Posted on 03/20/2024 6:31:00 AM PDT by hardspunned
The IDF late Tuesday night admitted for the first time that the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have penetrated the country's missile air defense. According to the IDF, reports of an unidentified object landing north of Eilat on Sunday night referred to a cruise missile which came from the direction of the Red Sea. Although the IDF did not specifically identify the Houthis, the Iranian-backed group in Yemen has tried to strike Israel with ballistic missiles numerous times for months.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.jpost.com ...
There’s really zero detail here.
Something from somewhere was fired by somebody.
Are they talking hypersonic stuff?
There are several ways to look at this. In some ways the Ukraine war and the Houthi attacks are a well disguised blessing. Hopefully military planners and lawmakers are taking notes on the glaring holes these attacks reveal in strategy, tactics and hardware.
To date military’s buy super expensive weapons because that’s what industry pitches. I tried to get the final two companies I worked for to pitch some cheap anti-drone ideas to the military and the problem was they were too cheap. Nobody in the military wants to be involved in a cheap program as status and rank are associated with the big bucks. Companies want huge, expensive systems that take years to build, test and deliver because that’s where the profit is. I’m not saying my concepts would definitely work, but I couldn’t even get a hearing on them.
I’m reminded of a statement attributed to the air force general in charge of procurement in the late fifties. “If the next plane doesn’t go faster and fly higher than the last one, don’t even show it to me.”
For those who care, the entire task of weapon system intercept is dependent on a parameter called radar cross section (RCS). You can’t target anything you cannot detect.
The F-35 is supposed to be the gold standard of stealth (which means small RCS). Well, RCS is not an absolute parameter immune to all efforts. Frequency (of the radar) agility has been shown to provide a counter to stealth.
But the best way to defeat air defense systems is to have RCS that is small, and missiles that themselves are physically small (certainly smaller than an F-35) can be arranged for that. Ditto cruise missiles.
Drones get a lot of attention lately, mostly because the media, with no technical education, has seen them flying around and understands what they are. But while they will have a small RCS, they also have a small payload. It does you no good to arrive undetected if you arrive with not much more than a firecracker for payload.
The Houthis say they have hypersonic missiles now.
Obama gifted Iran with a Lockheed RQ-170 stealth drone back around 2012.
With the help of China and Russia, Iran has reverse engineered it not just into an ISR platform but also a stealth cruise missile.
It's a very effective weapon . Israel has shot a number of these things down and they are hard to detect and hard to intercept and destroy.
Sounds like they are aiming at the Dimona reactor.
Glad to hear someone else say this.
I think the news that the U.S. Navy has deployed a new, unmanned “drone” base sub is right in line with this. Why build more ships if you can use drones to attack ships more cheaply? The ChiComs may have built a giant obsolete arsenal, much like the Soviets did with their missiles when SDI came out.
Here is how I expect a U.S. China war to go: US Pac Fleet heads for China. When within range, a massive air battle of ChiCom drones vs our drones and AA takes place where we defeat their drone swarms. The retaliatory US drone strikes wipe out the large part of the Chicom fleet then.
The F-22 is the gold standard. The F-22 has an RCS of a sparrow. The F-35 has a RCS of a Volkswagen beetle, but only head on, else its a semi truck
The F-35 is only sort of stealthy head on, without any pods or weapons under wing.
The Houthis say they have hypersonic missiles now.
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Iranian knockoff of Russia’s Kinzal which is a Iskander ballistic missile with a booster for terminal descent. Neither are hypersonic glide vehicles.
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