| Not aware of any MANPADS that can use radar. AFAIK they all use heat seekers. Not much you can do other than deploy flares. Stealth doesn't help you in close visible range. >For close air support, maybe the US wants to use fast, stealth aircraft firing missiles to spots specified with laser designators, GPS, etc. Yeah, the Air Force always says that, and the ground troops always demand A-10's Apaches, etc. >As I recall, at times the USAF claimed that to kill tanks an F-16 with a missile was better than the A-10: Sure, the gun on the A-10 is amazing, but the A-10 flies low and slow and should be vulnerable to, say, MANPADS. The F-16 flies higher and faster, fires a missile, and then is out'a there. The Air Force always claims that they have a good reason to get rid of the A-10. The fart-gun while awesome, isn't the real reason troops love it so much. The ability to loiter on station for a long time and keep enemy forces down in defensive mode is. Neither fast-movers, nor helicopters can loiter as long. >Maybe the USAF wants the F-35 to be better, still: Use stealth. Stealth isn't a panacea, it's a buff against the enemy's radar. And, yeah, drones/unmanned are the future. |
Some versions of stealh try to lower their heat signatures, e.g., hide the jet engine output from the ground by an extension of the part of the plane below the engine and mixing the jet exhaust with cool air. For the F-117, can get a little view of its engine output at
http://aviation-design.fr/images/jets/rc-jet-model-f-117/lar...
Looks like they tried to hide the exhaust heat.