This shatterbelt site sucks tbh. It feels like blogspam.
As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones.
It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of.
Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.
It has never been compute-intensive. Current hypersonic kinetic-intercept missiles use ancient MIPS R3000/4000 class CPUs.
But the real question is: does the appearance of good, cheap IR sensors in combat mean that we civilians will finally be allowed to buy thermal IR cameras that don’t suck? Everything is limited to 20 Hz with potato resolution. The ITAR restriction is a joke at this point.
The US and Israel didn't lose a single pilot over Iran after 15,000+ sorties which is saying something on their capabilities.
1) It's not the 1990s anymore, Counter-Countermeasure IR missile discrimination is pretty common on imported MANPADs and IR SAMs.
2) The F-35 has a insanely hot engine even when it's not afterburning. The F135 produces hotter inlet temperature than even the F-22's engine (F119) giving older IR seekers an easier target.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/china-s-new-infrar...
these new inventions will challenge western air dominance doctrine by using abundant heat seeking A2A missiles/drones possible.
Just like cheap drones have completely changed the battlefield on the ground, these things can potentially change the air battle completely
I think this is the most relevant 'new' piece of information from the article. IR missiles are not new, but IR missiles that can distinguish between aircraft and decoys might be.
An even earlier version, the AIM-9R was tested in 1990 before the budget was cut as part of the Cold War wind down. That’s 35 years ago.
Even earlier than that, a Soviet missile which became operational in 1984 (40 years ago!), the R-74, inspired the AIM-9R program.
So it’s not like imaging seekers were unknown to the people designing today’s generation of fighters.
To decoy that, the decoy needs to basically _be_ the aircraft.
And honestly, considering how good radars are nowaday, i wouldn't be surprised the stealth will get ditched eventually (not until we make FSR or an equivalent active that we can put in a missile though, so we probably still have 5 to 10 years?) (if an expert can chime in, i have not talked to a physician specialized in this field in a decade, and my buddy at Thales isn't working on radar software anymore :( )
Now this can be circumvented over with standoff munitions, but now you're increasing ordnance cost by magnitudes, and theoretically this can be scaled to hit subsonic standoff munitions, so on paper negate / require even more premium munitions.
The none poverty version coming online is mega constellation ISR, throw enough SAR in space to make sky completely transparent.
Last paragraph: "Does this make the F-35 obsolete? No."
From https://www.shatterbelt.co/about:
"One analyst. 500+ open sources across 15 languages. AI-augmented research that synthesizes what would take a team weeks. Human judgment on every conclusion."
oh no that's not true the F117 and F35 is though
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/ur5qt0/radar_cros...
In other words, you can target the F-35 but only when it's on top of you dropping bombs on YOU from much further away.
> How many impovershised american children could you feed for the cost of one f35 fighter jet?
Here is the answer:
> Using a rough estimate of $110.3 million for one F-35A and about $3,500 per child per year to cover food assistance, that would feed roughly 31,500 children for one year
MPACGA -- Make Poor American Children Great Again.
IR is useful for terminal guidance only due to very limited engagement distances at which it can get lock (see also: MANPADS). One of the objectives of non-IR stealth is that it eliminates the mid-course guidance needed for long-range missile engagements, which largely requires radar. Note also that sophisticated "IR-guided" missiles are not "heat-seeking", that is mostly a movie trope. They use imagers that include part of the IR spectrum.
The short range of IR terminal guidance limits the size of the associated warhead. US aircraft are designed and tested to survive being hit with warheads in this size class. An F-35 is expected to eat an IR-guided missile and get back home.
The F-35 definitely saw it coming. The article casually ignores the widely documented base capabilities of the aircraft that make it what it is.
That said, F-35 is an export design with limited IR stealth. The US uses IR stealth on non-export 5th gen designs and all of the 6th gen designs. This was one of the compromises to make the design "exportable".
Could you explain this a bit? OK, IR guidance is short range. Why does that mean I can't put a bigger bomb in it?
IR missiles must accelerate to ~Mach 2.5 over a very short distance to maintain lock and close the distance for the purpose of air intercept due to the short-range of the guidance. IR seekers are lightweight and compact, which lends itself to quick acceleration.
This short-range performance profile can be maintained with a heavier warhead using a larger, heavier rocket motor. This has cost, weight, size, etc implications but that isn't a reason to not do it in isolation.
The upgraded IR missile is still short-range but now it has a footprint similar to long-range radar missiles and those have a similarly large warhead. It erases the major technical advantages of IR missiles (cheap, light, small) without addressing their major deficiency (short range).
You could build an IR missile with a heavy warhead but it doesn't make much sense. The quick acceleration requirement creates a lot of engineering pressure to reduce weight, which can only be meaningfully achieved by reducing warhead size.
The USAF has had them since 1956: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-4_Falcon
I'd imagine small computers have made them more effective in the last decade or two, but that probably applies to detection and countermeasures in the victim aircraft as well.
Pretty simple and probably quite effective if true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flare_(countermeasure)
> The newest generation of the FIM-92 Stinger uses a dual IR and UV seeker head, which allows for a redundant tracking solution, effectively negating the effectiveness of modern decoy flares (according to the U.S. Department of Defense).
This stuff is a constant back-and-forth of tech improvements.
I'm pretty sure I could buy everything I'd need to build a thermal imaging tracker for a few hundred dollars. So perhaps not surprising that Iran did the same.
>>Flares, the standard IR countermeasure, are less effective against imaging IR seekers that can distinguish an aircraft shape from point-source decoys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K38_Igla
> The 9K310 Igla-1 system and its 9M313 missile were accepted into service in the Soviet Army on 11 March 1981. The main differences from the Strela-3 included an optional Identification Friend or Foe system to prevent firing on friendly aircraft, an automatic lead and super elevation to simplify shooting and reduce minimum firing range, a slightly larger rocket, reduced drag and better guidance system extend maximum range and improve performance against fast and maneuverable targets, an improved lethality on target achieved by a combination of delayed impact fuzing, terminal maneuver to hit the fuselage rather than jet nozzle, an additional charge to set off the remaining rocket fuel (if any) on impact, an improved resistance to infrared countermeasures (both decoy flares and ALQ-144 series jamming emitters), and slightly improved seeker sensitivity.
> The seeker has two detectors – a cooled MWIR InSb detector for detection of the target and uncooled PbS SWIR detector for detection of IR decoys (flares). The built-in logic determines whether the detected object is a target or a decoy. The latest version (Igla-S) is reported to have additional detectors around the main seeker to provide further resistance against pulsed IRCM devices commonly used on helicopters.
> Since 2014 the Igla is being replaced in Russian service by the new 9K333 Verba (Willow) MANPADS.[4] The Verba's primary feature is its multispectral optical seeker, using three sensors as opposed to the Igla-S' two. Cross-checking sensors against one another better discriminates between relevant targets and decoys, and decreases the chance of disruption from countermeasures, including lasers that attempt to blind missiles.
No one's likely to have been surprised by this capability. It's 80s tech.
1. Their quantum radar can detect stealth objects, but cannot lock
2. Their missiles are rapidly improving, I believe they have the longest range A2A missile [1], the PL-17 nearly doubles the best the US and Russia have, though I think the US announced something in that range recently (but not fielded)
3. Quantum to get close, thermal for terminal guidance
[1] https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-first-close-...
Really?. Funny that everyone now knows US overclaimed their capabilities.