According to new reporting from the New York Times, a Houthi surface-to-air (SAM) missile barely missed an American F-35 fifth-generation fighter, the crown jewel of the U.S. fighter inventory. The F-35, participating in Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis, was forced to take evasive action to avoid the missile.
The incident raises questions about the survivability of one of America’s most advanced fighters, and raises concerns over how effective the relatively unsophisticated Houthi air defense system has been at hampering U.S. action.
100% numerous people in the US military know that they’re sitting on extremely expensive ships/aircraft/vehicles that are with modern enough weaponry, easy to destroy. A question of whether they have the power, for enough time required, to fix the bloat
Difficult and expensive to develop, manufacturer, maintain. Trapped in service contracts with completely single source suppliers, no alternatives. If it wasn’t so expensive to maintain, even just the ammunition, maybe it wouldn’t be such a panic situation but well after pretty much constantly being at war since the countries inception, the US is sitting on an albatross of a military. Not just all the equipment but how much employment is tied to supporting the albatross. Albatross multiplied hard with Iraq and Afghanistan paired with all the tax cuts since Reagan. Without Afghanistan and Iraq, probably wouldn’t be so wallet concerned for for a good amount longer
Good for them
Wait, an f35? THAT F35? The super expensive, country sinking cost, MULTIPLE TRILLION dollar (with a capital T, that’s X,000,000,000,000 USD), super late, overbudget, multiple decade long development (80s-2010s?), the “that’s too expensive, cut everything that made it unique out” F-35?
The F-35 program that KEEPS getting MORE expensive?
The F-35 that, if you look at a pie chart of ALL of United States budget, would be a singular visible chunk?
The F-35 project that’s commonly cited when learning about logical fallacies as an example of sunk cost fallacy?
Millennium Challenge 2002.
That’s when we learned that low tech can beat high tech in this manner.
Did they learn the lesson at DOD? Of course not. They demoted the guy who won and made him play out a cosplay battle where America Wins!
I wouldn’t say they learned nothing from that war game. They’ve never done to Iran what they did to the other six of the infamous seven that the Bushies planned to dismantle. I suspect that that war game is a factor in that decision. This thing with the Houthis serves to refresh their memories I guess. At least I hope. Who knows, with this admin, anything can happen
The F-35, participating in Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis, was forced to take evasive action to avoid the missile.
So, they had to, like, dodge a missile? And that is panic worthy?
Supposedly the F35 should never have been seen or detected in the first place.
The fact that a missile was tracking it and they had to dodge it means that these stealth capabilities are lacking.
I heard it’s supposed to be super stealthy and really smart, so I guess they didn’t expect to even have to do that lol. Otherwise, we could spend less money and use the older less stealthy and technologically advanced jets.
You’d think evading something would be a success
evading prehistoric weaponry is a bad sign
A win is a win no?
For that pilot, yes. For everyone else… Yikes
I don’t see what’s so complicated. You’re a guy with a missile launcher. You look up, and see an F-35. You shoot a missile at it.
This is the most expensive, supposedly most advanced stealth fighter jet in the history of the world and it took a budget of trillions of dollars to develop. It’s a big deal that a jet that costs about a hundred million to get and needs expensive mainteinance for every hour of use could feasibly be destroyed by a weapon that costs tens of thousands of dollars.
So… the article describes that:
… the simplistic nature of the [Houthi Anti Air] systems also helps them to avoid earlier detection by America’s advanced equipment. “Many of the [SAMs] are also improvised, leveraging non-traditional passive infrared sensors and jury-rigged air-to-air missiles that provide little to no early warning of a threat, let alone an incoming attack,”
and:
but the Houthis claim that the Barq-1 and Barq-2 [Iranian AA missle systems] have maximum ranges of 31 miles and 44 miles and can engage targets at altitudes of 49,000 feet and 65,000 feet, respectively.
with some of these missiles being:
capable of firing Taer variants also reportedly have electro-optical and/or infrared camera to aid in target acquisition, identification, and tracking.”
… So I find it rather odd to describe passive IR guided AA missiles as ‘non-traditional’.
I think a better phrase would be ‘novel’ or ‘unaccounted for’.
Passive IR missiles of different exact specifications are… pretty common through the entire history of … just missiles, in general.
Jet engine exhaust is extremely hot, and it would seem the F35 is not actually as good at masking it as previously thought, probably when its flying away from the missile launcher and is thus showing its big hot ass… if passive IR + electro optical missiles can get this close.
(‘electro-optical’ is a fancy term for basically a visual spectrum camera + computer tracking an identified target… you know, like a snapchat face filter…)
" probably when its flying away from the missile launcher and is thus showing its big hot ass… "
Stupid, sexy joint strike fighter.
Yeah, it sounds like they’re trying to downplay how they disimissed the tech as “outdated” during design and construction.
Reading this stuff reminds me of earlier in the 2010s when Iranian weapon systems press releases were always met with mockery, I live in region with heavy military tech development companies. I had a feeling back then that progress is progress and eventually they’ll be at a point of close enough to make the risk calculation too high for the US to operate so far from production/maintenance compared to whatever country is the current target for invasion/bombings and their weapon sources. I think we’re getting to that point
Operate and lose equipment that cost a billion+ to make equipped with ammunition that are hundreds of thousands to millilions of dollars to resupply that also need to be serviced for extended periods of time and major parts replaced after only a few uses. Parts of the US intentionally let costs run away. Whether they thought the technolical advantage actually made a justifiable enough difference is another question
The mindset reminds me of their infamous wargame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
I have a soft spot for new planes being shot down by “outdated” technologies.
[translations, copypasted, so you don’t have to visit the source on reddit]
translations:
- “Sorry, your plane is on fire”(rhymes in Serbian)
- “Mine is visible, but doesn’t crash!”
- “Airplane junkyard: ‘We have F-117 parts!’”
- “The ground suddenly got in his way”
- “Missed the Surčin airport”
- “Look, daddy, no hands!”
- “What’s going to happen with the White House? I’m going to set it on fire!”
- “Give us another one… I need a roof for my pig pen!”
Followed by three more phrases which don’t translate well.
- “Like a child knows what is invisible”
- “We’ll fuck, NATO, my bro!”
- "Short but ‘effective’ "
Why are three marked off? They only shot down the one?
They are supposedly invisible, so you could never know
Don’t worry, folks. Pete Hegseth’s in charge. This is fine.
Take a drink for every f-35 that gets destroyed. And take a drink for every f-35 that isn’t!
Pretty sure that’s what they’re doing, I’m having a hard time believing that people can be so inept.
And one drink every time an f35 fall of a carrier
Then just take a drink. The wife can take notes for me.
TBF, taking down an advanced USA fighter jet is a tad less impressive when they are apparently falling into the sea on a regular basis
At least some of those aircraft appear to be falling into the sea because Aircraft Carriers are having to make rather extreme turns, evasive manuevers, in order to evade other Houthi missiles / drones.
Those were F/A-18 Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier. Not as advanced as you might think.
An order of magnitude cheaper
Well, they’re not the so-so hornets. So like, a little advanced.
Advanced enough to not take a swim while on duty.
True. Still, not exactly something 3rd world countries (or many 2nd-world) can produce.
I’m not sure why anyone would be “panicking” about the loss of a the latest US boondongle? The US MIC hasn’t been building things for fighting performance or efficiency since at least the end of the cold war, and probably before. An f-35 “almost” being shotdown just sound like boeing get’s another trillion dollars to build an “f-35+.”
All the career generals get to spend the next 10years instructing their minions to write intellectually bankrupt papers about how the US needs to engage our “strategic partners” to match this “new threat”. Honestly they could probably just copy the slurry of papers that were written after 9/11 about “low-tech threats” that the next generation of arms needs to deal with. Meanwhile the generals will be taken to the Capital Grill for their weekly lobbyist meetings where they get to drink $40 glasses of wine and eat $100 steaks because they are the most basic, worthless and craven people that our shitty political system has put in charge of trillions of dollars over their careers.
Regardless those people aren’t “panicking.”
You mean $400 glasses of wine and $1,000 steaks.
Nah, the joke is the military generals who have been in charge for so long are rubes and can’t even do corruption right. The Boeing shareholders/board members who are being paid these billions of dollars are the ones enjoying $4000 dollar wine and imported Kobe Beef steaks with the lobbyists
Ahhh gotcha. I was wondering if that’s what you meant.
America going in the same “Turns out their Military doesn’t quite have the bang to match their flash” direction as Russia, only the reason for that in America is spending ever more insane amounts for ever tinier benefits (though they too have their own version of Corruption, only it’s more indirect than Russias and involves 4-star Generals making sure they have “thankful friends” in the Private Sector for when they retire from the Military).
Meanwhile the Houtis, just like the Ukranians, are doing a lot with much, much (MUCH) less.
It’s depressing how accurate this probably is.
The relevant bit from the times article:
Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses,
I think the fact that they weren’t shot down says more.
