Stealthiness won´t guarantee supremacy for long time to come. Within 5-15 or so years ground based defences have solved the problem when they commonly start to use 4 or more radars at once against stealth aircraft- one is transmitting and others are receiving the signal and voilá; you know the exact coordinates of the "stealth" plane. Ok, you might use RAM coating instead of counting (more) on the shapes of the aircraft; but basically you must make the plane to absorb all radar signals because with better radars and software they can almost track birds with recent equipment- what its going to be in the future? AND radars - which are the Key because they can direct any weapons- are a lot of cheaper to develope than planes and faster too. Planes require some 10-20 years before they are fielded, an new radar takes few years and only with the fraction of the money used in plane R&D. And sooner or later they start to use multiple radar technology on aircraft too. I am quite sure that stealth hype is going to go down and become a thing that is taken for granted in aircraft, like chaff and flares. But the real revolution is coming when unmanned aircraft start to do most of the work. They can be made to pull 30+G turns, they can be made stealthier and completerly coated with RAM (there´s no RAM coating that can be seen thru). They will change the face of modern aerial warfare. Meanwhile if there is going to be stealth aircraft vs stealth aircraft fights they´ll be done with IR-missiles I guess and pilots are playing hide and seek. Cobra´s and other maneuvers are meant for dogfight and when you add Archers with great off-boresight firing capability and back-ward firing ones with excellent aircraft maneuvering with 10-12G turns; then you have very little chance to survive in dogfight. Everyone should get his/her eyes on the su-37 video where they demonstrate planes agility- it cannot be emulated with any western plane. And its a 30+ ton monster doing that. Russian pilots have been able to pull 10-12G turns for a long time. Its due training and better suits and pilots who have been chosen from those who naturally resist G-forces. Of course- each time you go over 8 Gs you´re in great risk, but its true that Russians have planes and pilots who can do those 12G turns- in experimental areas, because there´s no Su-37s in field units and won´t be soon. Basically well timed and done maneuver with chaff and flares makes you evade the incoming missile were it AMRAAM or Archer or anything. Some are harder to avoid but certainly none are impossible. And Archers can be shot at incoming missiles so the kill is all but sure. But on other aspects here; its definately true that Russian training, spares etc cannot match US´. No one´s can. Ok, maybe Israel´s but they are dependant on the USA.

To add to, yet in some ways disagree with, Mustavaris: Stealth is not invisibilty, but signature reduction. Foremost emphasis is on radar cross section reduction, since radar is the dominant sensor currently. Yes, developments like bistatic radar and plot fusion from multiple sources can go a long way toward countering radar stealthiness. Theoretically, all aircraft are detectable, it's just a matter of getting enough signal return to the receiver. Although there's no indication Iraq ever even detected any F-117s during the First Gulf War, they theoretically could have. Obviously the Serbians were able to at least once! However, there's an important difference between detecting an airplane and tracking an airplane, and an even more important difference between tracking an airplane and being able to commit a weapon against that track. The radar cross section of an object is a function of several parameters, one of which is the radar's frequency. Due to other factors, radars useful for long range early warning operate at lower frequencies (e.g., VHF) while those used for target tracking operate at higher frequencies (e.g., SHF). Stealth technologies typically are more effective as frequency increases. Thus, while it may be that some countries will soon develop ability to detect and even track stealth aircraft using radar, it will be quite a while before they will be able to actually engage them using radar. Yes, it's true that high-AOA maneuvers and missiles capable of launch at those attitudes and/or with high off-boresight tracking capability are deadly in dogfights. That's why pilots should stay away from dogfights: a guy could get killed that way! Thankfully enough, America has the solution: Information Dominance. Our pilots have vastly superior battlespace awareness and are far more likely to see and lock-up the bad guys long before the bad guys see us. While pulling missile breaks could work against early SAMs and AAMs if you saw them in time, it only works in relatively small parts of the engagement envelope for today's AMRAAMs and Sidewinders. We do agree on the other, perhaps more intangible aspects of aerial combat. Flying a better airplane is always desirable, but no guarantee. Thankfully, we've got both the best aircraft and the best force multipliers, too! :-) Jim Habermehl

As far as I know it Serbian radar was modified Soviet 50/60´s era low frequency radar with one transmitter and 2+ receivers. They had software (computer) based signal processing to detect the plane with other receiving radars and their missile scored a lucky shot- * but its not exactly known how lucky they were and one source tells that they got "about" location by radar and more precisely with modified IR-tracking sensor (maybe MiG-29´s??). Then they launched SA-3 missile which was TV-guided Yugoslavian model and the stars were favourable. * After this everything may be crap.Dunno. Back in reality; I dont know much about exact radar physics and I have to make a hypothese, feel free to correct me: basically when you transmit radar pulse against stealth aircraft the no1 thing is that very little of the energy goes back to the transmitting radar- the rest is scattered away from it. But now we got three other radars + the transmitter, we know their relative positions and have computer based signal processing; its just basic trigonometry, with 2 receivers you got 2 possible locations, with 3 receivers you got the exact location. And if your technology allows it, you can switch transmitting radars to avoid anti-radiation missiles and if the technology is better you can move your radars. Why high frequency radars cannot be used this way? They are accurate enough to direct weapons. Russians, Ukrainians and Serbs already have more less efficient low-frequency radars that seem to be able to see "stealth" aircraft. Why there won´t be high-frequency one in near future? Think about: ZSU-XXX or equivalent combined with long range mobile missile unit, 4-6+ mobile gun/missile platforms with a few long range detection radars and many short range radars for directing the weapons. I think that the future challenge for americans comes from the ground, in aerial combat you won´t find a worthy opponent for at least next one or two decades. Other aspects: nothing to add nor complain about:)

The F-35 will have the ability to supercruise. From what I heard, its supercruise speed will be around mach 1.3. Thrust vectoring would be great for the F-35. The high number of aircraft produced would make this feature cost effective. Nevertheless, if I had the choice, I would rather have a sort of super-AMRAAM than thrust vectoring. A 100km+ ramjet AMRAAM would be perfect. Its manoeuvrability should be significantly improved to kill any super-manoeuvrable aircraft at first shot.

Against stealth fighters, you need more radar power and more interception platforms. Since the price of fighters is prohibitive, wouldn't the solution be UCAVs? UCAVs are more manoeuvrable, more stealthy, much less expansive, and have longer range. I'm talking here about the 2015-2020 timeframe when UCAVs will have been tested for many years. These air-to-air UCAVs would also have full air-to-ground capabilities.

It would take one hell of a radar on an AWACS to detect stealthy aircraft at long range. An another hand, UCAVs with a big radar like the APG-77 would have a not too bad range. The low cost of UCAVs garantees that enough would be available to cover the entire airspace. What's more, when ennemy aircraft are detected by these UCAVs, some F-22s or F-35s can be sent in the area to intercept the boggies.

Use the UCAVS passively, processing the transmissions from the Awacs. Then they turn in and stealthily attack from close range. ALso, Ladar might be usefull.

i would think that by the time we are using ucav all the ucavs in the theater could send thier radar info back to be centraly processed to detect stealth air craft. also if you develope a combination of advanced awacs maybe unmanned so the tranmitting power could be increased greatly. and a b-52 out fitted as a ucav launcher or mobile missle platform. the combination of many sources of information and longe range in flight updatable missles could eliminate the need for many small short ranged air supression fighters, this would require a major developement in c&c systems like maybe infrared or laser based satalite comunication to allow secure theater control of massive quantitys of information. the real challenge will be developing inexpessive systems to accomplish the goal of the theater. spending a $150,000 missle fired from a ucav to take out a $15,000 pick up truck is not a efficient way to do things. we may have to look into arming our ucavs with gun pods, unguided rockets or some new cheap weapon.

Guys, Russians have a far more advanced stealth technology than US. They use plazma and magnetic fields. A cheap and effecient way. Check this out: http://robocat.users.btopenworld.com/su37.htm The whole thing will be packed up into the PAK-FA and will be in mass production as a 5th generation fighter plane. Think about it: with it's in-flight maneuver capabilities and superior stealth methods it will be invunrable!

All of this sounds great. But you don't really believe that the US and Russia will be in conflict anytime in the near future do you? But let's say you do. Or you were just comparing equipment. US will still come ahead, we have the superior pilots because of the training they get. So until this equipment, be it the best or not, gets in the hands of pilots who have time and a government willing to spend the money for training, it will still come out second best.