mo ago
    IR/EOST capabilities of the very short range (SHORAD) Majid* / AD-08. F-35 flying relatively low (somewhere <FL200) and in full burner according to the alleged video. Getting hard facts is complicated by the fact that this DoD isn't necessarily going to reveal what happened, and the IRGC can't be trusted 100%. * Rumored that some components like some of the "camera" sensors were sourced from Canada.
deleted 6mo ago
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franktankbank 6mo ago
I wonder how often they fired in the last month. How lucky do you have to be per shot?
ge96 6mo ago
Would the F22 or YF-23 have faired better with their special exhaust design or still same problem? I always thought the F-35 wasn't that stealth because of its exhaust design like the Russian Pakfa exhaust
- deleted 6mo ago
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- ge96 6mo ago
  I would be curious too how they spotted it in the first place to film it regarding stealth/altitude, I saw some infographic one time showing the radar cross section size in like cubic meters and the B2 is smaller than a bird or something crazy like that oh no that's not true the F117 and F35 is though https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ur5qt0/radar_cross_section_of_a_b2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ur5qt0/radar_cros...
  - Doxon 6mo ago
    It's been reported Iran is deploying IR missles along the common ingress and egress paths the U.S. has been using for the past month. So target acquisition could be MK I eyeball
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bearjaws 6mo ago
One distinction between F-22 and F-35 is thermal management and thermal stealth.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  Combat role, too. You're gonna throw F-35s into missions you'd never waste a F-22 on like close-in ground support.
kzsh 6mo ago
> Flares, the standard IR countermeasure, are less effective against imaging IR seekers that can distinguish an aircraft shape from point-source decoys. I think this is the most relevant 'new' piece of information from the article. IR missiles are not new, but IR missiles that can distinguish between aircraft and decoys might be.
- nickff 6mo ago
  [dead]
- khelavastr 6mo ago
  I'm sure there's active "flarey" body heat modulation for missiles looking for plane bodies..
  - dingaling 6mo ago
    It's difficult to decoy because the missile's processor is programmed to know what typical aircraft profiles look like; for example a transport aircraft has two or four propellors with hot leading edges, numerous turbine exhausts and warm leading edges. A flare is a seen as a hot ball, in contrast. To decoy that, the decoy needs to basically _be_ the aircraft.
- kevin_thibedeau 6mo ago
  Worth pointing out that the Chinese have consumerized sufficiently high resolution thermal sensors with high enough frame rates to be used in a guidance system. I'd bet that Iran is taking advantage of those in this case.
- convolvatron 6mo ago
  they are certainly not, visual feature detection, multi sensor fusion and a whole raft of other techniques have been under active development and fielded in working systems for decades.
- cpgxiii 6mo ago
  Developers of "IR" seeking missiles have been trying to distinguish between aircraft and countermeasures since the very beginning. I say "IR" because the first really robust countermeasure-avoiding seekers were dual-band IR+UV and have been around for decades. IR+UV is useful because making a decoy that looks like jet exhaust in both IR and UV is quite difficult. Imaging "IR" is a bit more capable, particularly for all-aspect use, but once again this has existed for decades.
elendilm 6mo ago
"Iran's claims of a full shootdown are consistent with their pattern of overclaiming throughout the war." Really?. Funny that everyone now knows US overclaimed their capabilities.
bijowo1676 6mo ago
China’s new infrared chip makes military-grade vision sensors 99% cheaper https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-new-infrared-chip-makes-military-grade-vision-sensors-99-cheaper/ar-AA20kFHz https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-new-infrar... these new inventions will challenge western air dominance doctrine by using abundant heat seeking A2A missiles/drones possible. Just like cheap drones have completely changed the battlefield on the ground, these things can potentially change the air battle completely
tomku 6mo ago
Click on the home page and look at their other headlines, read the "About" description. It's just an endless stream of clickbait AI slop. Their "archive" goes back two weeks and has over a hundred articles with the same stilted "Reasonable statement. Controversial twist." headline format. Please stop falling for this trash.
deleted 6mo ago
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Papazsazsa 6mo ago
Headline: "The Stealth Era May Be Over" Last paragraph: "Does this make the F-35 obsolete? No." From https://www.shatterbelt.co/about https://www.shatterbelt.co/about: "One analyst. 500+ open sources across 15 languages. AI-augmented research that synthesizes what would take a team weeks. Human judgment on every conclusion."
game_the0ry 6mo ago
For fun I ran this query in AI: > How many impovershised american children could you feed for the cost of one f35 fighter jet? Here is the answer: > Using a rough estimate of $110.3 million for one F-35A and about $3,500 per child per year to cover food assistance, that would feed roughly 31,500 children for one year MPACGA -- Make Poor American Children Great Again.
- primitivesuave 6mo ago
  The cost to operate a single jet is $6-7 million a year, so the total cost over its 30-40 year lifetime would be closer to $400m :(
woeirua 6mo ago
So we have one hit out of how many thousands of sorties by the F-35 during this war? Not sure I’d claim stealth is done yet. If anything I think it proves the opposite…
declan_roberts 6mo ago
The article ignores the fact that you need radar to find targets for your IR missiles. Infrared Search and Track (IRST) systems have a fractional range of radar and require ideal weather to reach their maximum distance. In other words, you can target the F-35 but only when it's on top of you dropping bombs on YOU from much further away.
wildzzz 6mo ago
The AI wrote a shitty article solely based on a single fact: an F-35.was damaged by a heat seeking missile. Then it just made up a bunch of implication to suggest that no one had ever thought about anything other than radar threats before. This shatterbelt site sucks tbh. It feels like blogspam.
rich_sasha 6mo ago
What a pile of breathless nonsense. LLM, be ashamed. As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones. It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of. Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.
- M95D 6mo ago
  > the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. I'm no expert, but the exhaust doesn't look hidden to me. A missile (surface to air) usually sees the airplane from behind and below. This image [1] is an example. Even from a side, while the horizontal stabilizer partly covers it, you can still clearly see the exhaust [2]. Compare that to A-10 engines and stabilizer. This image [3] is from the same angle as [1]. The engine exhaust is completely behind the horizontal stabilizer. This image [4], same angle as [2], shows the engine exhaust covered by vertical stabilizer. A-10 is not the same type of plane, but just by looking at the differences, I very much doubt that they even tried to hide the exhaust in F-35. > You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. Engine inlet isn't hot. [1] https://n.sinaimg.cn/sinakd20120/133/w2000h1333/20200915/3f8a-izeysaz2129984.jpg https://n.sinaimg.cn/sinakd20120/133/w2000h1333/20200915/3f8... [2] https://cdn-cavok.nuneshost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/F-35_Lockheed_deliveries1.jpeg https://cdn-cavok.nuneshost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/F... [3] https://www.slashgear.com/img/gallery/a-single-a-10-warthog-aircraft-is-wildly-expensive-but-thats-not-the-worst-part/l-intro-1775293141.jpg https://www.slashgear.com/img/gallery/a-single-a-10-warthog-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Gun_Run.JPEG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Gun_R...
jandrewrogers 6mo ago
This article is slop written by an LLM/person with superficial understanding of the technology involved interspersed with a lot of jargon. IR is useful for terminal guidance only due to very limited engagement distances at which it can get lock (see also: MANPADS). One of the objectives of non-IR stealth is that it eliminates the mid-course guidance needed for long-range missile engagements, which largely requires radar. Note also that sophisticated "IR-guided" missiles are not "heat-seeking", that is mostly a movie trope. They use imagers that include part of the IR spectrum. The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. US aircraft are designed and tested to survive being hit with warheads in this size class. An F-35 is expected to eat an IR-guided missile and get back home. The F-35 definitely saw it coming. The article casually ignores the widely documented base capabilities of the aircraft that make it what it is. That said, F-35 is an export design with limited IR stealth. The US uses IR stealth on non-export 5th gen designs and all of the 6th gen designs. This was one of the compromises to make the design "exportable".
- AnimalMuppet 6mo ago
  > The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. Could you explain this a bit? OK, IR guidance is short range. Why does that mean I can't put a bigger bomb in it?
  - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
    The warhead is typically 10-30% of total missile weight and most of the non-motor weight. A substantially heavier warhead on the same rocket motor greatly reduces missile acceleration, speed, and range. IR missiles must accelerate to ~Mach 2.5 over a very short distance to maintain lock and close the distance for the purpose of air intercept due to the short-range of the guidance. IR seekers are lightweight and compact, which lends itself to quick acceleration. This short-range performance profile can be maintained with a heavier warhead using a larger, heavier rocket motor. This has cost, weight, size, etc implications but that isn't a reason to not do it in isolation. The upgraded IR missile is still short-range but now it has a footprint similar to long-range radar missiles and those have a similarly large warhead. It erases the major technical advantages of IR missiles (cheap, light, small) without addressing their major deficiency (short range). You could build an IR missile with a heavy warhead but it doesn't make much sense. The quick acceleration requirement creates a lot of engineering pressure to reduce weight, which can only be meaningfully achieved by reducing warhead size.
orwin 6mo ago
I can shittalk the f35 for almost an hour, but this not a plane issue. Stealth was always against BVR missiles (fox-1 engagement, or any S-400 or other using SARH/ARH), and never against IR missiles (UV missiles now?) or bullets. Yes, that makes the f35 stealth less usefull for CAS than a true CAS plane, but it is a multirole, of course it will be worse than specialized plane. The true utility of the f35 is its EW suite anyway, the stealth is just a bonus. And honestly, considering how good radars are nowaday, i wouldn't be surprised the stealth will get ditched eventually (not until we make FSR or an equivalent active that we can put in a missile though, so we probably still have 5 to 10 years?) (if an expert can chime in, i have not talked to a physician specialized in this field in a decade, and my buddy at Thales isn't working on radar software anymore :( )
daft_pink 6mo ago
To be fair, most stealth bombers also have countermeasures against infrared.
maxglute 6mo ago
Missing most important piece which is detection/target. Article making rounds a few days ago: Chinese engineer shared trick to shoot F-35 fighters just days before Iran’s strike. Not to credit PRC because this something Iranian STEM can figure out, but premise is simple - recognize vs air superiority overmatch that tradition antiair sensors not survivable via SEAD. So build mesh of cheap, PASSIVE distributed dual use commercial sensors, i.e. marine multi spectral pods with electro optical / infrared. Have enough for coverage and coordinate zerg rushing / shoot & scoot with fast / attritable surface to air launchers. Basically UKR's COTS acoustic sensor mesh for drone detection. Recognize US/high end operators tries to break Find in F2T2EA (Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess). As long as can find, upgrade with modernish IR seeker, on paper 40+ year old legacy missile tech is more than kinematically sufficient to take down modern multi role. Now this can be circumvented over with standoff munitions, but now you're increasing ordnance cost by magnitudes, and theoretically this can be scaled to hit subsonic standoff munitions, so on paper negate / require even more premium munitions. The none poverty version coming online is mega constellation ISR, throw enough SAR in space to make sky completely transparent.
deleted 6mo ago
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28 points by xrd 6mo ago

I was thinking about this vis a vis China 1. Their quantum radar can detect stealth objects, but cannot lock 2. Their missiles are rapidly improving, I believe they have the longest range A2A missile [1], the PL-17 nearly doubles the best the US and Russia have, though I think the US announced something in that range recently (but not fielded) 3. Quantum to get close, thermal for terminal guidance [1] https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close-look-longest-a2a-pl17 https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close-...

fsh 6mo ago
"Quantum radar" is a toy experiment with zero practical applications. The experiments achieved a "quantum advantage" by using entangled photons which only works in the single-photon regime. Since microwave photons are pretty small, this implies incredibly low transmission powers. With the typical return loss of an airplane (stealth or not) detected by a radar antenna, one would have to average for centuries to detect something (assuming the airplane stays there for said centuries). This assumes perfect entanglement with no other imperfections.
- verdverm 6mo ago
  We can probably remove the quantum hype and still arrive at the same circumstance. Stealth does not make you invisible, just insufficient for locking on. In theory, it is supposed to make the jet indistinguishable from a bird or similar small object, but it's a cat & mouse game like anything else. It could likely be possible to fire a loitering A2A into the general vicinity of a stealth craft and it thermally finds targets of opportunity.

ceejayoz 6mo ago

We've had IR missiles for a long time (the Nazis were playing with them in the 1940s). It's why military planes have flares. The USAF has had them since 1956: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-4_Falcon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-4_Falcon I'd imagine small computers have made them more effective in the last decade or two, but that probably applies to detection and countermeasures in the victim aircraft as well.

pimlottc 6mo ago
I was waiting for the article to address this. IR tracking is not a new idea. Surely the designers of the F-35 were aware of this. Why is this practical now and not earlier?
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  It was always practical, and we were always gonna lose some aircraft in real combat. Especially when flying them at low altitude; we've seen footage of American aircraft definitely in MANPADS range during the search for the F-15 crew.
  - pimlottc 6mo ago
    The author is acting like this is some big game changer though, are they just blowing it out of proportion?
    - ceejayoz 6mo ago
      They are, yes.
kitd 6mo ago
The article implies that this new one uses an IR image rather than just IR point sources, so can detect the shape of the aircraft among a cloud of decoy flares. Pretty simple and probably quite effective if true.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  That's not new tech either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure) > The newest generation of the FIM-92 Stinger uses a dual IR and UV seeker head, which allows for a redundant tracking solution, effectively negating the effectiveness of modern decoy flares (according to the U.S. Department of Defense). This stuff is a constant back-and-forth of tech improvements.

randyrand 6mo ago

The author writes this as if heat seeking missles are new tech. They’re not. The designers of the F-35 developed it knowing they exist and made whatever tradeoffs they decided to make. That’s just engineering.

franktankbank 6mo ago
So what is it that happened? They got extremely lucky? The missile has a seriously reduced profile? How did the guy land? Almost sounds like a cannonball hit him.
- dmix 6mo ago
  It's been speculated the F-35 detected the missile and deployed it's towed decoy behind it which the MANPAD missile hit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ALE-50_towed_decoy_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ALE-50_towed_decoy_system
  - franktankbank 6mo ago
    So got hit indirectly.
    - dmix 6mo ago
      Possibly with fragments, which is the best outcome considering how dangerous MANPADs are. The US and Israel didn't lose a single pilot over Iran after 15,000+ sorties which is saying something on their capabilities.
- burnt-resistor 6mo ago
  IR/EOST capabilities of the very short range (SHORAD) Majid* / AD-08. F-35 flying relatively low (somewhere <FL200) and in full burner according to the alleged video. Getting hard facts is complicated by the fact that this DoD isn't necessarily going to reveal what happened, and the IRGC can't be trusted 100%. * Rumored that some components like some of the "camera" sensors were sourced from Canada.

deleted 6mo ago

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franktankbank 6mo ago

I wonder how often they fired in the last month. How lucky do you have to be per shot?

ge96 6mo ago

Would the F22 or YF-23 have faired better with their special exhaust design or still same problem? I always thought the F-35 wasn't that stealth because of its exhaust design like the Russian Pakfa exhaust

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ge96 6mo ago
I would be curious too how they spotted it in the first place to film it regarding stealth/altitude, I saw some infographic one time showing the radar cross section size in like cubic meters and the B2 is smaller than a bird or something crazy like that oh no that's not true the F117 and F35 is though https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ur5qt0/radar_cross_section_of_a_b2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ur5qt0/radar_cros...
- Doxon 6mo ago
  It's been reported Iran is deploying IR missles along the common ingress and egress paths the U.S. has been using for the past month. So target acquisition could be MK I eyeball

deleted 6mo ago

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bearjaws 6mo ago

One distinction between F-22 and F-35 is thermal management and thermal stealth.

ceejayoz 6mo ago
Combat role, too. You're gonna throw F-35s into missions you'd never waste a F-22 on like close-in ground support.

kzsh 6mo ago

> Flares, the standard IR countermeasure, are less effective against imaging IR seekers that can distinguish an aircraft shape from point-source decoys. I think this is the most relevant 'new' piece of information from the article. IR missiles are not new, but IR missiles that can distinguish between aircraft and decoys might be.

nickff 6mo ago
[dead]
khelavastr 6mo ago
I'm sure there's active "flarey" body heat modulation for missiles looking for plane bodies..
- dingaling 6mo ago
  It's difficult to decoy because the missile's processor is programmed to know what typical aircraft profiles look like; for example a transport aircraft has two or four propellors with hot leading edges, numerous turbine exhausts and warm leading edges. A flare is a seen as a hot ball, in contrast. To decoy that, the decoy needs to basically _be_ the aircraft.
kevin_thibedeau 6mo ago
Worth pointing out that the Chinese have consumerized sufficiently high resolution thermal sensors with high enough frame rates to be used in a guidance system. I'd bet that Iran is taking advantage of those in this case.
convolvatron 6mo ago
they are certainly not, visual feature detection, multi sensor fusion and a whole raft of other techniques have been under active development and fielded in working systems for decades.
cpgxiii 6mo ago
Developers of "IR" seeking missiles have been trying to distinguish between aircraft and countermeasures since the very beginning. I say "IR" because the first really robust countermeasure-avoiding seekers were dual-band IR+UV and have been around for decades. IR+UV is useful because making a decoy that looks like jet exhaust in both IR and UV is quite difficult. Imaging "IR" is a bit more capable, particularly for all-aspect use, but once again this has existed for decades.

elendilm 6mo ago

"Iran's claims of a full shootdown are consistent with their pattern of overclaiming throughout the war." Really?. Funny that everyone now knows US overclaimed their capabilities.

bijowo1676 6mo ago

China’s new infrared chip makes military-grade vision sensors 99% cheaper https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-new-infrared-chip-makes-military-grade-vision-sensors-99-cheaper/ar-AA20kFHz https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-new-infrar... these new inventions will challenge western air dominance doctrine by using abundant heat seeking A2A missiles/drones possible. Just like cheap drones have completely changed the battlefield on the ground, these things can potentially change the air battle completely

tomku 6mo ago

Click on the home page and look at their other headlines, read the "About" description. It's just an endless stream of clickbait AI slop. Their "archive" goes back two weeks and has over a hundred articles with the same stilted "Reasonable statement. Controversial twist." headline format. Please stop falling for this trash.

deleted 6mo ago

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deleted 6mo ago

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Papazsazsa 6mo ago

Headline: "The Stealth Era May Be Over" Last paragraph: "Does this make the F-35 obsolete? No." From https://www.shatterbelt.co/about https://www.shatterbelt.co/about: "One analyst. 500+ open sources across 15 languages. AI-augmented research that synthesizes what would take a team weeks. Human judgment on every conclusion."

game_the0ry 6mo ago

For fun I ran this query in AI: > How many impovershised american children could you feed for the cost of one f35 fighter jet? Here is the answer: > Using a rough estimate of $110.3 million for one F-35A and about $3,500 per child per year to cover food assistance, that would feed roughly 31,500 children for one year MPACGA -- Make Poor American Children Great Again.

primitivesuave 6mo ago
The cost to operate a single jet is $6-7 million a year, so the total cost over its 30-40 year lifetime would be closer to $400m :(

woeirua 6mo ago

So we have one hit out of how many thousands of sorties by the F-35 during this war? Not sure I’d claim stealth is done yet. If anything I think it proves the opposite…

declan_roberts 6mo ago

The article ignores the fact that you need radar to find targets for your IR missiles. Infrared Search and Track (IRST) systems have a fractional range of radar and require ideal weather to reach their maximum distance. In other words, you can target the F-35 but only when it's on top of you dropping bombs on YOU from much further away.

wildzzz 6mo ago

The AI wrote a shitty article solely based on a single fact: an F-35.was damaged by a heat seeking missile. Then it just made up a bunch of implication to suggest that no one had ever thought about anything other than radar threats before. This shatterbelt site sucks tbh. It feels like blogspam.

rich_sasha 6mo ago

What a pile of breathless nonsense. LLM, be ashamed. As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones. It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of. Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.

M95D 6mo ago
> the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. I'm no expert, but the exhaust doesn't look hidden to me. A missile (surface to air) usually sees the airplane from behind and below. This image [1] is an example. Even from a side, while the horizontal stabilizer partly covers it, you can still clearly see the exhaust [2]. Compare that to A-10 engines and stabilizer. This image [3] is from the same angle as [1]. The engine exhaust is completely behind the horizontal stabilizer. This image [4], same angle as [2], shows the engine exhaust covered by vertical stabilizer. A-10 is not the same type of plane, but just by looking at the differences, I very much doubt that they even tried to hide the exhaust in F-35. > You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. Engine inlet isn't hot. [1] https://n.sinaimg.cn/sinakd20120/133/w2000h1333/20200915/3f8a-izeysaz2129984.jpg https://n.sinaimg.cn/sinakd20120/133/w2000h1333/20200915/3f8... [2] https://cdn-cavok.nuneshost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/F-35_Lockheed_deliveries1.jpeg https://cdn-cavok.nuneshost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/F... [3] https://www.slashgear.com/img/gallery/a-single-a-10-warthog-aircraft-is-wildly-expensive-but-thats-not-the-worst-part/l-intro-1775293141.jpg https://www.slashgear.com/img/gallery/a-single-a-10-warthog-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Gun_Run.JPEG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Gun_R...

jandrewrogers 6mo ago

This article is slop written by an LLM/person with superficial understanding of the technology involved interspersed with a lot of jargon. IR is useful for terminal guidance only due to very limited engagement distances at which it can get lock (see also: MANPADS). One of the objectives of non-IR stealth is that it eliminates the mid-course guidance needed for long-range missile engagements, which largely requires radar. Note also that sophisticated "IR-guided" missiles are not "heat-seeking", that is mostly a movie trope. They use imagers that include part of the IR spectrum. The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. US aircraft are designed and tested to survive being hit with warheads in this size class. An F-35 is expected to eat an IR-guided missile and get back home. The F-35 definitely saw it coming. The article casually ignores the widely documented base capabilities of the aircraft that make it what it is. That said, F-35 is an export design with limited IR stealth. The US uses IR stealth on non-export 5th gen designs and all of the 6th gen designs. This was one of the compromises to make the design "exportable".

AnimalMuppet 6mo ago
> The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. Could you explain this a bit? OK, IR guidance is short range. Why does that mean I can't put a bigger bomb in it?
- jandrewrogers 6mo ago
  The warhead is typically 10-30% of total missile weight and most of the non-motor weight. A substantially heavier warhead on the same rocket motor greatly reduces missile acceleration, speed, and range. IR missiles must accelerate to ~Mach 2.5 over a very short distance to maintain lock and close the distance for the purpose of air intercept due to the short-range of the guidance. IR seekers are lightweight and compact, which lends itself to quick acceleration. This short-range performance profile can be maintained with a heavier warhead using a larger, heavier rocket motor. This has cost, weight, size, etc implications but that isn't a reason to not do it in isolation. The upgraded IR missile is still short-range but now it has a footprint similar to long-range radar missiles and those have a similarly large warhead. It erases the major technical advantages of IR missiles (cheap, light, small) without addressing their major deficiency (short range). You could build an IR missile with a heavy warhead but it doesn't make much sense. The quick acceleration requirement creates a lot of engineering pressure to reduce weight, which can only be meaningfully achieved by reducing warhead size.

orwin 6mo ago

I can shittalk the f35 for almost an hour, but this not a plane issue. Stealth was always against BVR missiles (fox-1 engagement, or any S-400 or other using SARH/ARH), and never against IR missiles (UV missiles now?) or bullets. Yes, that makes the f35 stealth less usefull for CAS than a true CAS plane, but it is a multirole, of course it will be worse than specialized plane. The true utility of the f35 is its EW suite anyway, the stealth is just a bonus. And honestly, considering how good radars are nowaday, i wouldn't be surprised the stealth will get ditched eventually (not until we make FSR or an equivalent active that we can put in a missile though, so we probably still have 5 to 10 years?) (if an expert can chime in, i have not talked to a physician specialized in this field in a decade, and my buddy at Thales isn't working on radar software anymore :( )

daft_pink 6mo ago

To be fair, most stealth bombers also have countermeasures against infrared.

maxglute 6mo ago

Missing most important piece which is detection/target. Article making rounds a few days ago: Chinese engineer shared trick to shoot F-35 fighters just days before Iran’s strike. Not to credit PRC because this something Iranian STEM can figure out, but premise is simple - recognize vs air superiority overmatch that tradition antiair sensors not survivable via SEAD. So build mesh of cheap, PASSIVE distributed dual use commercial sensors, i.e. marine multi spectral pods with electro optical / infrared. Have enough for coverage and coordinate zerg rushing / shoot & scoot with fast / attritable surface to air launchers. Basically UKR's COTS acoustic sensor mesh for drone detection. Recognize US/high end operators tries to break Find in F2T2EA (Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess). As long as can find, upgrade with modernish IR seeker, on paper 40+ year old legacy missile tech is more than kinematically sufficient to take down modern multi role. Now this can be circumvented over with standoff munitions, but now you're increasing ordnance cost by magnitudes, and theoretically this can be scaled to hit subsonic standoff munitions, so on paper negate / require even more premium munitions. The none poverty version coming online is mega constellation ISR, throw enough SAR in space to make sky completely transparent.

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