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Yep.

"Time is flat circle"

angrily inhales cigarette

I mean, you can try, but if you're not paying for the subscription to ongoing software updates, uh, YOLO, basically.

Eh, if you fly it within range of a heat seeker you get what you deserve. Looks like a skill issue tbh.

If this can be done again Americans air superiority is cooked.

Wouldn't that depend on how successful US is at shooting down Chinese planes and how many planes each one has? If China can damage one F-35 in, let's say, 5% of the missions US is sending but US can shoot down 90% of Chinese fighters it sees and they have similar numbers of planes, wouldn't US still have air superiority?

Duck US imperialism, but its stealth not bulletproof, 1 getting shot doesn't really show anything.

Yeah but it has 3 more cupholders than Chinese fighter jets and Apple Carplay.

ding ding ding

Winner! Winner!

Oh man, Taiwan is so fucked.

No, no you would not be.

Because now you have some of the most valuable targetting data on Earth.

Iran, Russia and China will be pouring over all of that data, using it to figure out how to replicate a successful tracking and interception with their existing systems, or new ones.

If you were a real War Thunder player, you'd be leaking that information on the forums.

... do people not get this?

That... this is the start of F35s just... not really being stealth, in at least certain situations?

Where the... US and other F35 operators... may not know what those 'certain situations' are?

6 months, a year, 2 years from now, the US no longer can just assume it will get air superiority.

That... kinda ... blows up a good deal of our military doctrine.

Do you notice how the F35 ... isn't even doing evasive manuevers?

Is not deploying countermeasures?

It didn't know it was being targetted.

That's a really big problem.

Lol, the modern warfare hot indicator. Listen, you can hear it.

x

See?

x

Welp.

That was much faster than even I was expecting.

Looks like it was done via thermals, stealth aircraft is for radar to my knowledge, and maybe not the most effective against thermal targeting. I could be wrong though

I'm gonna presume that its a resource that the US and Israel have been overusing since the start.

Oh?

Why would you presume that?

All stealth means is that their head-on radar cross-section is extremely small, and the coating and shape of the craft refract radar signal, rather than reflect.

You ever heard of the concept of an ambush?

You... appear weaker than you are, absent, and then you set a trap?

Also: $2 trillion dollars.

Could have bought a lot of healthcare with that.

I'm surprised more haven't been hit or lost.

Not surprising if we haven't been using them that much and have instead been using a lot of ballistic missiles, untill we basically ran out of them.

You know like how Ukraine went early on, everybody blew their load early, then had to figure out ways to try and get the same range out of stuff launched from fighters/attack aircraft, like the guided+boosted glide bombs?

Hell I'm surprised a Shahed drone swarm hasn't tried for a carrier.

That's not surprising given how incredibly rational Iran has been acting.

It doesn't escalate first.

We do. Then they respond in kind.

Sinking a US carrier and causing roughly a 9/11's worth of deaths would uh... be quite an escalation, and they're aware of that.

Fortunately, it seems the sailors on the Ford seemed to do a good enough job of stuffing tshirts into the toilets and setting the laundry room on fire, that that particular carrier uh, removed itself from action, functionally.

It seems Iran is using what they have to disrupt and upset the world's energy economy, which is probably the smarter option, for them.

It is so insanely obviously the smarter strategy that for decades, that's been the conclusion of Western military analysts, and Iran has just also ... more or less just said that is what they would do.

If the F35 got hit by AA and landed, it speaks well of the aircraft

Does it? If I was rolling out the first tank against an enemy on horseback that were able to disable my tank enough to send my tank back for repair, I'd really have to rethink my tank design.

Not a perfect analogy. But, I'm trying to make a point so it's exaggerated. We are talking about the flagship stealth aircraft getting shot at and damaged without its knowledge of being targeted or shot at. That's insane.

Unless Iran is rocking some Chinese tech we don't know they have (or even some tech they developed themselves) the F35 was tracked and damaged without any knowledge to the pilot at all that they were being shot at until they got hit.

That may speak well of its impact capability. But, the F35 is not a tank, it's literal purpose is to target the enemy without being detected and Iran just flipped that on its head with the US militaries flagship 2 trillion dollars of development cost aircraft.

That DOES NOT speak well for it at all given it's fundamental purpose. The fact that it was forced to land and could not carry out it's purpose is NOT a testament to its ability at all.