I have never claimed that Stealth is unnecessary or useless. My argument was against an egregious claim made by
@johnj that Su-35 can not trace F-22/F-35 beyond 20 km. which was a pure lie.
Few DFI members have a typical dick-measuring habit. their evaluations are one-sided opinions often based on random fake news. these YouTube inspired claims would be found bogus once you see the ground.
Syria has been the biggest weapon testing ground for superpowers since 2014. few summaries:--
1) Israeli F-16 uses one of the world's best EWS and avionics but every time Russian jets caught them in Syria.
2) USA F-16 (with Ultra-modern EWS ) was harassed to the level where the USA had to deploy F-22 in the Middle East for the first time permanently.
3) F-35 tried to track SU-35 in Syria and SU-35 immediately activated their countermeasures.
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/us-f-...ets-over-syria-as-fight-against-isis-resumes/
4) There is countless incident where SU-35 has intercepted the Eurofighter typhoon and Rafale in Syria.
What do these incidents tell us?? Stealth fighters can not fight one on one fight without giving up their location. Stealth aircraft are extremely useful when they work under AWACs but unfortunately, Russia is not the country that will allow an AWACS to fly a mere 400km from the frontline.
Rafale Spectra is excellent. not a silver bullet. Rafale EWS have excellent data fusion among all sensor ( second to F-35 ) and decoy systems. But the Su-35 also has a very powerful
L175M Khibiny-M electronic countermeasures system.
The only thing Russia lacks is data fusion among sensors and MAWS which makes it impossible to maneuver against IR missiles. Most of the Russian losses in Ukraine are against Heat-seeking missiles.
Countering an enemy just means you have to copycat your enemy's weapons. You can devise a cheap strategy to counter it.
Has anyone thought about What would happen if Russia/China came up with a cheap solution against F-35 that would be one of the biggest disaster for NATO as they solely rely on single-source aircraft?