@ sinoflex



> An export version F-35 vulnerable to AWACs detection



Answer me this question. How does USAF plan to detect and engage rogue F-35s that fall into enemy hands if they are indeed as stealthy as USAF versions?



This happened before, like Iran armed with then USN's flagship fighter F-14 and Phoenix missiles after the revolution. There is a high probability of this happening again.

 

The "export F-35" is just another myth being perpetuated by Slowkid. It has been stated numerous times by people here who actually know what they're talking about "ie gf", that there will be no difference between the Lightnings delivered to the US and those to the other members of the consortium.

@ sinoflex

> An export version F-35 vulnerable to AWACs detection


Answer me this question. How does USAF plan to detect and engage rogue F-35s that fall into enemy hands if they are indeed as stealthy as USAF versions?


This happened before, like Iran armed with then USN's flagship fighter F-14 and Phoenix missiles after the revolution. There is a high probability of this happening again.

everyone in the consortium is getting the same platform, what some countries elect to add is their own business. the baseline platform is the same for all.

@ sinoflex



> What you're basically saying is that the US would willingly jeopardize joint operations and lives by degrading the stealth characteristics of its allies' F-35's.



The US will to protect the lives of its own troops. Concerns of allies be damned, just like the F-35 software source code decision.



F-35, unlike F-22, is exportable, because there is certain security feature built into them to deal with them should they ever go rogue, like Iranian F-14s armed with Phoenix missiles.



That security feature is downgraded stealth for the US AWACS to detect them at a sufficiently long range.

And it's so secure and super-secret that even though we tell our allies that such a downgrade does not exist, and our allies expect to receive aircraft with LO capabilities that equal our own F-35s and meet the one set of LO specifications as (we deceitfully) agreed to by all parties in the contract, we're--shisshhh, now, don't tell anyone else this part!--actually going to give them aircraft that are not as LO as we tricked them all into thinking it would be, *BUT* (and here's the really funny part, heh heh!) when they examine them for themselves they'll still think they *are* as LO as we told them they would be.  You see, we're not only the world leaders in LO technology, but we're also the world leaders in *FAKE* LO technology:  technology that makes it *seem* like it is LO... to everything but American AWACS!  Mind you, that's only AMERICAN AWACS, too, not those identical AWACS that our allies use, either!  Oh man, we're brilliant!  Kudos to Lockheed-Martin and DoD for dreaming up this beauty of a plan!

 

@ warpig



> You see, we're not only the world leaders in LO technology, but we're also the world leaders in *FAKE* LO technology



It's called selective LO, or "narrow-band" LO.



> it *seem* like it is LO... to everything but American AWACS!



Actually everything but to American AWACS, Chinese AWACS, Russian AWACS, PAK-FA with its wing-mounted L-band radar, Aegis radars, etc.



F-35 is stealth for Iran and North Korea. F-35 is no stealth for the likes of Russia, China, Israel, Japan, etc. They see export-grade F-35 incoming from hundreds of miles away.

So the LO of the export versions of the F-35 is not effective vs. US, Chinese, and Russian AWACS, Russian theoretical fighter-mounted L band radar, Japanese and South Korea Aegis, *AND* "etc."... BUT:

 

1.  All our allies have been fooled into thinking their export version F-35s will be just as LO as our own F-35s because that's exactly what we have repeatedly told all of them... but unbeknownst to our allies, secretly their export versions will not be as LO as our own F-35 but they will still *APPEAR* to be just as LO as our own F-35--because if they do not appear that way to our allies, then our allies will all discover they have been deceived all along.

 

2.  Someone has decided to produce an airplane at the cost of tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars that is only good enough to engage the second-rate, broke-ass, crappy IADS of Iran and North Korea--two countries whose IADS we could steamroll right over with virtually no loss right now without ever having developed the F-35 to begin with!  What a pathetically absurd idea that would be, and anyone who could believe that is the design goal of the F-35 program is an idiot or hopelessly ignorant about modern aerial warfare.

 

 

By the way, what is it about the specific systems you mentioned above (along with the "etc." systems that I'd like for you to list as well if you would, please) that you think renders the "export" version of F-35 trackable at hundreds of miles, but that Iran and North Korea don't have available to them?