There are limits, of course. They are only stealthy under certain circumstances, it requires the radar installation to use certain wavelengths, and they need to avoid flying in front of another target (or there will be a stealth plane shaped hole in the radar return).

I would expect it to still work just fine against a single older export style Buk installation, but perhaps not so well against the newest ones used by the Russian army (and although I have heard nothing about the Chinese equivalents, I expect the same would apply).

My understanding is that even though nobody will admit to their actual capabilities, it's fairly widely believed that stealth doesn't work anymore.

While the radar cross-section might be the size of a large bird, which is always a major bullet point in their marketing material, no large bird is flying in a straight line at 5k+ feet and 400 kts and it's easily within the the capabilities of modern processing to sort out all the large bird sized objects and find the one that's behaving in a very un-birdlike way.

Of course, I suppose it's always better in a war to be seen as little as possible, but newer projects like the F-22 and more specifically the F-35 are probably handicapped by being held to meeting the "stealthy" design requirement.

This is 50% of a good video. The first half presents actual facts, which make a strong case that classic dogfighters are being made obsolete by very long range, stealthy aggressors. Simply put, fighters aren't fighting the same fight anymore. Muskets and grenadoes are out: rifles and mortars are in.

The second half, however, is propaganda and promises. Describing the goals of a program isn't itself a good defense of the demonstrated capabilities of a program.

It's true that the F-35 is being built to counter advanced technology opponents (Russia and China and their customers), and it's further true that we will probably (hopefully) never use them. This is not an argument against building the F-35, however: Russia and China are building their versions and the US would be at a strategic disadvantage if we effectively ceded air control of every conflict zone to the Russia-backed side. It's an arms race whether we like it or not.

It does feel like we're spending way too much on a overly compromised aircraft, though.

/internet high-five to @MilkmanDan for his comments.

The colors are critical for the comics, but for a movie it would have made no sense. I doubt that Wolverine is all stealthy, hiding in the shadows in his bright yellow outfit. That would have looked stupid in the movies.

LOL I can't be a pig and Sarah Palin at the same time. Make up your mind

Those are all valid criticisms, but nobody apart from the flight engineers and test pilots truly know whether this plane is a lemon or not. If it does everything it's supposed to do, then it's exactly what the military asked for, just 10 years too late....

Any suitability and fit for purpose criticism that anyone has ever come up with for the F-35 also applies to just about any piece of military equipment that has been created in the last 70 years. Engineering is a balancing act, and an iterative process. Almost every aircraft, and vehicle in the military today was built to fight a soviet army. Luckily that never happened. But that means that most aircraft and vehicles in the military today have been grossly modified to make them fit for a different purpose. The F-35 will probably go through this as well over the next 30 years, because it's a normal part of the life-cycle of military equipment. Almost every plane dropping bombs now was previously designed as a fighter. But nobody ever calls them out for being mutants like they do with the F-35, they call it additional capability. The F-35 was born with these capabilities instead of being added over time.


Expensive: I'll agree. Could the money have been spent better else where? Definitely. You could argue that the cost is tiny compared to that of a full scale war, maybe F-35 is a good deterrent. Air superiority is the key to winning a war. If you're going to spend money then that's where it should be spent. When the oceans rise enough, is a country like Indonesia going to lash out and try to take land and resources for their civilians? Maybe. I doubt all 200 million of them will just stand there and starve. (Ok I'll concede, this does make me sound a bit like Palin. But hopefully not as dumb )
They could have probably made 3 different stealth planes for 1/2 the cost, but that has it's own strategic downsides. You have to have the right assets in the right places or you have to spread them quite thinly. With a multi-role plane you have all of the capabilities everywhere. Just a matter of a loading it with different weapons.

Not needed: Time will tell whether this is the right plane, but new planes are needed. And they absolutely must have stealth. Within 10 years, weapon systems will be so advanced that if you are spotted, you're as good as dead. We are currently dropping bombs on fairly unsophisticated enemies, but wars tend to escalate quickly. You just never know either way, and it's better to be prepared for the worst. There are plenty of countries with very good planes and pilots that could get sucked into a conflict. If you're really unlucky you could be fighting US made planes with pilots trained in the same way, and you don't want to be fighting a fair fight.
Further still, Russia, China and Japan are developing their own stealth planes, which pretty much forces everyone else to do the same thing.
Especially if Donald Trump gets elected. You never know who that crazy asshole is going to provoke into a war

Doesn't work: It's still in development and testing.

Overtasked: It does the same stuff the aging multi-role planes (that were originally built as fighters) do. With the addition of stealth, and better weapons/sensors/comms. Small performance variables don't win wars, superior tactics and situational awareness does.

Underpowered: Almost every plane ever built has had it's engines upgraded to give it more thrust through it's life. And engines on planes are almost a disposable item, they're constantly being replaced throughout the life-cycle of the plane. Like a formula one car.
The current engine, is already the most powerful engine ever in a jet fighter. It is good enough to fly super sonic without an afterburner, which none of the planes it's replacing are capable of.

Piloted: Agreed. But who knows, maybe a Boston Dynamics robot will be flying it soon

Test Failing: That's only a good thing. You want things to fail during tests, and not in the real world. Testing and finding flaws is a normal part of developing anything.

Fragile: That can be said for all US aircraft. They all need to have the runway checked for FOD, because one little rock can destroy even the best plane. Russian aircraft on the other hand are designed to be rugged though, because they're runways are in terrible condition. But in reality, all sophisticated equipment needs constant maintenance, especially when even a simple failure at 40,000 feet becomes an emergency.

Quickly Obsolete: Time will tell. Perhaps it would have been better to keep upgrading current planes with more technology like plasma stealth gas that make then partially stealthy, better sensors and more computing power. But by the time you've done that you've got a plane that's as heavy as F-35 anyway, and not as capable. Although it might have been cheaper in the long run.

Like I said in my previous comment. All of this doesn't make an interesting story so you'll only ever hear the two extremes which are "the plane sux" vs "it's invicible!!11" depending on your media source.

The ultimate problem with this is that it's not really needed.

Let's assume that all the problem get sorted out and the F-35 magically becomes the fastest, deadliest, stealthiest manned plane in the sky. It's still hamstrung by the squishy meatbag in the front.

For the cost of one F-35, you could have 10 predator drones. Slower, less maneuverable, less stealthy.... but also cheaper and expendable. You shoot down an F-35, you not only destroy the plane, but you most likely take the pilot out of the equation as well (even if they eject, they're still not going to be flying another plane any time soon). Shoot down a predator? "Game over. Insert $10 million to continue"

Manned air superiority fighters are last century.

Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch... Funny, but a stretch.

The bit about "what does the ring DO?!" in the beginning was interesting to me because that is one thing that I also dislike about Tolkien's works (as a nerdy reader of the Silmarillion like Soren in the video). The three elven rings Narya, Nenya, and Vilya all grant enhanced "elemental" type powers (for example, Gandalf has Narya, which is why he's got the beefy fire magic). Invisibility seems like a pretty poor ultimate power for the *ONE* ring (yes, there are other features, but invisibility is the primary *active* power of the ring).

Personally, I think that it would be cooler if the mighty *one* ring granted the single ability that any individual user would be most tempted to use, and eventually ABuse -- to facilitate its corruption of the wearer. Smeagol/Gollum, Bilbo, and Frodo, being Hobbits, are already predisposed to stealthiness, so granting them invisibility on top of that makes sense and would tempt them to use the invisibility to do more morally ambiguous things and possibly eventually outright evil things. Isildur, being human, could/should have been granted a different power by the ring. Extreme combat prowess or something. Certainly overconfidence in that could just as easily have led to his death via the "betrayal" of the ring.

I remember playing Fallout 1/2 and being a "Savior of the Wasteland" and being a stealthy character robbing everyone blind. I'd pickpocket fancy armor off some shopkeeper and then promptly sell it back to him. I did however give most slavers the dynamite in the pants treatment on general principal.

It's a "surveillance plane" which means spying. Spying doesn't need to be stealthy, it just has to be effective. The Russians knew the U2 and SR-71 were there, they just couldn't do anything about it.

*quailty shooty stabby stealthy action

I SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR THIS!

The one thing that I don't like about the One Ring explanation:

It turns you invisible, unless you are the one person for whom it was actually designed (Sauron).

To me, it seems like the rings of power and especially the one ring should grant a more consistent actual power than that. The three elven rings made by Celebrimbor outside the influence of the one are much better examples.

Narya is the "ring of fire", and in the timeline of LoTR it is held by Gandalf. Which makes sense, because he does a lot of fire-related stuff with his magic. Nenya is the "ring of water" held by Galadriel, and Vilya the "ring of air" held by Elrond. These are used less consistently in the books (or movies), but one movie example is the flood that helped save Frodo and get him to Rivendell. In the movie, the flood is shown as being made of water with horse shapes surging through it, which suggest the magical influence of both Nenya and Vilya (water and air) working together. Anyway, those 3 rings have a consistent and fairly well established list of powers associated with their "elemental" attachments, fire, water, and air.

But the one ring lacks that consistency. It is supposed to help Sauron with his urge to dominate, but it doesn't really explain how that works. It doesn't make him invisible; only others who wear it. Also, it helps him to control or at least influence the wearers of the other rings. That is probably the best, most established power of the one ring, but it is also a bit shaky because wearers other than Sauron don't get those abilities. It seems to make other wearers just more susceptible to corruption, greed, and lust for power.

To me, I think it would be more interesting if the one ring actually granted a more specific power, unique to the psychological state of the wearer. The consistently presented thing about the one ring is that it corrupts, and nothing corrupts more than power. So basically, I think that the one ring should be analyzing whoever wears it, and granting them a unique power that is specifically designed to provide them with their greatest source of temptation to abuse that power.

The invisibility power actually makes a lot of sense for hobbits. As presented in the video here, they generally aren't very ambitious. BUT, hobbits are established as being stealthy beings by default, so granting them invisibility is a good source of temptation to turn that stealthiness into more nefarious purpose. So, I don't mind that the three main hobbit (or hobbit-like) wearers (Gollum/Smeagol, Bilbo, Frodo) all consistently get the invisibility power out of the ring.

Human wearers like Isildur would have less consistent powers granted by the rings, because they have more diverse motivations than hobbits. Just as an example, I'd think that Isildur would be motivated by martial prowess and leadership after watching his father killed by Sauron and the human/elven armies decimated at the end of the second age. So, the ring could perceive that about him and grant him physical power and charisma to lead -- both of which would be very easily turned to corruption. Invisibility just doesn't logically provide the same level of temptation for someone like Isildur.

Finally we come to Sauron himself. He is already an exception to the "ring grants invisibility" concept. But for him, the ring should (and arguably does) represent power and control. Sauron had to put on a false face and play the role of deceiver to get Celebrimbor and the other elves to accept him and create the other rings. Having to stoop to that rather than simply crushing them made him despise that sort of approach; after creating the one ring he cast that aside and became all about sheer power and domination, rather than trickery and deception. So, I see the ring's powers granted to Sauron himself as being sort of a conversion of those cunning/deceptive abilities into might, self preservation, and overwhelming mental dominance that allows him to control his orc armies.


Sorry for the length of that -- I have just always felt that the established powers of the one ring would be a bit more interesting if they led to corruption through real power granted to the wearers, rather than "it makes them invisible, but not Sauron, and in general corrupts them, just because".

The mission generally dictates the engineering and design of a mechanical system. The Buran and the Shuttle are prime examples. The new X-37 resembles both in general shape because a reusable "space plane" needs certain specific physical characteristics.

The Mig-25 looks like the F-15 because both were originally designed as high altitude, high mach interceptors. The demand placed on the system by the overly large engines dictates the shape.

The basic principles of radar "stealth" dictate certain shapes to be effective. The Have-Blue shape was effective against high frequency radar through deflection. As materials technology advanced, e.g. radio absorbing materials, more aerodynamic shapes could be implemented and still retain "stealthy" characteristics, if not improve upon them.

All the F-22 vs Pak50, M1a1 Abrams vs T80 videos are funny. The 1 versus 1 advantages are fun to debate, but its the entire system that wins or loses the fight. In the same vein, its common knowledge that German armor in WW2 was vastly superior to American armor in every technical way. Similarly, German fighter aircraft were more maneuverable than the P-47s and P-51s that they fought. Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, this superiority was not enough to defeat the allied system as it rolled east across Europe.

The term 5th generation does not define the aircraft themselves, but the system they belong to. If you read wikipedia, this does not mesh, but the wiki values maneuverability (which is inherently limited by the pilot), stealth features (limited by current materials and design), advanced avionics (what does this mean?) and multi-role capabilities (we have had this since the 1980's). The key to 5th generation fighters and its defining characteristic is the ability to integrate the new fighters with every other piece of war equipment in the theatre, not just in tactical use, but the total meshing of sensors and 2-way data links. Its the difference between a war of attrition and a war of "look first, shoot first".

The Russians appear to be building an excellent stealth fighter that looks sexy as hell. The Chinese are doing the same. What they both lack at the current time is the "backend" systems to make these new 5th generation-esque vehicles fully capable. The Pak50 and the J20 won't be sharing targeting data with their Navy or other ground forces anytime soon.