Posted on 02/11/2022 6:22:32 AM PST by daniel1212
During the first Gulf War, Baghdad was one of the most heavily defended air space any Air Force had faced in recent history. More than 3,000 antiaircraft guns and over 60 SAM batteries protected the capital.
The F-117 was the first aircraft to begin targeting Iraqi radar stations, Command centres and other high value targets over Baghdad
Just 8 F-117s were responsible for the successful re-attack on Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility , where a previous strike comprising of 75* non-stealthy platforms failed (Package Q Strike ).
Package Q Strike was the first time non-stealthy platforms were sent into Baghdad and it resulted in the loss of 2 F-16s. The lessons from it made the leadership revert to the previous strategy of F-117-only for striking inside downtown Baghdad.
Throughout the air campaign it flew almost 1,300 combat sorties and 7,000 flight hours – all without a single loss. This was the first time the world saw the effectiveness of a LO aircraft. This is often underrated by the hype of a single F-117 loss in Kosovo which had more to do with incompetent leadership and negligence.
The F-117 almost exclusively relied on Stealth – having almost no Situational Awareness outside WVR (No RWR/stand-off attack capability; no way for the pilot to know if any ‘unaccounted’ enemy radar is tracking it)
Yet only 36 F-117 (deployed) comprising merely 2.5% of coalition aircraft played a crucial role in putting a hole in the Iraqi Air Defences – all without a single loss despite the threat level and limited capabilities. Thereby, allowing other non-stealthy platforms to quickly achieve Air Superiority.
Now imagine if you design an aircraft not only stealthier but gave it the Situational Awareness and Networking capabilities comparable to an AWACS; and integrating them to a level that would allow every platform in the area to form a single comprehensive picture of the battlefield.
And if such an aircraft comprises majority of your inventory, say ~2,400 as in case of USAF, USMC & USN.
Enemy Air Defences
The F-35’s design is optimised for penetrating the most heavily defended air space and operating inside them with impunity. It has lower RCS and far better Situational Awareness than any other Fighter. Enabling the F-35 pilot to see “gaps” in radar coverage that a LO aircraft like itself can exploit.
On top of it, the F-35 has one of the most advanced offensive EW capability. The power of the F-35’s EW/EA systems can be inferred from the fact that the Marine Corps "is going to replace its EA-6B [a dedicated jamming aircraft] with the baseline F-35B" with no additional pods or internal systems.
“I flew a mission the other day where our four-ship formation of F-35As destroyed five surface-to-air threats in a 15-minute period without being targeted once.”
“It’s pretty cool to come back from a mission where we flew right over threats knowing they could never see us.”
“With the stealth capability of the F-35A we can get close enough to put a bomb right on them. That would be impossible with a fourth-generation aircraft.”
“After almost every mission, we shake our heads and smile, saying 'We can't believe we just did that’. We flew right into the heart of the threat and were able to bring all of our jets back out with successful strikes. It's like we hit the 'I Believe' button again after every sortie.”
– Maj. James Schmidt, former A-10 pilot. ....
The F-35A had 20:1 kill ratio in Red Flag 17–1 against the F-15s and F-16s backed by advanced IADs.
Real world exercises have shown it time and again that the F-35 is second only to the F-22 and the gap is really smaller than what many think. The F-35 has a record of scoring 20–24:1 kill ratio in large scale training exercises like Red Flag, Topgun and Northern Edge against the F-15s, F-16s & F-18Es.
“I was conducting a strike mission and Red Air was coming at me. In a 4th Gen fighter you must do a whole lot of interpretation. You see things in azimuth, and you see things in elevation. In the F-35 you just see the God’s eye view of the whole world. It’s very much like you are watching the briefing in real time."
"I am coming in to perform the simulated weapons release, and Red Air is coming the other direction. I have enough situational awareness to assess whether Red Air is going to be a factor to me by the time I release the weapon. I can make the decision, I’m going to go to the target, I’m going to release this weapon. Simultaneously I pre-target the threat, and as soon as I release the A2G weapon, I can flip a switch with my thumb and shoot the Red Air."
"In the F-35 I know where the threats are, what they are and I can thread the needle. I can tell that the adversary is out in front of me and I can make a very, very smart decision about whether to continue or get out of there. All that, and I can very easily switch between mission sets."
– Col. Rich “BC” Rusnok, CO of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron VMFA-121.
Former Israel Air Force chief Maj. Gen. (res.) Amir Eshel has called the F-35 “game changing”, saying that Israel gathered new intelligence during a single flight by the F-35 early 2017 that other reconnaissance and intelligence gathering systems would take ‘weeks’ to gather.
While the range of AAAD has increased since the Iraq war, the graphic seems to show the exact opposite, worse the AAAD sites no longer overlap ... Seems like a PR effort to justify the F-35, rather than show a real world situation.
Speaking of which, there was a recent war game exercise against a peer in which no F-35s were deployed because they would not last more than a few minutes. Any stealth the 35 has is front-on only, and it is visible to passive AESA radars. There only usefulness would be guarding refuelers and AWACS against long range fighters like the J-20 - and because of the longer range BVR missiles employed by the J-20s, SU-57s, SU-35S’, they would be useless or marginal at best.
They would also be up against the best jamming systems in the world (at least against Russia) ; those same systems have successfully jammed GPS, HIMARS artillery, AC-160s, and C&C battle communications in Syria.
Yup. Unbelievable as it sounds, they were ORDERED by the commander in chief himself to take exactly the same path every night.
Positioning radar had very little to do with it. They simple filled the flight path with massive amounts of lead. I'm pretty sure the Russians reimbursed them for the ammo in exchange for access to the crash remains.
Sorta reminds one of LBJ with a map selecting targets every morning. That worked well.
I was a plane captain with a Q squadron back in the ‘70’s...
What an EA-6B could do was amazing.
Now an F-35 can do MORE without ALQ pods?
I’m sold
Absolutely. It wiped Monica Lewinsky right off the front page.
We've chosen to kick Him out of schools, out of courts, out of the arts, and out of the public square.
We've chosen poorly.
Perfect!
Absolutely. It wiped Monica Lewinsky right off the front page.
The bonus was we bombed Serbian Christians to save Kosovo muslims.
The same administration that said “armored vehicles” would look too offensive in Somalia. How many paid with their lives for that debacle?
Optics over safety and a few thousand Somali’s died for it as well as our spec ops guys.
Clinton was awful on military matters. Same story different chapter now.
There was a company that built a simple fuel tank fire suppression system.
It was essentially a flat dry-chem extinguisher. Any force big enough to punch through the extinguisher and rupture the fuel tank would have instantly opened the extinguisher and stifled a fire or explosion before it even got started.
Cheap, compact and easily bolted on to existing inventory.
The Pentagon Perfumed Princes rejected it. It’s only 80% effective.
Go to any National Cemetery or VA hospital. Count the combat vehicle burn victims and imagine that 8 out of 10 were never burned in the first place...
I guess the contractors who gave more to politicians won out with the halon system.....
The buzz about hypersonic missiles isn't coincidence.
It’s very charitable of you to assume the lower level troops got vehicles equipped with expensive Halon® systems. (Maybe they eventually did? I don’t know if Humvees made the cut, or even MRAPS, tanks certainly did.)
Which other nations develop because the US has ACs, while for the US
I think the second graphic is supposed to indicate the reduced range at which the SAMs can observe the F35 as opposed to to 4th gens?
I have a 2005 Jaguar S-Type and I love it. I've had it for 2.5 years and I've only had one problem, which was minor enough for me to fix myself.
I know "in the old days" the electronics on the Jags had the reputation of being awful, as you point out. In 2005 Jaguar was owned by Ford though and I think they improved it a lot. In my fuse boxes there are numerous parts with the Ford logo.
I think the second graphic is supposed to indicate the reduced range at which the SAMs can observe the F35 as opposed to to 4th gens?
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So if that were true and they were your radars, wouldn’t you fill the holes in? Remember they AESA radars can see ‘stealth’ particularly the very limited stealth of the F-35. Distance is more a function of the power the radar is putting out, all other things being equal. Stealth is not what it was when the 35s were designed - things have moved way beyond that now. Again more wishful F-35 PR, aimed at keeping them funded and off the chopping block.
The S-400, 450 and 500 systems can see and track multiple objects simultaneous out over 500 miles, including missiles and satellites - but cannot see 35s? Are the Russians that stupid?
I don’t know about the Chinese systems, but I would not doubt they are every bit as good as the Russian - if not exactly the same (copies). The battle management radars (the ones that fire the missiles) have to overlap or they are worthless. Are the Russians that stupid?
B-21s are going to do the job that the PR lays on the 35s. There are already 6 prototypes built and may be a roll out toward the end of the year or next.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44235/a-sixth-b-21-raider-stealth-bomber-is-now-being-built
I had one in the early ‘70’s. We called it the Princely Valiant.
Just off of memory, it was a Soviet made SAM, maybe a -6. Those, and others, had dual capable tracking - radar and IR. Radar would give them a rough launch target, especially when the bomb bay was open in the attack, and the SAM had a fair chance of acquiring the ‘faint’ heat signature of the F-117.
Changing the routing and timing made them safer, again. Including changing course after weapons release.
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