The F-35 Guides Missiles Without Firing a Shot

[Independent voter]

Skroe and Kellhound were right.

An F-35B can penetrate enemy airspace using stealth technology and guide a missile to an enemy fighter, the missile fired from a friendly ship hundreds of miles away. This is important because the F-35 doesn't give away its position.






http://finance.yahoo.com/news/f-35-j...192811263.html



(An F-35B from Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 (VMFAT-501), flies near its base a MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina.Lockheed Martin)
An F-35B just carried out a remarkable test where its sensors spotted an airborne target, sent the data to an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense site, and had the land-based outpost fire a missile to defeat the target — thereby destroying an airborne adversary without firing a single shot of its own.

This development simultaneously vindicates two of the US military's most important developments: The F-35 and the Naval Integrated Fire Control Counterair Network (NIFC-CA).

Essentially, the NIFC-CA revolutionizes naval targeting systems by combining data from a huge variety of sensors to generate targeting data that could be used to defeat incoming threats.

Standard Missile-6View photos
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(The U.S. Navy Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) launches a RIM-174 Standard ERAM (Standard Missile-6, SM-6) during a live-fire test of the ship's Aegis weapons system in the Pacific Ocean.US Navy)
So now with this development, an F-35 can pass targeting data to the world's most advanced missile defense system, an Aegis site, that would fire it's own missile, likely a SM-6, to take out threats in the air, on land, or at sea.

This means that an F-35 can stealthily enter heavily contested enemy air space, detect threats, and have them destroyed by a missile fired from a remote site, like an Aegis land site or destroyer, without firing a shot and risking giving up it's position.

The SM-6, the munition of choice for Aegis destroyers, is a 22-foot long supersonic missile that can seek out, maneuver, and destroy airborne targets like enemy jets or incoming cruise or ballistic missiles.

The SM-6's massive size prohibits it from being equipped to fighter jets, but now, thanks to the integration of the F-35 with the NIFC-CA, it doesn't have to.

The SM-6, as effective and versatile as it is, can shoot further than the Aegis sites can see. The F-35, as an ultra connective and stealthy jet, acts as an elevated, highly mobile sensor that extends the effective range of the missile.

This joint capability helps assuage fears over the F-35's limited capacity to carry ordnance. The jet's stealth design means that all weapons have to be stored internally, and this strongly limits the plane's overall ordnance capacity.

This limiting factor has drawn criticism from pundits more fond of traditional jet fighting approaches. However, it seems the F-35's connectivity has rendered this point a non-issue.

Overall, the F-35 and NIFC-CA integration changes the game when it comes to the supposed anti-access/area denial bubbles created by Russia and China's advanced air defenses and missiles.

“One of the key defining attributes of a 5th Generation fighter is the force multiplier effect it brings to joint operations through its foremost sensor fusion and external communications capabilities,” said Orlando Carvalho, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, said in a statement.

[Flarelaine]

About time the F-35 showed something for all those bucks dumped into it.

[caervek]

This is great for defence, but pretty worthless over "enemy territory", unless the CIA build SAM sites in their country (in which case they have more problems than invading F-35s).

inb4: "but muh x-band radars! muh S-500!"

But that is pretty neat.

I'm pretty sure that the S-500 will have the same ability, the older models were networkable (the MiG-25 was never supposed to shoot the SR-71 itself, just target it so SAMs ahead can get the hit).

[Deletedaccount1]

[Skulltaker]

Wow. All that money wasted for a conflict that will never come.

[Flarelaine]

Wow. All that money wasted for a conflict that will never come.

Probably well spent if it contributes to said conflict never coming.

[Ulmita]

What a click bait title.

The plane can communicate with the aegis ships, ok cool, but where does it say it can take the Russian airspace exactly?

There is no such thing as stealth dude, there is only low observability in SPECIFIC radar band.

Ohh and the Sunflower radar says hi

[Taojnhy]

Man that explanation, regardless of accuracy, sounds like someone reading a particularly tortuous end user agreement.

[HumbleDuck]

I may be way off here, but can't a drone do that too?

[Independent voter]

I may be way off here, but can't a drone do that too?

Yeah, I got the article from reddit. The commenters, well once you skipped passed the joke section, talked about how the future fighters will be drones and how the Air force is retrofitting F16s to become drones.

But I guess that's still off in the future.

They plan on using the F16 drones as wingmen for the F35s and to attack high risk targets like SAM sites.

[thilicen]

Wow. All that money wasted for a conflict that will never come.

That's basically the whole point.

[Deleted]

Couldn't you, like, use an existing, like, satellite, to, like, do the same thing? See shit n say that shit should be blown up? You need to spend gazillions on a plane to do what you already can do?? Is op trolling or is he this clueless?

[Mavett]

Pretty cool, but still you will have the usual suspects coming here and saying "Shit American toy plane, glorious Russian radar detects it 10.000km away and fire glorious Russian AA missile that has no equivalent in the West and knocks the American toy plane out of the sky without much trouble, *takes a sip of vodka*".

[Gref]

Wow. All that money wasted for a conflict that will never come.

How you think is seriously wrong. Humans need the idea of conflict or the war itself to advance.
I feel sorry to say this but how do you think we advanced so much in such a short time?

We want to destroy faster, harder and much more efficiently. So we always try to be faster and stronger. Simple concept; 2 nations, they both have airplanes. They both have the same speed. They will both reach their target at the same time and destroy their targets. But hey, you try to find a way to destroy the target even before that enemy pilot takes off from the ground. You develop and improve. Communications, Internet, Space exploration and all this technology you use are the result of endless wars, conflicts or their ideas.

Really If we didn't need to reach intel so fast in die battle situations, we would be still using letters. A peaceful world would be all nice and beautiful but not advanced, not this much.

Technology like this will enable humankind to go into stars with MACROSS designs.

[Wikko]

Doesnt the US have satellites that can do this without any risk of getting detected?

[Deleted]

Probably well spent if it contributes to said conflict never coming.

But it doesn't. That's the point. Whether the F35 exists or not specifically has no bearing on whether the US gets into any kind of a situation where the F35 is actually required. The likelyhood of that situation becoming a reality is determined by a whole bunch of other factors, none of which have anything to do with the latest air toy of the US military.

[Deleted]

*takes a sip of vodka*".

You filthy imperialist degenerate, one does not sip vodka. If you're being classy, you drink it in shots. If you don't give a fuck, you chug it out of the bottle. But sipping? That's for Frenchmen.

[zmp]

Doesnt the US have satellites that can do this without any risk of getting detected?

The air force needs to give credit to the F-35 for something... just something... since its been so expensive to make.

[willtron]

The crazy bit is that f-35s can share data between each other and they're talking about being able to remotely fire f-15/16 too.

Once the railguns are fully operational, it'll be a pretty devastating setup. Dunno why Yahoo feel the need to mention Russia or China, they have nothing to do with this.

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F35 can be detected with new radar tech, which both Russia and China have as far as I know.

Doesn't matter really. Their radar will be further than any CN/RU fighter and they can just send the data to an Aegis system and have that deal with them. Or f35 can identify the SAM batteries or radar stations, send the data to a drone, and have that deal with it.

[Deleted]

it's proof in the same way wargames prove that a scandinavian submarine can take out a US carrier undetected. whenever someone posts that people are quick to bring up the differences between a test/wargame and a real scenario.

first thing that comes to mind would be that they probably didnt use wartime level signal jamming during this test, which seems to me would be the first thing an opponent who knows he can't detect the enemy would use heavily.

other then that: what's so special about this, seems just an evolution on say a ground based team using a laser pointer to guide a missile to it's target.