Uh oh, are we unboxing this?
It isn’t meant to be invisible, the entire point of stealth aircraft (quite literally defined as “low observability”) is reduced detection / acquisition range. If you can track a helicopter at 20km by the blades alone, while the Comanche sits at 10km before detection, it’s a functioning stealth aircraft.
“No matter of ram coating or shape adjustments will change that”? Are you lost? Like… Genuinely, I didn’t think it’s possible to say something so stupid.
Let me try!
No amount of butter or a knife will help you make a slice of buttered bread.
No amount of milk and oats will help you make oatmeal.
No amount of dirt removed from the ground will make a hole.
This is fun!
1 Like
It wasn’t. The only arguable “stealth” aspect of it was the internal weapons bay that was added years after the initial conformal mounts.
The only stealthy design Mikoyan had attempted was the 1.42… And that never left the drawing board.
I would imagine that 2 bankruptcy claims in the '90s would do it…
This has been disproven many times by the fact it has engine grates, just like the F-117
2 Likes
The F-117 sucks in game because it sucked in real life. It was basically a PR stunt–conducting low-risk raids at night–to be lauded by the press at home as America’s ultimate stealth fighter, never losing a plane yet destroying 1500-1600 “High value” targets.
Lolwhut… Surely my eyes are failing what I just read
2 Likes
Horrible maneuverability, payload capacity and speed. It was shot down in 1999 by a cold war SAM.
1 Like
Yes, because the US made the mistake of flying the same flight path several times including in daylight, so the SAM site was already aimed and active. But, they only got lock after the F-117 had opened its internal weapons bay. The stealth worked perfectly, what got it shot down was human error and oversight
2 Likes
It had little to do with the weapons bay, the primary reason why it was shot down was because the operators of the SAM broke multiple engagement regulations and put themselves in danger in the act of it.
2 Likes
I mean… Sure… From a 1000ft fuzzy perspective you’re not entirely wrong in everything you just said.
But let’s dissect it bit by bit.
Well… Yeah, it’s basically a flying diamond, as was required to do the RCS calculations with the technology of the time. But the same could be said of any aircraft which would have been tasked with its designed role which was to drop bombs on Soviet command and control centers, silos, etc such as the F-111, B-52, etc
Which again, met it’s design purpose. Carrying bunker busters for specific strategic targets. Are you saying you wish they had built the proposed “super-sized F-117” because I don’t think anyone would disagree given an infinite budget.
It was shot down by luck and a good bit of arrogance/complacency in SOPs on the part of the Ops personnel.
Yet prior to this it proved untouchable by the least permissive air environment on the planet short of Soviet Moscow on multiple occasions.
When it was built no other aircraft on the planet could fill its role, and it took decades for it to be even close to equalled by an aircraft built in another country. You could pull them out of mothball right now and they would still have a purpose in every air force on the planet that can’t buy the F-35 or isn’t China or Russia.
1 Like
Ut have RWR now.
1 Like
Honestly, while I am astonished it took that long to get shot down, I’m confused as to why it took the Soviet Union, who had ISRT technology on their MiG-23 in 1970 didn’t just patrol the skies in pairs, one with radar, one with IRST, wait for them to open their bay, get a radar lock, slave the IRST of the other plane, and launch an R-23T.
not Russia in specifically obviously, that’d have started the Cold War, but other nations used them a lot against the US.