I don't mean those anti-drone systems should target regular aircrafts. Really cool F35 can target them and at the same time it’s highly unlikely F35 would have ever reached those distant airfields.
> Really cool F35 can target them and at the same time it’s highly unlikely F35 would have ever reached those distant airfields.
If you wanted to take out bombers regularly attacking you with F-35s, you don't have to reach the airfields, you just have to reach them somewhere between the airfields and where they release their weapons.
Modern missiles have been developed to a point where those bombers would not necessarily have to leave russian airspace to release them.
It concerns me a lot if those supersonic bombers are still valid today, but taking the fact Russia has 4 new tu-160 in production, I shoulda be wrong
"new tu-160" is a stretch. These airframes were started during the time of the Soviet Union and are very very slowly being assembled. Russia has no ability to produce any of the TU-95/TU-23m/TU-160 past the few unassembled airframes it inherited from the USSR.
As far as I understood the biggest problem was not in the frame production itself, but in digitizing the Soviet era documentation for modern machinery.
They reported it done in 2018 and 2 new aircrafts are promised to be brand new. I doubt anyone would be able to reliably prove they coming with old frame or not.
Even in the traditional scenario it’s still unclear how would F35 compete in range with enormous antennas on both specific aircrafts like Е-3 or land-based defense systems.
Or is it more about fail safety rather than distance?
If you wanted to take out bombers regularly attacking you with F-35s, you don't have to reach the airfields, you just have to reach them somewhere between the airfields and where they release their weapons.