An Indian AF cpt will say "see, drones are the future because of Geran2. Without realizing that these drones fly a pre determined path. They are essentially smaller and cheaper cruise missiles in a sense. Drones in the sense what Ukraine used and the like are rather very easy to shoot down and Russia proved that. Fighter jets eat those drones for breakfast.
You are totally right Seph except that Fighters wont eat these targets for breakfast because the ARH missiles they will be burning through to take out these small low slow targets will render those fighters rather vulnerable to enemy engagement and trading a Geran drone worth $800 for a million dollar AMRAAM or Meteor is just pissing money away at a rate even the west cannot afford.
Everyone who has the money already made contract to replace them with f-35.
Israeli F-35s wont enter Syrian airspace on their own... how safe do they think they are?
The US wont let the Turks own S-400 and F-35s at the same time... they didn't ban F-35s from operating in Syria or Israel where Syrian based Russian S-400s could track them and gather all the secret information they say they are afraid the Russians might gather if Turkish F-35s and Turkish S-400 batteries operate together... almost like they are afraid that Turkey might find out just how stealthy the F-35 really is...n't.
The Russians didn't refuse to sell S-400, and the Turks said it was better than they said they were promised in terms of its performance when tested with F-16s and other systems they have... the Russians were clearly conservative in their promises and were not afraid of Turkey using their products... perhaps the Americans have not been conservative with their promises and fear being exposed...
Home on jam isn't an easy way to obtain a kill. You have no idea what your missile lock on and some jammings are impossible to track the source. It's a easy way to spend missiles on nothing. Specially against modern jammers.
That is very true, but the missile can now have the processing power of a desktop computer from 10 years ago and could examine the signals it is receiving together with the signals it is emitting and work out what is reflection and what is just being broadcast as noise... an encrypted 128 bit radar signal is not the easiest thing to replicate in real time... and when they can do that a 129 bit encrypted signal contains twice the number of key potentials...
They are designing missiles optimised for killing stealth targets so the chances an IIR seeker will be included with an ARH or perhaps other sensor means the job of staying alive for the target will always be problematic... for any aircraft.
It doesn't have any EO for looking downward specialized in ground attack mode. So your statement is just dumb and you know it, just trying to save the face.
Its OLS covers a greater visual area than its radar which is also used to find ground targets... it wont see ground targets behind itself but why do you think it would need to?
Russia has an enormous number of different platforms it could use on the ground, in the air and in space to find potential targets for aircraft like the Su-30 to go and inspect and evaluate and unlike the Su-35 it can have a guy in the back looking for targets on the ground while the pilot in the front looks for threats and incoming missiles or ground fire and is always ready to react to anything he spots.
Only su-24 and su-34 have such EO systems and they face the front only. With a pod you can fly anywhere near the target and still keep a lock on it with your EW ball.
The OLS system of the MiG-29 and Su-27 were always used for air and ground targets and contain laser range finders for attacks on targets without using the radar.
The new models include thermal imagers and digital video sensors... in fact the MiG-35 has a downward facing pod to compliment its OLS with the pod handling targets below and even behind the aircraft while the nose mounted system handles forward hemisphere targets in front of the aircraft like the radar does.
Thinking not having coverage below the aircraft is somehow a problem is just ridiculous for a low fast aircraft... WTF is an Su-30 going to do about flying below 100m at 700km/h with a target it detects beside it? The only system it would need to detect such a thing is threat detection, not target detection.
The Su-34 with recon pods would be used to find targets with belly mounted sensor pods... remember there were about three different sensor pod options?
What makes you think the F-35 has better stealth than the F-117? The truth is it is quite the opposite...
Even just in IR terms the difference would be enormous... look at the engine heat difference of the two is enormous...
And we know how well the F-117 did in Serbia. So well they retired it from service shortly afterwards as it was a compromised aircraft.
And both are subsonic...
In many ways the F-117 carried two LGBs... for all the cost they could have just used two cruise missiles to replace its capability...
I guess the results of f117 were actually pretty good. Main dumb thing is they didn't use long range weapons on it and stick with free fall bombs in a contested area.
Like the B-2?
The PAK DA is not a strategic bomber, it would be used as a theatre bomber, though even then with glide bombs and standoff missiles, but in the strategic roles it would use long range missiles.
Stealth isn't invisibility. Get too close to radars and you will be spotted. But with tactical missiles with 100km range and gliding bombs, radars will have hard time finding you.
The Russia IADS is optimised to shoot down bombs and missiles too, the SA-12 from the 1980s was intended to shoot down Honest John II warheads... the export Antei-2500 is intended to shoot down ballistic targets moving at up to 4.5km/s with an ERA of 0.02m... a single battery can handle 16 ballistic targets at once.
The RQ-170 event was so big yet people easily forgotten it. It is essentially the F-117 event all over again but gets no talk.
With the added issue that a drone can be knocked out in international airspace, the other side can just claim it was threatening and was a danger to civil air traffic...
Ironically a stealthy aircraft actually will draw the attention of every air defence system, but not make them turn on their radar... they are more likely to use optics or other systems to detect... with a drone you could send up an Su-25 to intercept it...