The AI wrote a shitty article solely based on a single fact: an F-35.was damaged by a heat seeking missile. Then it just made up a bunch of implication to suggest that no one had ever thought about anything other than radar threats before.
This shatterbelt site sucks tbh. It feels like blogspam.
What a pile of breathless nonsense. LLM, be ashamed.
As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones.
It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of.
Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.
> the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles.
I'm no expert, but the exhaust doesn't look hidden to me.
A missile (surface to air) usually sees the airplane from behind and below. This image [1] is an example. Even from a side, while the horizontal stabilizer partly covers it, you can still clearly see the exhaust [2].
Compare that to A-10 engines and stabilizer. This image [3] is from the same angle as [1]. The engine exhaust is completely behind the horizontal stabilizer. This image [4], same angle as [2], shows the engine exhaust covered by vertical stabilizer.
A-10 is not the same type of plane, but just by looking at the differences, I very much doubt that they even tried to hide the exhaust in F-35.
> You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits.
The author writes this as if heat seeking missles are new tech. They’re not. The designers of the F-35 developed it knowing they exist and made whatever tradeoffs they decided to make. That’s just engineering.
I think the point (no idea if this is true, it isn't my domain) is that cheap, infrared imaging seekers are new. Previous generations of heat seekers either used low-resolution infrared sensors or were hellishly expensive on a unit basis. Do cheap Chinese components and cheap compute not mean that its now feasible to field these things much more cheaply and widely, by a larger range of actors, than previously? (again, not my domain).
This type of imaging terminal guidance has been around since (at least) the 1990s. They actually use low-resolution imagers because they are cheap and sufficient. There is nothing new or novel about the IR threat domain.
It has never been compute-intensive. Current hypersonic kinetic-intercept missiles use ancient MIPS R3000/4000 class CPUs.
Cheap may be the point. The Soviets deployed a missle with an imaging seeker in 1984.
But the real question is: does the appearance of good, cheap IR sensors in combat mean that we civilians will finally be allowed to buy thermal IR cameras that don’t suck? Everything is limited to 20 Hz with potato resolution. The ITAR restriction is a joke at this point.
So what is it that happened? They got extremely lucky? The missile has a seriously reduced profile? How did the guy land? Almost sounds like a cannonball hit him.
IR/EOST capabilities of the very short range (SHORAD) Majid* / AD-08.
F-35 flying relatively low (somewhere Getting hard facts is complicated by the fact that this DoD isn't necessarily going to reveal what happened, and the IRGC can't be trusted 100%.
* Rumored that some components like some of the "camera" sensors were sourced from Canada.
Even with countermeasures, the F-35 has two issues:
1) It's not the 1990s anymore, Counter-Countermeasure IR missile discrimination is pretty common on imported MANPADs and IR SAMs.
2) The F-35 has a insanely hot engine even when it's not afterburning. The F135 produces hotter inlet temperature than even the F-22's engine (F119) giving older IR seekers an easier target.
> Flares, the standard IR countermeasure, are less effective against imaging IR seekers that can distinguish an aircraft shape from point-source decoys.
I think this is the most relevant 'new' piece of information from the article. IR missiles are not new, but IR missiles that can distinguish between aircraft and decoys might be.
Developers of "IR" seeking missiles have been trying to distinguish between aircraft and countermeasures since the very beginning. I say "IR" because the first really robust countermeasure-avoiding seekers were dual-band IR+UV and have been around for decades. IR+UV is useful because making a decoy that looks like jet exhaust in both IR and UV is quite difficult. Imaging "IR" is a bit more capable, particularly for all-aspect use, but once again this has existed for decades.
Worth pointing out that the Chinese have consumerized sufficiently high resolution thermal sensors with high enough frame rates to be used in a guidance system. I'd bet that Iran is taking advantage of those in this case.
It's difficult to decoy because the missile's processor is programmed to know what typical aircraft profiles look like; for example a transport aircraft has two or four propellors with hot leading edges, numerous turbine exhausts and warm leading edges. A flare is a seen as a hot ball, in contrast.
To decoy that, the decoy needs to basically _be_ the aircraft.
they are certainly not, visual feature detection, multi sensor fusion and a whole raft of other techniques have been under active development and fielded in working systems for decades.
"One analyst. 500+ open sources across 15 languages. AI-augmented research that synthesizes what would take a team weeks. Human judgment on every conclusion."
I can shittalk the f35 for almost an hour, but this not a plane issue. Stealth was always against BVR missiles (fox-1 engagement, or any S-400 or other using SARH/ARH), and never against IR missiles (UV missiles now?) or bullets. Yes, that makes the f35 stealth less usefull for CAS than a true CAS plane, but it is a multirole, of course it will be worse than specialized plane. The true utility of the f35 is its EW suite anyway, the stealth is just a bonus.
And honestly, considering how good radars are nowaday, i wouldn't be surprised the stealth will get ditched eventually (not until we make FSR or an equivalent active that we can put in a missile though, so we probably still have 5 to 10 years?) (if an expert can chime in, i have not talked to a physician specialized in this field in a decade, and my buddy at Thales isn't working on radar software anymore :( )
Would the F22 or YF-23 have faired better with their special exhaust design or still same problem? I always thought the F-35 wasn't that stealth because of its exhaust design like the Russian Pakfa exhaust
I would be curious too how they spotted it in the first place to film it regarding stealth/altitude, I saw some infographic one time showing the radar cross section size in like cubic meters and the B2 is smaller than a bird or something crazy like that
It's been reported Iran is deploying IR missles along the common ingress and egress paths the U.S. has been using for the past month. So target acquisition could be MK I eyeball
Missing most important piece which is detection/target. Article making rounds a few days ago: Chinese engineer shared trick to shoot F-35 fighters just days before Iran’s strike. Not to credit PRC because this something Iranian STEM can figure out, but premise is simple - recognize vs air superiority overmatch that tradition antiair sensors not survivable via SEAD. So build mesh of cheap, PASSIVE distributed dual use commercial sensors, i.e. marine multi spectral pods with electro optical / infrared. Have enough for coverage and coordinate zerg rushing / shoot & scoot with fast / attritable surface to air launchers. Basically UKR's COTS acoustic sensor mesh for drone detection. Recognize US/high end operators tries to break Find in F2T2EA (Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess). As long as can find, upgrade with modernish IR seeker, on paper 40+ year old legacy missile tech is more than kinematically sufficient to take down modern multi role.
Now this can be circumvented over with standoff munitions, but now you're increasing ordnance cost by magnitudes, and theoretically this can be scaled to hit subsonic standoff munitions, so on paper negate / require even more premium munitions.
The none poverty version coming online is mega constellation ISR, throw enough SAR in space to make sky completely transparent.
The article ignores the fact that you need radar to find targets for your IR missiles. Infrared Search and Track (IRST) systems have a fractional range of radar and require ideal weather to reach their maximum distance.
In other words, you can target the F-35 but only when it's on top of you dropping bombs on YOU from much further away.
So we have one hit out of how many thousands of sorties by the F-35 during this war? Not sure I’d claim stealth is done yet. If anything I think it proves the opposite…
> How many impovershised american children could you feed for the cost of one f35 fighter jet?
Here is the answer:
> Using a rough estimate of $110.3 million for one F-35A and about $3,500 per child per year to cover food assistance, that would feed roughly 31,500 children for one year
MPACGA -- Make Poor American Children Great Again.
This article is slop written by an LLM/person with superficial understanding of the technology involved interspersed with a lot of jargon.
IR is useful for terminal guidance only due to very limited engagement distances at which it can get lock (see also: MANPADS). One of the objectives of non-IR stealth is that it eliminates the mid-course guidance needed for long-range missile engagements, which largely requires radar. Note also that sophisticated "IR-guided" missiles are not "heat-seeking", that is mostly a movie trope. They use imagers that include part of the IR spectrum.
The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. US aircraft are designed and tested to survive being hit with warheads in this size class. An F-35 is expected to eat an IR-guided missile and get back home.
The F-35 definitely saw it coming. The article casually ignores the widely documented base capabilities of the aircraft that make it what it is.
That said, F-35 is an export design with limited IR stealth. The US uses IR stealth on non-export 5th gen designs and all of the 6th gen designs. This was one of the compromises to make the design "exportable".
1. Their quantum radar can detect stealth objects, but cannot lock
2. Their missiles are rapidly improving, I believe they have the longest range A2A missile [1], the PL-17 nearly doubles the best the US and Russia have, though I think the US announced something in that range recently (but not fielded)
3. Quantum to get close, thermal for terminal guidance
I'd imagine small computers have made them more effective in the last decade or two, but that probably applies to detection and countermeasures in the victim aircraft as well.
Click on the home page and look at their other headlines, read the "About" description. It's just an endless stream of clickbait AI slop. Their "archive" goes back two weeks and has over a hundred articles with the same stilted "Reasonable statement. Controversial twist." headline format. Please stop falling for this trash.
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This shatterbelt site sucks tbh. It feels like blogspam.
As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones.
It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of.
Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.
> the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles.
I'm no expert, but the exhaust doesn't look hidden to me.
A missile (surface to air) usually sees the airplane from behind and below. This image [1] is an example. Even from a side, while the horizontal stabilizer partly covers it, you can still clearly see the exhaust [2].
Compare that to A-10 engines and stabilizer. This image [3] is from the same angle as [1]. The engine exhaust is completely behind the horizontal stabilizer. This image [4], same angle as [2], shows the engine exhaust covered by vertical stabilizer.
A-10 is not the same type of plane, but just by looking at the differences, I very much doubt that they even tried to hide the exhaust in F-35.
> You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits.
Engine inlet isn't hot.
[1] https://n.sinaimg.cn/sinakd20120/133/w2000h1333/20200915/3f8...
[2] https://cdn-cavok.nuneshost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/F...
[3] https://www.slashgear.com/img/gallery/a-single-a-10-warthog-...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Gun_R...
It has never been compute-intensive. Current hypersonic kinetic-intercept missiles use ancient MIPS R3000/4000 class CPUs.
But the real question is: does the appearance of good, cheap IR sensors in combat mean that we civilians will finally be allowed to buy thermal IR cameras that don’t suck? Everything is limited to 20 Hz with potato resolution. The ITAR restriction is a joke at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ALE-50_towed_decoy_system
The US and Israel didn't lose a single pilot over Iran after 15,000+ sorties which is saying something on their capabilities.
F-35 flying relatively low (somewhereGetting hard facts is complicated by the fact that this DoD isn't necessarily going to reveal what happened, and the IRGC can't be trusted 100%.
* Rumored that some components like some of the "camera" sensors were sourced from Canada.
1) It's not the 1990s anymore, Counter-Countermeasure IR missile discrimination is pretty common on imported MANPADs and IR SAMs.
2) The F-35 has a insanely hot engine even when it's not afterburning. The F135 produces hotter inlet temperature than even the F-22's engine (F119) giving older IR seekers an easier target.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-new-infrar...
these new inventions will challenge western air dominance doctrine by using abundant heat seeking A2A missiles/drones possible.
Just like cheap drones have completely changed the battlefield on the ground, these things can potentially change the air battle completely
> Flares, the standard IR countermeasure, are less effective against imaging IR seekers that can distinguish an aircraft shape from point-source decoys.
I think this is the most relevant 'new' piece of information from the article. IR missiles are not new, but IR missiles that can distinguish between aircraft and decoys might be.
An even earlier version, the AIM-9R was tested in 1990 before the budget was cut as part of the Cold War wind down. That’s 35 years ago.
Even earlier than that, a Soviet missile which became operational in 1984 (40 years ago!), the R-74, inspired the AIM-9R program.
So it’s not like imaging seekers were unknown to the people designing today’s generation of fighters.
To decoy that, the decoy needs to basically _be_ the aircraft.
Last paragraph: "Does this make the F-35 obsolete? No."
From https://www.shatterbelt.co/about:
"One analyst. 500+ open sources across 15 languages. AI-augmented research that synthesizes what would take a team weeks. Human judgment on every conclusion."
And honestly, considering how good radars are nowaday, i wouldn't be surprised the stealth will get ditched eventually (not until we make FSR or an equivalent active that we can put in a missile though, so we probably still have 5 to 10 years?) (if an expert can chime in, i have not talked to a physician specialized in this field in a decade, and my buddy at Thales isn't working on radar software anymore :( )
oh no that's not true the F117 and F35 is though
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ur5qt0/radar_cros...
Now this can be circumvented over with standoff munitions, but now you're increasing ordnance cost by magnitudes, and theoretically this can be scaled to hit subsonic standoff munitions, so on paper negate / require even more premium munitions.
The none poverty version coming online is mega constellation ISR, throw enough SAR in space to make sky completely transparent.
In other words, you can target the F-35 but only when it's on top of you dropping bombs on YOU from much further away.
> How many impovershised american children could you feed for the cost of one f35 fighter jet?
Here is the answer:
> Using a rough estimate of $110.3 million for one F-35A and about $3,500 per child per year to cover food assistance, that would feed roughly 31,500 children for one year
MPACGA -- Make Poor American Children Great Again.
IR is useful for terminal guidance only due to very limited engagement distances at which it can get lock (see also: MANPADS). One of the objectives of non-IR stealth is that it eliminates the mid-course guidance needed for long-range missile engagements, which largely requires radar. Note also that sophisticated "IR-guided" missiles are not "heat-seeking", that is mostly a movie trope. They use imagers that include part of the IR spectrum.
The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. US aircraft are designed and tested to survive being hit with warheads in this size class. An F-35 is expected to eat an IR-guided missile and get back home.
The F-35 definitely saw it coming. The article casually ignores the widely documented base capabilities of the aircraft that make it what it is.
That said, F-35 is an export design with limited IR stealth. The US uses IR stealth on non-export 5th gen designs and all of the 6th gen designs. This was one of the compromises to make the design "exportable".
1. Their quantum radar can detect stealth objects, but cannot lock
2. Their missiles are rapidly improving, I believe they have the longest range A2A missile [1], the PL-17 nearly doubles the best the US and Russia have, though I think the US announced something in that range recently (but not fielded)
3. Quantum to get close, thermal for terminal guidance
[1] https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close-...
The USAF has had them since 1956: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-4_Falcon
I'd imagine small computers have made them more effective in the last decade or two, but that probably applies to detection and countermeasures in the victim aircraft as well.
Really?. Funny that everyone now knows US overclaimed their capabilities.