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Israel launches ‘preemptive strikes’ against Iran, Defense Minister says (www.cnn.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/worldnews@lemmygrad.ml
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[–] [S] 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

That doesn't track given that we know Yemen nearly shot down an F-35, it's pretty clear that stealth doesn't actually work all that well. https://www.twz.com/air/how-the-houthis-rickety-air-defenses-can-threaten-the-stealthy-f-35

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    Taking some shots at the hot exhaust of an F-35, while a commendable achievement for a group such as Ansarallah, is not the same as shooting one down. At the end of the day, they shot down zero planes.

    "Stealth" is a valuable technological concept that was first discovered by the Soviets in the 1960s, that an object's radar return is related to its shape and not only it's size, and thus can be minimised by changing it's shape.

    Clearly it works, we've had many cases of stealth aircraft taking their adversaries by complete surprise, from the Gulf war to Yugoslavia to now. There are videos online now where you can hear Israeli aircraft in the background over Iranian skies.

    Is it a Hollywood tier invisibility cloak? No, and it's possible to shoot down stealth aircraft. But it's a force multipler, which is why China is working very hard on their 6th generation stealth aircraft and their own analogue to the F-35, called the J-35.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Stealth has been a joke this whole time, and NATO first learned this when Yugoslavia tool out a "stealth" jet.

    What Israel actually did was to send agents to directly attack and jam AD systems in coordination with their attack.

    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/revealed-mossad-commandos-launched-secret-105629519.html

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Yeah I'm sure that China is investing billions and betting their future air force and navy strategy on "joke technology". The Chinese engineers working on the J-35, J-36 and J-50 just got brainwashed by NATO propaganda. China should just build a bunch of Flankers instead, so they can end up like the Russian Air Force that can't penetrate Ukrainian controlled airspace 3 years into a war and just lob glide bombs ad infinitum, while Israel can penetrate deeply into Iran on their third attack. Whatever.

    As for jamming, that's exactly where stealth/low observability being a force multipler comes in. If your radar cross section is much lower, you need a lot less energy to jam and effectively mask your radar signature, and the jamming is effective over exponentially longer distances. Yes the effects of stealth technology are exaggerated by propaganda and movies, and of course it's possible to shoot down stealth aircraft, but it's still effective.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Last I checked, Russian airforce is absolutely dominating the airspace in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia has also demonstrated that it's far safer and smarter to use strategic bombers to launch long range hypersonic missiles without any need for stealth. The fact that you think Russian approach in Ukraine hasn't been effective tells me that you have an incredibly superficial understanding of what's happening there.

    Meanwhile, as the link explains in plain English, Israel had to send agents to disable AD systems on the ground in order to accomplish their attack. In fact, last time they tried to do this, they had to turn back because their jets did get painted. Hence, why they ended up developing an elaborate new strategy here.

    I'm not saying stealth tech doesn't give any edge at all, obviously it shortens the response window for the opponent. However, it's not a game changer that people seem to think it is, nor has it actually been tested against any peer competitors with advanced militaries.

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