I've seen videos and articles the past few days about a new stealth fighter that might be sold to our (U.S.'s) enemies within the next 5 to 10 years. Given that this might prevent our planes from winning air battles at a distance and force them to have more close range dogfights with planes that could be more agile, could this development be any type of game changer? Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3-J5tuTgx8
What makes you think US forces cannot detect "stealth" airplanes? I got news for you, they can. The stealth planes the US uses really only need to be stealth from the 1970s technology that the rest of the world uses.
That was Clint Eastwood flying Firefox to the states via the North Pole route.......Russians will have to start all over again from scratch!!! :eek:
We first unveiled the stealth technology in the 1st Persian Gulf War, literally flying down the main street Bagdad, invisible on their radar. If you're old enough you can recall the news feeds of their antiaircraft guns firing blindly into the shy hoping to hit something. That was 1991. I wish I could remember the actual name of the show, aired on Discovery channel where they interviewed one of the scientist that worked with the old Lockheed skunk works in development of the stealth aircraft. They started building them in the 70's some 15-20 years prior. He had been retired for many years, but he all but admitted they were working on what we would call unconventional aircraft. and the ultimate stealth body formation would be an orb. I would say without reservation if we are selling our technology, it's because we have something that's much better and we know our own technologies weaknesses. fwiw.
Hopefully we are working on 6th gen as the Raptor line was shut down. The thing is this plane has two engines while the f35 only has 1 engine. Trying to think how f35 will do in dogfight with this one...
As these weapons get more complicated, their life-spans decrease, and acquisition costs increase. The F-117 was the shortest lived major fighter program ever, and built at great cost for a country with only a dubious need. Now we are proving we don't learn with all the problems in current fighter development and acquisition: http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-bu...gates-tries-to-get-f35-program-back-on-course