F-35 Got Hit

verdverm

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-...

ceejayoz

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 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.

randyrand

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

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

ge96

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

bearjaws

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

kzsh

> 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.

bijowo1676

China’s new infrared chip makes military-grade vision sensors 99% cheaper 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

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.

elendilm

"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.

Papazsazsa

Headline: "The Stealth Era May Be Over" Last paragraph: "Does this make the F-35 obsolete? No." From 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

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.

woeirua

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

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

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

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.

jandrewrogers

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".

orwin

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

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

maxglute

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.