[mrtksn]

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?

[lm28469]

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...

[red-iron-pine]

> 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.

[orwin]

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.)

[Albatross9237]

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.

[euler_angles]

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

[maxglute]

>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.

[_djo_]

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.

[maxglute]

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.

[_djo_]

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.

[maxglute]

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.

[mrtksn]

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

[hkpack]

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.

[JohnBooty]

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.

[invalidname]

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.

[rstuart4133]

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?

[JohnBooty]

    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.

[invalidname]

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.

[mangamadaiyan]

> 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.