Bye-Bye F-35
My first blog back in 2012 talked about this problem with the F-35, as an over priced piece of experimental equipment. Too costly to put into battle, too unreliable to be available for battle and as I have said ever since these military contractors have been touting stealth, it just isn't so. The Air Force has finally said that the latest Russian and Chinese technology is able to detect the F-35 under combat conditions. What the Air Force didn't say, was the F-35 and all stealth aircraft have always been detectible under combat conditions. Yes, since before the F-117.
Do you remember when we flew into Iraq the 1st day of the war? Well, the Air Force touted that the F-117 was the first aircraft into the combat zone around Baghdad. But did you hear what altitude it went in at? It was 50 feet! If that thing was so stealth, why didn't it just fly into the combat zone, attack it's target and return? That's because it isn't stealth and had to fly at extremely low altitude to be below the visible horizon. Plus there were some that got shot down. Here is a very simple method to determine if something is radar invisible (stealth). Can you see it? If yes, then it isn't stealth.
We are able to see because light bounces off an object. If light bounces off an object, then it is a simple matter of bouncing radar off an object. It is the very same principle. Once upon a time, I was sitting at a radar scope on an EC-121D aircraft on station south of Key West, Florida. I picked up a track coming across the Gulf of Mexico from Mexico. It had no flight plan so NORAD in Colorado Springs told us to have it intercepted and identified. We scrambled an F-4B out of Key West Naval Air Station and sent him down and had him turn in behind this track. It was only flying about 115 mph and around 14-15 thousand feet high. When the F-4 turned in behind it, the F-4 could not pick up the target on it's radar. This never happens, as the F-4 had the top radar on a fighter aircraft. As the interceptor got close, the target would just start breaking up and disappear off my radar.
As the F-4 passed through the track would appear behind the fighter. Immediate hard left bank and around for another pass. This went on a couple of times, but on the third attempt, the pilot called and said that each time he got near our target he was approaching a flight of geese that would scatter. We brought the Navy Phantom home to Key West and let the geese fly on into Florida, without a flight plan. Do you have an airplane more stealth that a flight of geese? Not likely.
How about this one. An engineer friend of mine was working for Motorola in Arizona. They were designing a battle field radar to be used by the army. Since it was a highly portable unit they decided to take it out of the building and over to an open field near their site and test it. After getting it warmed up and checked they kept noticing interference on their radar scope about 200 yards away. None of the engineers could see anything, so they sent a couple of guys down range 200 yards to see if they could determine what was causing something to show up on their radar unit.
When the engineers returned from their "walk", they were asked what it was. They pointed out that there was an alfalfa field that was in bloom and it was bees flying to and from the alfalfa field. So they were tracking bees! BEES!! How large did you say your stealth aircraft is? You build it and I'll track it.
The F-35 has much larger problems than being non-stealth. When the F-4 Phantom was introduced it set something like 17 world flight records. When the F-15 was introduced it set a multitude of world flight records including time to altitude records. Please provide me with a single world flight record in the almost 15 years of messing around with the F-35. Not a single improvement, nothing. Oh, it's the electronics on the F-35. The F-15 can lift more electronics by weight into the air and to a higher altitude than an F-35. So now you have a glimpse into why the F-35 will not be the replacement for the F-15's and F-16's or the Navy F-18's.