Comment by greedo
15 hours ago
F-35s have done pretty well in both Israeli and US hands against the Russian supplied SAM systems.
And if these vaunted Russian IADs can't stop Ukrainian drones with a RCS the size of a barn, they stand little chance against a stealth fighter.
_All_ the classic anti-air is useless against drones, as the US also found out. It can be easily saturated, and ground-hugging drones are not a good target for missiles anyway. Ukraine is now using interceptor drones for this reason.
The issue with stealth fighters is that they have nothing to do. The enemy can launch barrages of drones from hundreds of kilometers away, outside the F-35's effective range. Or if you're moving ground forces, they'll be attacked by mobile units armed with short-range drones, also making F-35 less than useful.
That's also the reason why Russia right now is at a full stalemate. Its only semi-working strategy is to filter infantry through killzones that can be tens of kilometers in depth. Russia can easily bomb Ukrainian positions with gliding bombs or missiles like S-300. But there's just nothing to bomb, Ukrainian army is spread out.
The US has not found that out, they knew it, that's why things like lasers and other systems have seen so much development.
Yes the war showed some new aspects, but relentless low capability drone attacks is not the same as flying an F-35 into enemy air space and bombing their critical resources with high accuracy thanks to sensors.
Mass manaufacture and drones and such need to be take into account in the future, but when it comes to what is easer to counter, mass drone attacks or F-35, ill be money on the mass drones being countered first.
There are already many system that can deal with drones quite well. Old school FLAC with improved sensors, fast shooting system, even cheaper drones as counters and of course lasers and so on in the future.
Yes S-300 doesn't deal with drones either, but its pretty clear what to develop to counter-them, how to counter F-35s is not nearly as easy.
> The enemy can launch barrages of drones from hundreds of kilometers away, outside the F-35's effective range.
If they are doing that these drones are no longer as cheap and if you fly against modern anti drone weapon that have costs of a few $ per shot down drone, the economics is no longer in your favor.