For years, Americans without healthcare have been able to reassure themselves that although they may be denied life-saving cancer treatment, at least their country had fighter jets and aircraft carriers that could reduce cities to rubble.
  • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
    4·
    2 hours ago

    Yes, they more or less are are, to radar. The thumbnail is of an infrared image. If you’re close up enough to do this and prepared they can still be shot down.

    The trick is just getting that to happen. Consider how many F-35s right above them the Iranians haven’t shot down.

    • AGM@lemmy.ca
      23·
      14 hours ago

      Just the F-35s? The entire defense industry is about swindling public money. That’s why they spend hundreds of millions per year on lobbying and political influence in the US.

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.comEnglish
    18·
    14 hours ago

    The USS Gerald R. Ford was officially taken out by a “laundry fire”, and to make matters worse, Iran is claiming to have struck the USS Abraham Lincoln, forcing that carrier to also withdraw.

    In a country of misinformation like the USA who knows what to believe.

  • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    111·
    15 hours ago

    I mean, no stealth aircraft is truly invisible, or the pilots and maintenance men wouldn’t be able to see them either. These days, machine vision has improved to the point that if a human can see them, a properly-trained computer likely can too. Set up a network of drones with cameras, and anything less than perfect optical camouflage is going to be of limited value. Radar isn’t the only thing you have to worry about anymore.

    • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      This is known as “optronics” in military applications, FWIW. I don’t know if anyone is using it for target discovery yet, but optronic guidance to a known target is a thing.

      Radar is nice in that it and works under all kinds of conditions (like through clouds) and can have very long range, but there definitely are other sensors that are making their way onto the battlefield. Passive audio sensors have been a huge success in Ukraine, for example. Sending out an radar pulse also draws all the wrong kind of attention.

      6th gen fighters probably won’t bother with anything except hiding at this rate, and the battlefield might be so transparent by then nobody will make a 7th. The “blue skies” will just be where various unmanned projectiles pass through.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      4·
      12 hours ago

      I think most people know Stealth to mean invisible to Radar, not to the human eye. The F35 is obviously going to be seeable once you have human eyes on it. The idea is targeting systems and long range equipment would not pick it up. But Iran has proved that to be false it seems.

      • CanadaPlus@futurology.todayEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        No, the engineers knew it would be visible like anything else, because they’re not completely stupid. A lot of stuff still relies on radar, though, and other frequencies and tools can have limitations, like in range or “does-it-work-in-rain”. Consider how many F-35s made it over Iran safe and sound.

        Presumably they’re as sneaky as possible in other ways as well, although at some point it’s still a jet plane.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    103·
    14 hours ago

    an anti-establishment, working class perspective

    It’s interesting to see the proliferation of these “anti-imperialist” propaganda mills seemingly imitating the successful model of grift made famous by the alt right. They’ve nothing to say about socialism, but spend all their energy on emotional appeals to get people focusing on how bad the bad guys are based on the most attention-grabbing news headlines they can find or invent. It’s so carefully designed to provoke dissent, distrust, and polarization with only the barest pretense of being about anything more substantial or constructive.

    This one doesn’t have much to do with Canada. Even those of us who aren’t professional military analysts should probably find better sources to inform our opinions on the martial capabilities of different kinds of ridiculously expensive airplanes.

    • FlexibleToast@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      36 minutes ago

      They’re not even the same role. I know nations are making that trade. I think replacing a multirole jet with an interceptor says more about your priorities changing than the weapon platforms themselves. With the threat of a Russian invasion it makes sense to switch priorities to affordable interceptors.