> I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.

I'm in optics, not sonar, but I have a hard time believing that sound waves are such unbelievably reliable tools for accurate FFT's of a target. Ultrasonics begin at 100 mm, while "long" visible light is 200x shorter (and wavelength is proportional to resolvable detail). Noise and dispersion in the ocean are significant.

Reminds me of when the CIA planted stories that they could recover data from multiply-erased hard drives using electron scanning microscopes. Possibly - one bit at a time.

Phased radar is a thing. Phased sonar is also a thing. Couple that with a bunch of ML and its very doable.

Or maybe the Typhoon is actually better than the F35 and F22 at dogfighting and general "within visual range" combat. But its unlikely that would really matter in a real war, F35 doesn't need to be good at those things if it just shots you down long before you know its there.

That's one way to nerf them, force them to fight in situations they would never find themselves in.

In real life, if they can't neutralize the threat in BVR they just turn around and run before getting in range.

Their stealth allows them to get the enemy in range before the enemy has them in range. It's like a boxer with a long reach: jab and move.

The F-35 can self escort to an extent, but the concept of operations is generally to avoid direct air combat. Instead they would try to attack at night, relying on low observability, jamming, and careful route planning to avoid detection or interception and then destroying adversary aircraft on the ground using stand-off weapons. That's basically how the predecessor F-117 operated.

F35 maybee. F22 has never been publically flown within its actual combat envelope. Super maneuverability probably makes it possible to notch the living fuck out of heat seakers, i.e turn past 180 degrees, afterburner out.

I’m sorry, but you clearly don’t know anything about the F 35 development program. It is held up as an exemplar case of preventing congressional pork, as every single development and integration contract was competitively won on a best-value basis.

Yes, and it is a matter of pure happenstance that 46 states directly benefit from that program. That's just like how other competitive trillion dollar systems are typically developed.

It is not how any other defense project is managed. Seriously, go read about it.

Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?

Also ignore me, all I know about air combat I learned from top gun and iron eagle.

Well in Ukraine both sides are generally too afraid to get their jets anywhere near the frontline and just use them to launch long range cruise missiles and such from a safe distance.

Air defences are just too effective and modern jets are so expensive that nobody can really afford to risk losing them.

Maybe F-35 could change that, it seemed very efficient in Iran. But AFAIK Iran didn't have anything better than the S-300 so it wasn't exactly a fair fight...

In Iran, did the F35 got deep and low, like an A10 would? Were they used as B2 would, high altitude bombers? Or did they stayed at the border and were used as mobile EW planes to coordinate/acquire targets? Because I've read about 2 and 3, and too much internet almost made be believe 1, so I'm asking here where someone who actually know something might answer.

F35 main advantage is basically being able to target things provided by other assets.

For active homing missiles, the aircraft tells the missile approximately where the plane is, then the missile only activates tracking once its close. Obviously this can be defeated if the plane manages to get out of the scan range of the missile before it switches to homing mode.

Semi active homing is a bit more reliable, as it relies on the launching aircraft to track the target, but obviously aicraft needs to be in closer range to track.

With F35, you can have AWACS or ground radar or whatever else continuously updating information on where the target is, and the active homing missile can reliably navigate and switch to homing.

Without the network, F35 is as good as pretty much any other jet, with the exception that its somewhat stealth. But not against modern heatseekers.

Rules of engagement and the fact that nobody was properly trained on tactics that worked with the missiles. IIRC only the air force added a gun to the F4, the Navy just improved their training regime, and ended the war with better kill ratios than the air force.

Plus the early missiles just had some problems that were fixed over time.

> Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?

Not only ROE limitations, but unreliable missile technology (see the "Red Baron" reports for example) and bad tactics as well. The Navy was better than the USAF in both respects.

But how many can they knock out? Patriot air defenses are extremely effective. But on some level they’re not very useful if the interceptor missiles are materially more expensive than the things they’re intercepting against a foe of equalish economic means.

“Drone” covers many orders of magnitude in capability, but a CIWS can handle functionally unlimited numbers of the low-end, and the high-end don't clearly win the cost-per-kill war.

Drones are game changing on land because they allow smart munitions to be usefully spread across an entire country, far outpacing a defender's ability to deploy air defenses. But a carrier battle group doesn't have this problem: the defenses are necessarily already positioned on and around the thing being defended.

Where the cost balance starts becoming relevant is when destroyers are trying to defend other vessels: something that could be easily shot down by a CIWS at the target might require an SM-1 if the Standard is coming from 100km away from the target vessel.

I don’t think it’s clear at all that a CIWS system beats a large swarm of jet turbine drones. I think Ukrainian sea baby style attacks are also going to be very tricky if scaled up beyond the levels we have seen in this war.

FPV drones, imo, have created a system of dynamic mines, effectively. Both sides are able to project defenses forward without boots on the ground. I suspect this will revolutionize naval warfare shortly on a similar kind of story. If it ever becomes relevant again.

““Drone” covers many orders of magnitude in capability”

I don’t know why you’re repeating that. Drones are a growing class, but I have specified several specific archetypes and drones all generally share the same basic advantage which is that they’re much cheaper than historical alternatives.

If you’re just trying to say that there are some drones which won’t be effective against ships that’s just kind of silly. Obviously that’s true.

I think it’s pretty clear that these shiny super expensive weapons systems will be overwhelmed by cheaper autonomous systems like drones . They are good for bullying less capable adversaries but I think in an all out war they won’t have a good time. As far as I have read the F22 has never been used in combat because it’s too expensive to lose.

F22 has never been used in combat because nobody wants to go up against it. We deploy F22s and enemy is basically like "well we cant see it and it probably out turns any of our shit, so whats the point"

Drones are cheaper, but also not robust like human operated machinery. Great for bombing, not so great for air supreriority. UCAVs may be cheaper in getting missles off, but comms are easy to disrupt and ai capabilities arent there