It's not about been totally hidden (sans a cloaking device that is never going to happen) it's about been less detectable after all.
If the distance the stealth platform can see you from is greater than the distance you can reliably detect them from you are already dead - the missile simply hasn't arrived yet.
During the Sri Lankan civil war about 10 years ago, the Tiger rebels had acquired Zlin Z 43s, modified them to carry several bombs [1], and were bombing targets left and right, including the country’s capital.
The populace was increasingly pondering why the country’s well-trained air force, with modern fighter jets with years of scrambling experience [2] could never seem to shoot these slower planes down. In fact, there were no confirmed kills during the conflict.
It was later revealed that the rebels knew the capabilities of the enemy Chengdu J7 and MiG 29 interceptors, and had modified their own aircraft engines with anti-IR capabilities [3]. Complex IR jamming equipment was suspected, but the country’s PM later said that the rebels had simply redirected the exhaust fumes from the back of the aircraft to the front, throwing “unlockable” heat signatures [4].
By the end of the war, the rebels had actually “won” the war in the skies by destroying over 30 aircraft and losing 2, despite ultimately losing.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zl%C3%ADn_Z_43
[2] The government’s prized jet fighters were stationed in the capital, about 400 km from the main conflict zone. In 2000, the rebels launched a devastating offensive and the government held on by a thread due to their ability to scramble ground attack craft to battles in 7 minutes. It’s said that had they lost that battle, all hopes of winning the war would have been lost.
[3] http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081102/Columns/sitreport.html
[4] https://www.dailynews.lk/2020/01/18/local/208783/slaf-most-e...
An army consisting exclusively of F-35 vs old generation jets could decimate all enemy jets without losing a single F-35.
It's the same with modern tank vs old tanks. Those old tanks can't penetrate the armor of modern tanks.
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/f-22-fighter-...
> while the planes own the skies at modern long-range air combat
In fact I would say if such an encounter were ever to happen, due to rule of engagements, a dogfight would be more likely than a BVR engagement (and likely to end without a single shot fired).
The F-35 can see and shoot down the F-16 with radar-guided missiles in BVR well before the latter is even aware the F-35 is in the area.
Dogfighting is minimally relevant to modern air combat for nuclear-armed nations. Things would have to be going extraordinarily badly in a war for the brass to start deciding to send their exceedingly expensive fifth-gen stealth fighters into dogfight coin tosses.
Hell, even an A-10 is a surprisingly effective dogfighter against modern fighters. The fighters have speed but the Warthog has an extremely tight turning radius and far better low-speed maneuverability, both of which allow it to stay inside the opponent’s “bubble” (the area inside which a turning jet can’t ever manage to point its nose). If the A-10 can keep it to a one-circle fight it will win handily. A fighter will often have to rely on a “boom and zoom” tactic (where it disengages, gains distance, and turns back around for a guns pass) but that can be quite low probability of kill and still be relatively risky if the A-10 has friendlies in the area feeling it location information.
But just like the situation already being discussed, this is for all practical purposes completely irrelevant. A flight of F-16s would engage and destroy a flight of A-10s from miles away with AMRAAMs and it would never have a chance to transition to an up-close dogfight.
what's stopping the f-16 from turning around and going cold as soon as it hears a lock or senses enemy radar?
Either way, if the enemy turns and flees, from your perspective you’ve won the engagement. Whatever their purpose in the area was (SEAD, strike, air superiority, etc.) has been subverted.
Maybe ... in the air ... if the numbers are the same ... if all of those F-35s are able to fly ... if the other side doesn't have a significant SAM capability ... if if if. In a realworld battle between armies the air-to-air capacity of fighters is a small part of the battle. Most will try to defeat the other's aircraft using ground assets, missiles/manpad. Ideally you take out aircraft in their hangars. A single well-placed artillery shell can take out a dozen F-35s in a hangar. A single frogfoot can destroy any F-35 that is low on fuel/ammo/speed after engaging a couple flankers. Realworld combat is messy. A pack of crows can take down an eagle.
Everyone is probably already arming space to the teeth. I guess it's better than mutually assured destruction?
Put a few hundred missiles in orbit, give them enough spare fuel to travel a decent distance on their own, and you have a pretty substantial worldwide strike capability.
Apparently it’s hard to fully shield weapons grade material
The ICBM can hit anywhere (instead of just where the orbit track happens to pass), in less time (or at most the same time, since deorbiting takes around half an orbit) with a better mass fraction (since it doesn't have to reach orbit and then deorbit afterwards) while being more accurate (you know exactly where the launch platform is, while satellites are harder to locate) and less vulnerable (you can harden an ICBM silo far more effectively than a satellite).
Really, it's hard to think of something that satellite anti-ground weaponry does better.
There is a lot of icbm detection. Unplanned rocket launches could lead to global nuclear annihilation. What happens if something seems to deorbit above the US? How much early warning and procedure is there?
Especially if you want to deliver conventional munitions to a non-nuclear power, a system like this seems better than an ICBM.
If you want to hit something with a conventional warhead in a non-peer state without warning, why not use a stealthy cruise missile instead?
I am not advocating weapons in space btw. Just pointing out what the advantages are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
Possible, though problematic.
There might already be stealth sats in orbit.
A curious case was the Zuma satelite [1].
Classified payload. Ostensibly failed to detach from the payload adapter, as claimed by anonymous sources... Lot's of speculation that this was a media charade to sow confusion about a stealth sat.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect....
Just because it's physically challenging to avoid having some blackbody emissions or whatever doesn't mean you can't evade modern sensors in practice.
Wikipedia isn't a reliable source for this stuff. Look at the basic physics involved.
To me, this seems to imply you could make a useful system today with orders of magnitude less transmit power.