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.
I have a soft spot for new planes being shot down by “outdated” technologies.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’ "
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…)
Yeah, it sounds like they’re trying to downplay how they disimissed the tech as “outdated” during design and construction.
Yeah the IR SAM threat is not a new thing, 25 NATO coalition aircraft were damaged or downed by IR SAMs during the Gulf war, and that was three decades ago. The IR SAM threat has been understood since the SA-7/9K32 Strela-2. This is why IR signature reduction is so important to stealth/low observability technology.
What’s new are these frankenSAM systems in Yemen and Ukraine using advanced infrared guided air to air missiles with high off boresight capability like the R-73, ASRAAM and latest AIM-9s as SAMs, and advanced ground based infrared search and track systems that can connect to more traditional SAM, which extends the range of the IR threat considerably.
An F-35 is not going to be as good as something like the F-117, B-2, B-21 or YF-23 prototype at hiding it’s engine exhaust from ground based sensors, it’s not even as good as the F-22 at that, nevermind those previous aircraft where the engine exhaust isn’t even visible from below. Such was likely one of the compromises in the F-35s design, to allow for mass production and fulfilling all the different roles all 3 F-35 variants carry out.
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.”
It’s depressing how accurate this probably is.
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.
All of those were caused by Ansarallah fire causing the carrier to take evasive maneuvers. Ansarallah inflicted the damage either way
Critical support for both the Houthis and Poseidon
Scoreboard — US aircraft carriers 0 Poseidon’s trident 2
Those were F/A-18 Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier. Not as advanced as you might think.
Well, they’re not the so-so hornets. So like, a little advanced.
True. Still, not exactly something 3rd world countries (or many 2nd-world) can produce.
Advanced enough to not take a swim while on duty.
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!
Then just take a drink. The wife can take notes for me.
Seems like technological advancements of the past few decades are making US tech obsolete.
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.
That’s right, they just happened to fall of a carrier for no reason at all.
please let the funniest thing possible happen
Didn’t we just sign a ceasefire agreement with these guys? Or were those “talks”?
edit: this probably happened weeks ago before the ceasefire, but the article is unclear.
This is probably why we signed a ceasefire
