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Would even a conventional war between NATO and Russia really be decided by artillery shell production rates?
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I am certain no one here has ever actually used a fucking FCR or even a operated a boat with a commercial nav radar. All this 'stealth doesn't work' smugposting to portend the sheer stupidity of NATO in developing a white elephant fails to consider the corpus of historical evidence for low observable UCAVs in penetrating contested environments, not to mention literally every Red Flag exercise seeing F35s curbstomp 4.5G unless things are stacked specifically against the F35. Stealth aircraft are incredibly difficult to detect much less differentiate from atmospheric pickup, and not even 2010s tech is able to do variable gain adjustment and track reacquisition. Every nation is either looking to buy or indigenously develop 5G+ stealth planes because right off the bat stealth strangles your opponents aerial inventory and capability. No CAP, CAS or ISR if you can never confirm if even your own airspace is clear and if you lose automatically lose any contest. Ground Based Air Defense spam is cope when GBAD all requires a first track to be established by a radar station and thus is itself subject to the 'contested' matrix outlined above.
This doesnt change (much) the points raised about drones and artillery spam, but that might require a seperate effortpost. Suffice to say, artillery now has to include a wider variety of counter battery threat vectors and drones... well let me just say I am really excited for sci fi lasers to finally manifest in reality.
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Point to how good multilateration is vs stealth please. At that sensitivity you're making your radar pick up every passing sparrow. Good luck differentiating one gain, much less three. IRST still has a very wide performance band, always better for confirmation than for acquisition. IR has an issue where it is rear-facing optimized against jets since the heat of an engine comes from the rear (engine motors on helos are all hot which is why SHORAD will never go out of style) and is constant, unlike forward facing thermal profiles which continually deform based on angle and scatter. Stealth is also not just radar signature reduction, it is also thermal emissivity absorbing, which is why all stealth planes have that darker shade - absorbs more thermal energy and thus reflects less thermal energy. Also, thermal has notably stupid performance when things like cloud reflected scatter (same as radar), so a web (can't be a ring, you can just punch a hole) of IR sensors must still be complemented by multiple stations to increase gain probability. Nevertheless, once a decision is made to launch GBAD in a not so vague direction where a hostile aircraft is incoming, IR does render stealth null. Modern IRH is stupid hard to soft counter inside the kill envelope, so if the adversary is ok with just wasting dozens of missiles in the vague air then yeah stealth totally is a meme - but so is basically any type of air mission if the enemy just throws dozens of missiles at every passing (literal) bird.
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Of course not. This is a nerd forum, not warthunder. If you have secret info so damning to stealth, then so be it, rest easy that when the balloon floats you'll be vindicated, unlike literally every nation scrambling over themselves to buy F35s or develop the Su57 or J31 or Qahar. I prefer to err on the side of the wisdom of crowds and see 'past winners' continuing to buy 'winning' tech. Lazy and reductive, but its not like the history disfavors it. There is one exception to this historical trend though, and its super fun!
Of course this cuts both ways: S400 and Pantsir sellers also have every incentive to tout their stealth killing capability, which kind of is odd if stealth is so useless that 'multilateral' stations and a ring of IRST can easily counter this non-threat. Do note that the multirole/air superiority sales sector does not advertise their offerings as 'better than F35' but instead 'we can fulfill your order books faster and meanie LockMart doesn't want to sell F35 to you' for expensive multiroles (F15EX, Gripen, Typhoon, Rafale) or 'you are poor and we are cheap' (TA-50, Tejas, JF17). Whether this thesis is rooted in smart purchasing decisions avoiding a politically loaded white elephant or a reflection of limited political/financial bargaining power is an exercise in relative value assignment.
Finally, re Turkey... I respect your hypothesis that S400 tested against F35 would show the folly of stealth against superior GBAD and the USA is being spiteful bitches for Turkey going behind NATOs back, but do consider that Turkey has always been an ally of last resort in the geopolitical chessboard which is the Near East. Erdogan has made no secret of his disdain for the West, and with that comes an adjusted calculus on whether that asset owner will respect the interests of the manufacturer - a very different and significantly more interesting discussion could be had on whether F35 unified maintenance system and capabilities are the REAL octopus of the US DoD ensnaring lesser states in its wake, but again that may require a seperate effortpost.
In any case S400 has been directly used by Russia in Syria already, which is right next to Israel which has had F35s in the air since 201?, so the live data aspect should already be known to them (and, for our sake as internet shitposters, not us).
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