Declassified Pentagon F-35 Study Details Reliability, Security Woes | Hacker News Reader

Declassified Pentagon F-35 Study Details Reliability, Security Woes

bloomberg.com

33 pointsnf396 comments

Yet despite these problems, the F-35 remains the most commercially successful airframe in the world, with over 670 sold, and 2,500 on order from US-allied countries all over the world. What could explain this sales pipeline, if the F-35 was the boondoggle this article implies it to be?

For the first sales (Australia and either Norway or sweden, i dont remember), the US and lockheed Martin hid away the issues and lied on operating cost and availability.

For sales to NATO: you have to buy a plane that can carry the US bomb if you don't have one yourself (despite the fact that nukes will probably never be launched from aircrafts if at all).

For sales against competition, i don't have a lot of data, but you can check the Swiss 2022 competition between the F16, F18, Rafale, Gripen and F35, public data is scarce but basically, the Rafale and F18 would have been better on most points except VTOL and stealth. The choice however was probably economic (as while VTOL is nice, Swiss short airports are still longer than carriers, and stealth isn't that much of a factor in defense, especially in the Alps): they bought planes for less than half the price NATO countries did, and 60% of the money will be spent locally: basically 20% of the cost Germany and other NATO countries paid.

> despite the fact that nukes will probably never be launched from aircrafts if at all

"if at all": that's deterrence. I don't think any nuke-able aircraft small-country customer intent is to launch, but you gotta have the ability to.

"from aircrafts": when you have no submarines/silos and carting ground launch platforms around is impractical for your country, aircraft is the only remaining option to display deterrence factors.

If the US need Belgium planes to launch nukes, well, europe is truly fucked anyway.

If the US had the French doctrine i.e. any army moving toward France's strategic assets will be targeted with a "warning" shot (yes, the warning shot is to be nuclear), but it does not, US nuclear force is for retaliation only. It will never be launched from planes in the foreseeable future. Which is more than the operational lifetime of F35.

No, this is bully tactics and frankly i really, really hope that Trump dissolve NATO so Belgium don't have to buy planes that can fly 30% of the time.

Whatever money it saves over the short term for a country, dissolving NATO is a big blank check for Putin and Xi to whatever, whenever they want, including (attempted) genocide of “previous” NATO countries, like what is happening in Ukraine.

Norway for sure, they have been in NATO since they helped found it in 1949. Us Swedes needed a while to think about it, and joined on March 7, 2024. Sweden does not have the F-35, since we build our own [1] multi-role military aircraft.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

    stealth isn't that much of a factor in defense, especially in the Alps

I'm far from an expert. Can you elaborate?

I know that mountains can help planes evade radar and missiles.

But any fighters used in a defense role (against Russia presumably) are definitely going to need to contend with (Russia's apparently rather capable) air to air missiles.

I think they might well need to deal with SAM as well. Sx00 batteries are portable and presumably an invading Russian force would be bringing them along for the ride with ground forces. So I don't know; stealth seems like one of the most important things these days, if you're planning on engaging anybody with modern air to air missiles.

If you only have to contend in air battle and do not need ground control, like in a mountainous area, multipurpose jets will likely act as mobile SAM batteries. The range of METEOR missiles make it unlikely that your plane will be detected before it has time to launch, and even then, will be out of range of SAMs. The issue is that stealth mostly make sense on SEAD/DEAD (where frankly, BVR missiles and AWACS make even more sense), or bombing runs. It isn't useful in CAS where having more ordonance is better (if your enemy only have manpads and VSHORAD you are safe with any modern plane), only SHORAD with more than 15km range are threatening, and nowaday you have missiles that will target those from a longer range. Just equip yourself with those, destroy SHORAD SAM/Radars with ARMs, engage enemy army with Apaches (or if you have the means, LORA), go back, refuel, go again (that, you can't do with f35 in Beast mode, because they overheat. Other plane have refueling issues too, but none of them have that long of a downtime between runs)

Overall, i really dislike the idea of multipurpose stealth jets: it limit your electronic warfare capacity (the issues with the new f35 radar array were caused by its nose profile), it isn't usefull for real CAS, and it greatly increase costs.

To me, you can go two ways. The first would be multiple costly, but dedicated planes that will be superior to your ennemy in their field: the F22, or the B2 (or the A-10). I even like the B21 concept, i'm not anti-US planes, i like the f35 engine (well, no, not really, i think it isn't safe, and make emergency landing extremely dangerous, but i like the principle behind), i dislike the motivation or idea behind the f35. The other planes the USAF have are great, and have reasons to be as they are.

The second would be to have a multirole jet, cheap, with high availability, easy to maintain, to train all of your pilot on it (with 200 real flying hours/year, not simulator, wink wink Russia). Unless you fight the USA, this will likely be enough to at least give you a fighting chance. stealth here is just another cost factor that will lead you to have less planes, less pilots, and more operating costs. The reason Switzerland chose the f35 is that it was sold at 45% of its original cost, and with the promise to have 60% of that cost spent locally, to swiss industry.

Typhoon would have been a good fit for Canada but the US vetoed it.

> stealth isn't that much of a factor in defense, especially in the Alps

I'm confident that DCS and War Thunder pilots would disagree to that

The F-35 has never been one of the "most commercially successful airframes". 670 sold is actually a pretty low number, considering its supposedly multi-role capabilities and its rare VTOL feature.

The sales pipeline started being agreed when the plane was still a concept, and it's almost exclusively a feature of American foreign policy: the US government worked hard, over almost 40 years, to ensure a significant part of design and production costs (and risks resulting from such) would be absorbed by allies through guaranteed sales. NATO countries have been under huge continuous and sustained pressure to buy it and to standardize their systems around it. Quite a few European governments found themselves struggling to publicly justify their choices in this matter, because in the end it mostly boiled down to "the Americans told us to buy it or else". The F-35 project simply would not be allowed to fail in the market.

As far as I know, no other weapon ever enjoyed such massive and forceful support by so many US administrations throughout the decades.

> the US government worked hard, over almost 40 years, to ensure a significant part of design and production costs (and risks resulting from such) would be absorbed by allies through guaranteed sales. NATO countries have been under huge continuous and sustained pressure to buy it and to standardize their systems around it. Quite a few European governments found themselves struggling to publicly justify their choices in this matter, because in the end it mostly boiled down to "the Americans told us to buy it or else".

So, it’s SAP but for national defence

The article is sensational and deeply misleading.

Yes, the plane has a lot of bugs. It's got complicated software and hardware. You can't compare it to the relatively simple older designs that didn't deal with stealth.

Yes they don't need to test dogfights because war isn't a video game. When the enemy sees the f35 it is after it already sent the missile in your direction. You don't need to dogfight if you're an invisible ghost that can kill from a distance.

The f16 had a ton of bugs such as flipping over when south of the equator. It's a much better machine now and the f35 has all the makings to be a similar leap forward.

> The f16 had a ton of bugs such as flipping over when south of the equator.

In the simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4541685

The page that comment links to lists some (minor) problems found on the real plane too though.

It's the most modern jet that can be acquired. The Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon are all very good jets, but they're around half a generation behind; they're still popular and acquired by various countries because they better fit their requirements (or because the US doesn't want to sell them F-35).

> What could explain this sales pipeline, if the F-35 was the boondoggle this article implies it to be?

Easy, desire to please American politicians to fetch political support from the USA and strengthen your position as military ally. Ideally, you will be looking so scary that you wouldn’t have to actually use the plane.

” you will be looking so scary that you wouldn’t have to actually use the plane.”

I’d say this is the main intent. But not only because of the political aspects.

AFAIK the plane is intended to be used like an ultra-mobile target aquisition and launch platform designed to engage targets Really Far Away and then return to base (any base since it’s NATO compatible). It’s not really supposed to engage in Top Gun -style dogfighting.

So the main question is the capability of the radar and the missiles you carry, not necessarily the air frame itself. And as I understand those are fit for purpose.

Ofc if you are launching missiles far away for defensive purposes surely you could do it a lot cheaper, and that I would see as the main point of critique.

I’m not saying the issues are not issues, but as a non-expert-paying-customer (my country bought 64 of them I think) as long as you get airborn, acquire target lock and can launch missile, you are more or less using the offering as promised.

> What could explain this sales pipeline, if the F-35 was the boondoggle this article implies it to be?

The overwhelming USA sphere of influence over its "allies". I don't really see a NATO member buying new fighter jets from China or Russia instead without that causing a big ruckus.

Sweden sells a really nice NATO-compatible multirole jet.

The Gripen is not a dual-capable aircraft, meaning it isn't certified to carry nuclear weapons. This makes it a tough sell to NATO nations who must align themselves to NATO's strategic goals [0], which call for nations to contribute dual-capable aircraft. Nor is the Gripen independent from US supply chains. It uses the General Electric F414-GE-39E engine.

If you're a NATO nation looking for a non-US jet that can satisfy your dual-capable needs, your only option is the Rafale.

[0] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2022/6/pd...

  > The Gripen is not a dual-capable aircraft

I did not realize that, thank you. I simply assumed that with the bomber role came the ability to carry a small (<500 pound) tactical nuke. Is this more of a certification issue or an actual hardware issue?

It's mostly a certification issue. There are some hardware changes and integration work that has to be done, but the biggest obstacle is that the certification work is done in and by the US. So there's a diplomatic element.

Thank you.

The US isn't the only NATO member that produces fighter jets. EU members of NATO make the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale, and the Saab JAS 39 Gripen.

There are no F-35 equivalents beside the Russian Su-57 and Chinese J-20, afaik

Those are not really F-35 equivalents; they aimed for different points in the design space.

Both Russia and China cannot match the US on very low observable technologies, so they have tried to make the most low observable platform they could and then attempt the air combat problem with different technologies that they ARE good at. The J-20 has doubled down on having very long range, capable air to air missiles, as well as being highly datalinked with other Chinese platforms.

The Russians don't have nearly as good AAMs so they're just trying to be as maneuverable as possible.

I have a much higher opinion of the J-20 than I do the SU-57.

F-35 actually exists.

The J-20 exists in significant numbers, as well. The SU-57 really doesn't.

That's low #s exports relative F16 etc granted 35s more expensive, countries now spend less on defense, but you'd think a joint program would end up with greater procurement from partners. Regardless, what choice is there? JSF program killed competitors/programs in many countries with domestic fighter base and after 20 years of sunk cost, options were limited to 1 exportable 5th gen fighter, doesn't matter how of much system ends up lemon. There's a reason EVERY F35 operator that could, is partnering up to pursue their own next gen multi-role program, in the mean time they're stuck with F35, and US operational controls (i.e. US generates mission data files for all operators). There seems to be disatisfaction behind the scenes, not just from DoD against LH, but operators against US oversight. Much of it just can't be loudly vocalized, i.e. think of domestic politics / drama if notion F35s is still an expensive, unreliable boondoggle, that killed your domestic fighter bsae AND can't be operated without US approval... it's borderline treasonous.

> the boondoggle this article implies it to be?

I highly recommend reading contemporary reporting on what are considered wildly successful aircraft (like the teen series F-14/15/16).

Hint: Just change one number and they're indistinguishable from reporting on the F-35.

the F-14 was an expensive hanger queen and was retired rapidly. the F-16 is still seeing use and was rotated out years after the F-14.

but yeah all fighters have bugs, often a lot of them

You buy F-35s to protect yourself from the mafia .

Unfortunately we do not measure combat weapons in terms of commercial success.

We measure them in terms of lethality and reliability.

Is it? The 737 has been sold 12000 times, with thousands of orders in the pipeline. The A320 is not far behind, but only got introduced twenty years later

Even if you just consider military airframes, the MiG-21 has been built 11000 times, and is/was used by more than 50 operators world-wide, all of which have paid for the privilege.

Then there's the C-130, with 2500 units produced and operated by 70 countries.

The first American Fighter jet would be the F-4 Phantom II, with 5000 units built, and used extensively abroad.

The F-16 has 4600 units built up to now and is used by more than 25 countries.

(I'm ignoring the P-51 with its 15000 units here because they were mostly used by the US and rarely sold abroad).

tl;dr: The F-35 is not the most commercially successful airframe in the world, in fact, it does not even come close.

A totally incorrect statement.

Super Hornet and Viper both dwarf this number by 10x and in every operational theatre in the world are exactly as competent as JSF. They currently are selling far more in every market than F35b, which is the most sold f35 to everyone's suprise.

No market is seeking out f35 specifically for nato congruence/stealth. (Though, The SVTOL variant is a pleasant market-friendly surprise for Lockheed. Turns out, many nations operate sub-fleet carriers that can handle harriers, ospreys, f35b.)

Recall that the JSF was drafted in the 90s, and an operational prototype existed in 2002.

The JFS program can be both impressive and way too expensive at the same time. It doesn't need to be setting records to justify it's existance.

You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about if you say the F35B is the most sold F35 variant. It’s the F35A*.

It’s also STOVL, not SVTOL. You slapped an S in front of VTOL instead of thinking about what the acronym really means.

*From f35.com - Designed to operate from conventional runways, the F-35A is the most common variant operated by the United States Air Force and most international allied customers.

There's no other fifth generation fighter available for export to the richest countries in the world?

Corruption to pass trials. Corruption to get sales?

No matter how much waste, a trillion dollars is bound to create something with some value?

It's junk, in the sense that we could have gotten a much better airframe for less sad money.

There's often a certain aspect of "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM" to these sorts of things.

4,600 F16s have been built, obviously it has the time advantage, but still, once F35 beats that number, I think it will be at the top.

>What could explain this sales pipeline, if the F-35 was the boondoggle this article implies it to be?

A lack of actual proven fight-testing.

But it did the most extensive flight test program for anything in history [0]. I worked on this program for years. I do not think a lack of flight testing is the problem. The problems are many, but in short:

1) Lack of competent, forceful oversight from the program office. DOT&E reports about the F-35 program have, for years, given the program office recommendations that it has failed to follow.

2) A prime contractor (Lockheed-Martin) that restricts access to its data. The F-35 program had to sue LM in federal court to get access to the necessary data to make the Joint Simulation Environment (JSE) fully functional. In the end, the case was settled, but only after six years of battle. The report linked in the parent article describes how maintainers are not allowed access to servicing procedures that they have on other aircraft. I have seen this personally in flight test. Even something like a gear swing requires an LM certified Field Services Engineer to conduct.

3) A completely broken software release process. For many years in developmental flight test, we received software builds that were just entirely broken, as in, the jet would not start with that software loaded. The C2D2 process was advertised as fixing this, but really it was just a new name for the same old fly-fix-fly process. The parent report details entire versions that were skipped in the IOT&E process because they were so buggy. The program could have turned JSE into the final stop for new software builds before hitting the fleet, but it chose to pivot entirely into training instead.

I could keep going. A decade working in a program like this gives you a long list of things to talk about. But I'll stop here for now.

[0] https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2018-04-12-F-35-Completes-Mo...

I meant, tested in actual combat against real adversaries, not test teams, but you've pointed out there are worse issues at stake.

Its basically a arcade-chip tradeable for us-protection within the western worldorder.

> What could explain this sales pipeline

Let’s not beat around the bush. Protection money

The same, or similar 'mechanisms' which enabled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals ?

Microsoft enters the room....

https://archive.ph/0toiV

Elon Musk recently made some remarks about F-35 on Twitter: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1860574377013838033

It's exactly what I was thinking about: Having a pilot onboard is overhead and its a limiting factor for the flight envelope as you have to keep it alive. Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths.

Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic? Sunken cost fallacy? Military industrial complex needs it?

The only thing I can think of is the political implications of downing plane with a soldier on board.

> it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths.

That’s not a gotcha you seem to believe it is, it’s like the first thing you learn about stealth technology and has been apparent to anyone following military news to any extent in the past forty plus years. That you somehow think it’s something that went unnoticed and the thousands of people working on this every day has been “pretending” after reading some Twitter posts is absurd and funny.

Wow really? Someone else already noticed that invisible to radar isn’t invisible to eyesight and event teaching it? lots of smart people out there.

I’m happy that you’re feeling smart and superior but that’s not the point, the point is signal collection and processing came a long way, and maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore. At least enough to justify spending huge sums on a plane that keeps having issue and falling short.

>maybe low radar cross-section isn’t that big of a deal anymore

That's simply not true. There is not a peer or near-peer country that is not developing a variety of low-RCS aircraft.

It’s not as if stealth is foolproof even to radar:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown

This incident happened precisely because the human controller activated radar twice to get a read on ground AA targets.

This is an operational/user fatigue error rather than a fault of the plane. It was completely blind to any and all AA until it turned on it's radar.

Which is to say, f35 Stealth characteristics are worth their weight until exactly the moment a human turns off "lane keep assist" because "they can do it better."

Your target is long gone by the time you can detect short wavelength visible spectrum. Jets don’t need to get physical with you to do damage, it’s not WW2 anymore. That’s not to say countermeasures aren’t a focal point of research.

There are lots of “smart people” out there shitting on very serious work after reading some tweets from captain obvious. There are lots of even smarter people who don’t think everyone else’s an idiot and therefore think long and hard before shitting on work they don’t understand.

>Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths.

There have absolutely been programs to reduce the visual signatures of aircrafts. Yehudi lights, COMPASS GHOST, BoP, etc. Don't get your information on anything from Musk.

Good point but all these things can be fitted on a drone too.

It's not like UCAVs aren't being developed, though. Piloted aircraft have lower latency and are better for some tasks. If UAVs were ready to replace piloted aircraft in all combat roles, they would have. They have almost completely replaced piloted aircraft in ISR, for example, where they are a great fit (no Gary Powers, no latency issues). The Pentagon doesn't want to lose trained pilots.

Does it justify the expense and the shortcomings though? Horses also have some advantages over tanks, like refueling from the grass on the roadside but they become mostly ceremonial anyway.

Yes, because AI is not good enough to fly a plane, detect an enemy craft, and react before a human pilot could. Like I said, they are developing UCAVs. They are not replacing all human-piloted strike planes, let alone all human-piloted air-superiority fighters, yet. Being able to pull a few more gs in a turn doesn't give you that much of an edge, yet.

It depends.

In a lot of cases unmanned craft are obviously superior.

But by the time you load an unmanned craft up with a powerful radar and multiple bombs and missiles - you're also not that far away from the size and expense of a manned craft.

The radar is something you might not appreciate. Modern fighters have very large and powerful onboard radars and a lot of onboard processing power. They are not just bomb and missile trolleys, they are powerful sensor platforms.

Think about it from another perspective. Scroll down and look at the cutaway drawing of an F-16:

https://www.flightglobal.com/defence/why-lockheed-martins-f-...

...clearly, a signficant portion of the plane is dedicated to the pilot. But honestly, not that much. Strip away the cockpit and how much smaller is the plane? 20-30% smaller and cheaper?

> Why just not drop any manned vehicles and go for the remote control + AI? What is the logic?

When the F-35 program was started in late 1980s-early 1990s, neither reliable remote control nor AI existed (I'm not even sure supersonic-reliable remote control exists now). Now, if there exists research programs utilizing unmanned fighter jets, they're likely classified and we won't know about them for quite some time.

DARPA's Air Combat Evolution program (ACE) began with AIs fighting each other in a simulated environment in a tournament. Then the winning AI fought against a human (USAF Fighter Weapons School graduate) in that simulated environment, and won. The company that developed the winning AI, Shield AI, has gone on to deploy an AI in an actual F-16 that has flown against a human in trials.

https://www.darpa.mil/program/air-combat-evolution

Many people underestimate the challenges of working in this environment. The DARPA challenge is like saying that boxing is the same as hand to hand combat. There are many similarities but the first has rules and parameters and the second has none. I find that people in IT tend to arrogantly proclaim things along the lines of, "I've set up a Kubernetes cluster. This can't be any more difficult." but it's more like setting up a Kubernetes cluster where you're paying someone else just like you to do everything they can to destroy it including giving them a knife and stabbing you. Then letting them loose in the datacenter.

I've worked with quite a few people who were part of the AI effort, and my current boss was the architect for ACE a few years ago. All of those people were painfully aware of the gap you describe here and were actively working to bridge it.

I'm sure you and your team were very aware. That was a very cool project and I'd be interested in hearing about your experience. My comment was more directed towards the armchair tech generals out there.

I didn't work on this effort, I am just in the same circles with a lot of people who did and still do.

First, visible/invisible isn’t a dichotomic distinction, it is a spectrum. Stealth isn’t to make an aircraft “invisible” to radar, it is to reduce its radar signature, which means that radar can’t see an aircraft at all beyond a certain distance, and can make it more difficult to identify and track at closer locations. What that means is that a stealth aircraft can fly “in between” radar stations without being detected, where other aircraft couldn’t, and get closer to an adversaries location before being detected, and be more difficult/take more time to identify it as hostile and engage. That adds up to being able to strike many more of your adversary’s targets and escape without them being able to meaningfully engage you and gives you a significant advantage.

It is just like regular camouflage. You cant just throw on a camo jacket and walk around Walmart and be “invisible”. But in the woods, with the right camo, and the right technique, you can move very “stealthily” and if it allows you to get in a position to kill your enemy before they can see and kill you, that is the point.

Second, is an issue with AI I didn’t see anyone bring up. Related to my first point, stealth is about minimizing signatures and that that includes sending/receiving signals. Situations where an aircraft is operating in a highly contested environment means it may not be able to communicate reliably or safely and maintain stealth (they do have MADL but I am sure it can’t work 100% and maintain stealth perfectly). You would have to delegate complete shooting authority to the onboard AI. That is very difficult for many reasons, just one being accountability (who is responsible if an AI commits a war crime?).

> Besides, it's not invisible despite calling it that. It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range

We didn't wait Musk to know planes weren't literally invisible or silent lmao, maybe don't take your military analysis from a man child with 0 experience in the domain.

They either fly high enough that you neither hear nor see them, or low/fast enough that you're dead long before you're even aware something is coming.

Also we already have unmanned aircrafts, a lot of them. Internet army experts will tell you f35 are useless because they're not invisible (duh) meanwhile in eastern Europe people are getting killed by 70+ years old tanks and other ww2 era surplus

Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things.

Flying high might make it invisible for human observers but the idea is that it’s not invisible in that wavelength, therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it.

Also, this is a brand new machine that is still not ready. Just write it off, liquidate any useful work that might have been done on it and go all in drones. What’s the point of insisting on a job not done when already looks obsolete?

If a bunch of microphones and binoculars would defeat stealth fighters (or any kind of jets) don't you think someone in the US, Chinese or Russian army would have thought about it ? Just as a reminder the thing is coming at mach 1.5-2 and as soon as it can it'll send a little present coming your way at mach 2-4

> therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it.

What's the probability some over worked dude who tweet 20 times an hour came up with something the US military–industrial complex hasn't thought about in the last 50 years ?

Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast

https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-coun...

btw his brand new idea is at least a hundred years old: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK...

> Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast

The Bayraktars are the budget-drone option. A big part of their success was less that they're good, and more that the Russians kept all of their EW and AA turned off to achieve tactical surprise. Which they sort of did, but not enough to anchor the fight, and the budget drones were effective at killing a lot of AA early on, increasing their window of lethality.

Once they got their EW & AA game together the Bayraktars stopped being dangerous very quickly.

I highly doubt f35 will use supersonic speed for anything else than repositioning/travel. In combat theaters i doubt it speed will go higher than Mach 0.8.

And anyway, if you want CAS, to stop an army, A-10 will probably be a dozen time better suited than any multirole, and especially the f35 with its ridiculously low availability rate, or even better in that particular case, an AC-130 (that is probably able to direct a drone fleet in its latest revision, but that was speculation last time i checked)

(the A-10 is the best modern plane in my opinion, i really like the F15, f18 and Rafale (those curves!), because i really like the idea of aircraft carrier but that plane is the best.)

Supersonic speeds would certainly be used for beyond visual range (BVR) engagements. Higher speeds mean you and your missiles have more energy and maneuverability. Since the F-35 needs to use it's afterburners to reach supersonic speeds, it likely wouldn't use the extra fuel just for transport.

The default for an F-35 is to be at something like M=0.9 and altitudes of 20-25kft.

>would have thought about it

IIRC in 2000s there was talk by USAF that stealth is a 10-20 year advantage. Not something undefeatable. The actual degree to which stealth can be / is defeated, we wouldn't know until shooting starts. It's ancient technology at this point.

Stealth doesn’t stand still. The latest low-observable US aircraft have lower radar and visual signatures than the previous generation.

It’s not an indefinite ‘lead’, of course, but having decades of experience with LO shaping and materials means you can keep making effective incremental improvements.

IMO keyword is incremental, but we don't know what relative gap is being maintained against detection... if any. As in detection, queuing, targetting might well have caught up, but the virtue of stealth may still be it forces adversaries to have denser sensor networks, even if it means stealth is dead if caught within net. My understanding focus is more on LO materials vs LO shaping in terms of design (to not compromise kinematics), but report suggest coating is not reliable after decades. If LO fighter that doesn't have optimzied LO shape can't fly with LO coating is not a good combo.

Anything that increases the time and effort required for both detection and tracking is worth it, and all else being equal a LO aircraft will always be more survivable in a dense A2/AD environment than one without LO features. It's a continuum, not a binary situation where stealth is either perfect or defeated.

The USAF was well aware that it would not be able to preserve the impunity with which F-117s flew over Baghdad in 1991, but that was never the objective.

Shaping remains by far the most important factor for reducing radar cross section, followed by the use of radar-absorbent materials (RAM) in the airframe and the application of a RAM coating on the outside.

The F-35, for instance, gets most of its RCS reduction from shaping and the composition of its fuselage, and was designed with extremely low tolerances in order to rely a lot less on needing a top coating to cover seals, rivets, etc than earlier LO aircraft. So even when the LO coating degrades, as it does on long operational deployments, it doesn't catastrophically increase the F-35's RCS.

That's an example of the sort of incremental improvement I'm referring to. The F-35 has come a long way in terms of LO from earlier US aircraft. Compared to them, it needs a lot less RAM coating, it can use less hazardous materials for that coating meaning you don't need as much specialist equipment to apply it, and it's more resilient to materials degradation. Those are all things it's somewhat difficult for even peer competitors like China to catch up to.

I should clarify comments was with respect to F35. I'm not disputing the importance of stealth, but depending on how far stealth detection has progressed, stealth may be merely table stakes. We know where stealth sits on the continuum relative to none stealth, but not relative to modern anti stealth, i.e. LO/VLO may be substantially less survivable vs modern sensors / detection methods vs 20 years ago. Question is, has incremental improvements in coating extended the gap, maintained it, or diminished relative to detection. Doesn't mean stealth is obsolescent (if anything it would become MORE necessary), but not standing still doesn't mean not getting lapped by detection/tracking/targetting potentially improving at faster pace.

When I say LO emphasis materials over shaping, with respect to F35, I mean F35 is not an opmital shaped flying wing for stealth. It has optimized shaping for what it is - an ellipitcal wing designed for multi role. It's compromised shaping relative to say, a B21, or renders of NGAD (both flying wings), and likely further fat amy belly compromise to accomodate S/VTOL (vs F22 or even J35 geometry), hence F35 has suboptimal shaping relative to optimal stealth planform. My understanding is coating can reduce RCS by another 30% on top of geometry, ~10% less detection range (inverse fourth power law), which is not catastrophic if lost. But at same time, math suggest incremental coating advancements, which F35 is stuck with to improve stealth, since geometry is locked, means it won't be game changing, it's merely what there is. Hence I'm not convinced incremental coating improvement is enough. IMO pretty telling most 6th gen proposals (even though renders) are all flying wing or blended delta wings.

And as much as F35 coating is improved relative to F22, this report suggests it's still maintenance nightmare. As for whether coatings are difficult to catchup, PRC has got very good material science in last 10 years. It seems more easy to iterate than engines.

Ukrainians already built a microphone network to detect incoming missile and planes.

Microphone network is mostly used for low speed and high noise Iranian Shahed drones which are also made from composite materials and have very low radar visibility. (For example, Moldovan military recently mentioned that they cannot detect them with their old USSR-made radars).

When one is flying towards you, you hear it from few kilometres away for minutes as it has very loud petrol-powered engine.

In contrast, when you hear low passing cruise missile, you will have just few seconds until it passes over you.

Musk: "Ah, yes, let me use microphones to listen for objects approaching at greater than the speed of sound"

I mean, yeah, if you control the ground in the battlespace and have microphone arrays all over the place, sure, maybe acoustic data could be... some part of... some kind of fused sensor network.

But even with perfectly smart software and shitloads of microphones over a huge radius that is going to be a very laggy and imprecise way of measuring (checks notes) objects that may be hundreds of miles away, moving nearly or above the speed of sound, using a spectrum (acoustic waves in air) that only propagates signals at the speed of sound.

He is wrong about that with the current technology. All you have to do to see that is look at Israel vs. Iran. In a decade drone technology might be enough to do something similar to what the F35 does, but right now the F35 is still the peek of technology. There's a reason Israel ordered more of them.

AI might be able to do a dogfight which is great in terms of flight envelope, but completely unnecessary in modern stealth warfare. Despite everything you heard, stealth does work. It isn't perfect but it destroyed Russia's top of the line anti-aircraft missiles in Iran without a problem. The planes are ghosts, by the time you see them it's already too late.

Drones have the advantage of reduced risk to the pilot but since a human sitting at the base will have to deal with signal delay, transmission jamming and low resolution... The difference in having a pilot physically present is huge. AI is unpredictable and unreliable e.g. Iranians were able to fool a US army drone by sending it signals that made it land. Then they took it apart and reverse engineered it.

Yet in Ukraine we see the reverse effect. Russia has some very advanced planes that are barely used.

It seems to come down to this: for the same money you can buy 1 F35 or 10,000 long range drones. If you are an army with a few SAM's, what you scare you more: a single F35 coming over the hill, or a swarm of drones so large you had no hope of taking them all out?

    Russia has some very advanced planes that are barely used.

I wouldn't extrapolate too much from the fact that the Su-57 are rarely if ever seen in this conflict.

For a long time they apparently only had two operational Su-57s. Apparently now they have 5-7? This is not a "production" aircraft as we would understand it in the west. Its actual stealth ability is also highly suspect. The official photos as well as photos from airshows have shown some sloppy physical construction that would compromise any stealth ability.

     If you are an army with a few SAM's, what you scare you 
     more: a single F35 coming over the hill, or a swarm of 
     drones so large you had no hope of taking them all out?

For some kinds of targets, the drones.

For other kinds of targets, the F35.

While your comparison makes sense from a budget perspective, it's not necessarily realistic though. Nobody has the ability to launch that many drones at once and nobody is flying in a single F35.

Also, respectfully, a lot of the anti-manned-fighter arguments boil down to "drones are really good and useful!"

Which is true, but also not something that anybody disputes. Even the most diehard defender of manned aircraft is going to tell you that drones are a huge part of the future of war. And that manned fighters are niche.

Russia has nothing like the F35 and Ukraine has planes too (although not as great). Once Ukraine got F16s they had an impact (even though it's a very old model).

The idea of a drone swarm is science fiction at this time. First, it's not 10,000 drones. Maybe the low quality stuff Iran builds is that cheap. A good western drone will be expensive but also of far higher quality.

If you try to send a drone cloud then they are easily detected and you can just shoot them down. If you send them one by one then they get detected one at a time. A few get through as we see with Israel who dealt with well over 30,000 drones/rockets over the past year... But it took them a year to launch 30,000 rockets/drones. They did very little damage.

You need logistics to send them out big logistics are a big target for an F35. If you do it from far away (like sending drones from Iran) then radars have a lot of time to pick them up and shoot them down. If you do it from close by (like Lebanon) then some might get through but the F35 in the sky will destroy you very fast.

Finally, they all need to fly autonomously which is flawed. You can take them down like ducks in a row. Any soldier with a smart scope can just bring down a drone. Not to mention their deep vulnerability to electronic jamming.

I used to think like you as an engineer. But having spoken to people who actually know this stuff I understood the difference. Yes, there is a price disparity which is why the Israeli army has both drones and F35. Different tools for different jobs. A drone can't carry the damage and logistics an F35 can. But sending an F35 to shoot down drones is a remarkable waste of resources. That's why Israel is working on energy/laser based defense systems which will make a swarm of 10,000 drones completely useless but won't even scratch an F35.

> Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things

Indeed. A broken clock also tells the time correctly twice a day.

>It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range, which means that you can build detection and tracking systems in those wavelengths instead of pretending that its invisible because its hard to detect at radar wavelengths.

Most anti aircraft radar works by sending out radar pulses and measuring the return. Visual spectrum light is scattered significantly by the atmosphere. It is a physics problem and visual range is just not as good of a medium as HF, UHF, VHF etc radar. Which there are multiple over-the-horizon radars with ranges in the hundreds of miles. And that is before we add in clouds, fog, smoke, snow, or you know, darkness, where radio waves easily penetrate. Visual detection needs far more contrast than radio wave detection. Optical detection is just not well suited.

As for using sound to detect and track an object coming at you at faster than the speed of sound, I think it encapsulates this entire comment’s level of thought and insight.

> remote control + AI?

We might be getting close to advanced AI for a lot of domains, but are we ready to have one making independent decisions with bombs?

I’m not a military expert but I’d much prefer having a human making decisions rather than AI for at least the next decade. I’m not sure that remote connectivity is reliable and high bandwidth enough everywhere for a drone fighter jet

We already have drones that are making independent decisions with bombs, but that’s not the point. You can still have people in the loop, people that are not on board.

For 100% of tasks that an F35 can perform?

I know we currently have this capability, but aren’t up to speed if you can rely on it everywhere and every situation.

Arguably even before drones, missiles have some form of "AI" to autonomously make calls, e.g Tomahawk TERCOM and DSMAC (arguably navigation, but hey, for a missile navigation ends in controlled descent into terrain)

This is already the air force's tentative plan. They made several announcements (10+yr ago) when it was new about the F35 being the last manned fighter and then kinda walked that back because PR but kept pursuing it.

> It's visible in the visible spectrum and hearable in the human hearing range

Sure. It's just that radar lets you see tens or hundreds of miles away, and visual doesn't. And sound lets you hear where something is only at the speed of sound, which is less useful for something that can fly faster than the speed of sound.

So developing a weapons-quality track from visual and sound data is problematic. That means that, while not invisible, it's "invisible enough".

Once an AI is able to land aircrafts on any airports, highway or carrier, is able to decide on an emergency landing, or on an emergency discharge an won't crash because of a faulty sensor (MCAS) or weird UFOs that trigger those sensors, i won't be opposed to AI-driven aircrafts.

In the meantime, Aircraft+"Ai-driven" drone is a great idea (look up to "nEUROn" if you want an idea of a combat drone capability)

    Having a pilot onboard is overhead and its a limiting 
    factor for the flight envelope as you have to keep it alive.

The advantages of unmanned craft, and disadvantages of manned craft, are numerous.

There are still plenty of cases where you want human pilots present. There's a lot of realtime decision making by pilots when it comes to identifying, selecting, and firing upon targets.

Remotely-piloted drones rely on seamless drone-to-base communications so they can be, you know, remotely piloted. These communications can be denied by an enemy. As far as autonomous drones that can act on their own without a datalink go, let's just say I think the current SOTA in automonous anything shows it's going to be a long time until we're there.

Also a few of the "obvious" advantages of unmanned craft aren't as relevant as one might think....

Drones can obviously be smaller and more manuverable than manned fighters because they don't have to carry that extra weight (pilot, ejector seat, life support, etc) and because they don't need to worry about g-force restrictions as much. However, the sort of close range high-G dogfighting maneuvering seen in movies is vanishingly rare. It's all about BVR (beyond visual range) missile launches.

Additionally, attack aircraft need to carry missiles and bombs. The missiles and bombs need to be a certain size because they need to carry X kilograms of explosive, Y kilograms of fuel, and Z kilograms of guidance electronics. If you want to put 2, 4, 6, 8 of these on a drone, and give the drone itself some kind of large-enough usable flight range, guess what -- it starts approaching the size and cost of a manned fighter pretty quickly.

As far as optical detection of stealth fighters goes...

(deep breath)

Sure, in some cases.

Probably not in ways that are as useful as you hope. First, there are these things called "clouds" and "nighttime" that are going to put a damper on the visual thing, no matter how good the camera and how smart the AI.

Also I want to point out the scale of modern aerial combat. Air to air missiles and surface to air missiles have ranges up to hundreds of miles.

There is probably a role for some kind of sufficiently smart visual spectrum... something... as part of future sensor networks, augmenting radar. Especially in parts of the world (deserts) where you typically have clear skies.

And as far as sound goes? Since Musk mentioned that too?

I'm just going to point to some basic laws of physics here. Gonna be hard to hear things coming in useful amounts of time if they're going near the speed of sound, and impossible to hear them coming if they're going faster than the speed of sound. There's also some significant lag involved that you don't have with EM spectrum stuff. So even with smart enough analysis the best you're going to be able to do is sort of guess that some stealthy fighters are in an approximate area, assuming you control the ground and have a sufficient number of acoustic sensors scattered all about the place and smart enough sensors. Again, this could be part of some kind of wide-spectrum sensor network fusing lots of different data, maybe, but it's not some kind of "gotcha" that invalidates current stealth hardware.

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