And soon to be regularly operating those exact "unmanned" platform in Loyal Wingmen.
Wingmen is far from being able to carry out tasks you think it can. Right now F16 with AI algo is dogfighting US pilots, but it’s still very early stages. Will take time to mature the platform.
To your point regarding IFF reliability (or lack thereof) we actually used to be on an Iranian Defense Forum back in 2009-2013/14 until it closed shop.
I was on that forum as well
But there was this great guy named Chogy who used to fly the F-15 for the US & NATO missions out of Germany back in the 80's and we used to talk shop up the wazoo with him since he was really outgoing and enjoyed talking about these things.
We were discussing BVR combat tactics and it took us to in the direction of IFF and he said that in his F-15C, he would often have a difficulty most of the time getting any solid return signals whenever he would activate his interrogator, it would get all jumbled or something to that effect to the point where most of his squadron would just bag the process and rely on AWACs.
US coalition feared Patriots during Iraqi war because of the IFF system. There were several close calls/shootdowns including a British Tornado. The blame game happen, some say British Tornado transponder malfunctioned others say Patriot identified it as foe. Pilots were avoiding anywhere patriots were deployed.
Now remember this is 2003 with a decrepit virtually non existent Iraqi Air Force. What do you think would happen against a near peer adversary like China in heavy air war with heavy jamming/electronic warfare on both sides?
Even Iran had issues with air defense teams locking on to friendly jets during peace team and sometimes even firing on them. There was an article a few years back that talked about those instances in the last decade. Lastly we all remember the TOR-M1 fiasco in 2020.
My point being anyone who thinks during a major war that there would not be friendly fire when systems are being more and more automated by the day are living in delusional land.
I'm willing to be that with all systems improvements we've seen in the past 10 years alone, let alone 30+, IFF systems have much improved since. But like anything comms systems related, there's always a chance of signals & waves etc. of breaking up.
True, but the era of EW/ECW is now much stronger and sophisticated than early 2000’s or 90’s. I mean early block F-22’s are set to be decommissioned this year because their electronics are so obsolete in this day and age. It would be too costly to upgrade them to even the later variant F-22s.
IFF is still an imperfect system, air defense systems typically will look at a objects speed/movement plus its radio signature (IFF) to determine if it matches a databank of known objects then it will label it foe. This is all down in seconds and many systems fire automatically rather than waiting for human intervention.
You can see how this information can be manipulated especially in today’s digital and AI age. Without some type of quantum entanglement based system, you will never know for such if the object is friendly or foe using current systems especially during fog of war. This is without even taken into account something that naturally happens in war - human error.
Just this week an Israeli tank was caught in ambush and went out of its zone of authority and shot at a building - ended up being full of IDF soldiers killing 2 soldiers. Fog of war and human error go hand in hand.
Then there is the issue of BVR and it’s reliability which is completely separate from this matter although overlap can exist.
I honestly don’t see the RuAF as even flying anymore!
Then you aren’t following the war. TU bombers and MIG-31’s are up every week launching payloads. Russian fighter jets have taken their Cold War era of FABs and attached JDAM kits and are bombing the living daylights out of Ukraine front line positions by releasing payloads from 30-40KM away. This is versus the early war where they needed to basically dive bomb to get any reliable accuracy as FABs are non guided bombs.
And the Ukrainian AF ceased to practically exist 2 years ago.
They still exist, a recent fighter jet was hit alongside a S-300 system past month. They fly extremely low and pop to fire anti radiation missiles and flee. They are used very precisely these days.
Two weeks ago a RuAF Tu-22M3 Backfire tried penetrating Ukrainian defenses with a belly full of cruise missiles and it was quickly shot down.
False, TU doesn’t need to penetrate Ukraine airspace as Russian large bombers release their payloads from Russia or Belarus airspace.
The incident you refer to was likely that a Ukrainian S-200 was somehow smuggled to the border area and hit the bomber inside its own/friendly airspace.
These are very rare occurances, but show how vulnerable AWACs, bombers, tankers are in modern warfare.
Danish/Dutch F-16’s to Ukraine with uki pilots being ‘constantly’ trained by NATO have not materialized.
They are coming, but won’t make a huge difference. f-16 has a frontal RCS of 1-3M2 and likely higher if fully loaded (weapons and drop tanks) so it won’t help against S-400/S-300 deployed. These aren’t my own words just read US pilots talking about limitations of platform near Ukrainian frontlines.
People (mostly on Twitter) seem to think F-16 is an F-35 or something. Far from it. Just because it’s been used in Jihadi-Stan conflicts and by Israel to bomb Palestinians doesn’t mean much. Much like Abrams and Leporads didn’t change the war. Or Excalibur and SDBs didn’t change the war. Or storm shadows didn’t change the war. F-16’s won’t either.
Now if Urkaine got their hands on F-35 then maybe you could see some tactical battlefield changes. They wouldn’t win the war, but they would certainly bring pain to Russian frontlines and forward operating bases
I don’t see the RuAF as a viable force today.
You are misinformed as Russian losses don’t even total 10% of their total airforce. And Russia continues to add SU-35’s and SU-57’s to its fleet. The factories are still working, Russia deploys a fraction of its airforce to the Ukraine warfront.
And I certainly don’t see anyone in Iran yelping to get their hands on dem Su-35’s either.
Everyone in Iran would love SU-35. It’s a great defense fighter to complement Iran’s air defense teams and protect the skies.
Yes, if you trying to use it to invade Israeli airspace or Saudi Airspace that is not wise, but using it in a defensive role to protect Iranian assets and IADS is very smart. Much better than relying on F-5/Mig-28/and the few flying F-14’s that are still airworthy.
