Aircraft already often fly low, which also works well against radar, but makes them vulnerable to cheaper and more numerous MANPADS. Flying high shouldn’t work particularly well given the setup I’ve described here, since we have a range of about 100km, an order of magnitude higher than the f35 can fly.
Flying very low, like 10-30 meters above the ground in night will protect against even MANPADS—it will fly above you in a few seconds. I recommend an interesting blog https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1 which discuss a lot about air defence and current war
They likely use them in places where no air defence is present and still at some disatnce using JDAM.
I think that I missed the main thing about stealth—they are stealth for radar on the distances like 100 km, but visible for radar on the distances like 10 km (arbitrary numbers). But optical observation on distances of 100 km is impossible (need large telescopes, but you need to know where to look). Also optical density of atmosphere starts playing role as well a spherical size of earth.
Naked eye has angular resolution of 30m at 100km, you need something slightly better. A small lense should do it. Cameras + zoom lens are well understood mass produced components. And this is a highly parallelizable task.
It works only if it fly above your territory—and similar systems are used for drones detection now. Actually, they use people eyes and smartphones and instant messaging. But during recent attack on Iran a single F35 flied over Iraq and fired a missile from like 200 km distance on a target in Iran.
Also, radars are good in pinpointing exact coordinates in space and time. Optical recognition may have delays or difficultly in measuring distance. Even 1 second delay makes their information useless for supersonic aircrafts.
Aircraft already often fly low, which also works well against radar, but makes them vulnerable to cheaper and more numerous MANPADS. Flying high shouldn’t work particularly well given the setup I’ve described here, since we have a range of about 100km, an order of magnitude higher than the f35 can fly.
Flying very low, like 10-30 meters above the ground in night will protect against even MANPADS—it will fly above you in a few seconds.
I recommend an interesting blog https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1 which discuss a lot about air defence and current war
But then no need for stealth at all?
They likely use them in places where no air defence is present and still at some disatnce using JDAM.
I think that I missed the main thing about stealth—they are stealth for radar on the distances like 100 km, but visible for radar on the distances like 10 km (arbitrary numbers). But optical observation on distances of 100 km is impossible (need large telescopes, but you need to know where to look). Also optical density of atmosphere starts playing role as well a spherical size of earth.
Why would you need large telescopes?
Naked eye has angular resolution of 30m at 100km, you need something slightly better. A small lense should do it. Cameras + zoom lens are well understood mass produced components. And this is a highly parallelizable task.
Note you don’t even need high resolution in all directions, just high enough to see whether it’s worth zooming in/switching to a better camera.
Did you ever see any plane that far? I saw only planes above me (10 km) and they are almost like dots.
The difference between optics and radar is that with optics you need to know where to look—but the radar has constant 360 perception.
But I discussed that in the post. All you need are enough cameras + processing power. Both are cheap.
It works only if it fly above your territory—and similar systems are used for drones detection now. Actually, they use people eyes and smartphones and instant messaging. But during recent attack on Iran a single F35 flied over Iraq and fired a missile from like 200 km distance on a target in Iran.
Also, radars are good in pinpointing exact coordinates in space and time. Optical recognition may have delays or difficultly in measuring distance. Even 1 second delay makes their information useless for supersonic aircrafts.