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.
Maybe we should stop FUCKING AROUND if we dont want to find out?
The F-35, participating in Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis, was forced to take evasive action to avoid the missile.
So, they had to, like, dodge a missile? And that is panic worthy?
Supposedly the F35 should never have been seen or detected in the first place.
The fact that a missile was tracking it and they had to dodge it means that these stealth capabilities are lacking.
It had to rely on a last resort as opposed to its primary defensive system which constricts its design in a big way, its stealth component.
It’s a stealth plane apparently, so I guess it wasn’t supposed to be seen, but they saw it.
Millennium Challenge 2002.
That’s when we learned that low tech can beat high tech in this manner.
Did they learn the lesson at DOD? Of course not. They demoted the guy who won and made him play out a cosplay battle where America Wins!
100% numerous people in the US military know that they’re sitting on extremely expensive ships/aircraft/vehicles that are with modern enough weaponry, easy to destroy. A question of whether they have the power, for enough time required, to fix the bloat
Difficult and expensive to develop, manufacturer, maintain. Trapped in service contracts with completely single source suppliers, no alternatives. If it wasn’t so expensive to maintain, even just the ammunition, maybe it wouldn’t be such a panic situation but well after pretty much constantly being at war since the countries inception, the US is sitting on an albatross of a military. Not just all the equipment but how much employment is tied to supporting the albatross. Albatross multiplied hard with Iraq and Afghanistan paired with all the tax cuts since Reagan. Without Afghanistan and Iraq, probably wouldn’t be so wallet concerned for for a good amount longer
Lol I’m sure a blitzed Pete Hegseth will fix these problems.
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
Those were F/A-18 Super Hornets from the aircraft carrier. Not as advanced as you might think.
Advanced enough to not take a swim while on duty.
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.
based on the impact of war and how people have been living there in Yemen for the past decade, I’d say “3rd world” is a reasonable assumption/classification.
it evades cheap missiles but at what cost!?
Good for them
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’ "
Why are three marked off? They only shot down the one?
The reddit thread proposes it could have been a lie for propaganda.
Looking into it, it seems only three NATO planes seem to have been shot down total over the conflict. So maybe the propaganda piece was showing total shot down planes and using the F-117 as the model?
Good point, if they were already shot down then it’s possible.
They are supposedly invisible, so you could never know
How reliable are US media reports?
If the Serbs shot more than one down we would have heard about it in 2000.
From who?
Did you hear about the Russians shooting down a plane armed with a nuclear missile in 2024?From the Serbs? They bragged about shooting one 20 year old plane down. They would 100% brag about 3.
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.
You’d think evading something would be a success
evading prehistoric weaponry is a bad sign
A win is a win no?
For that pilot, yes. For everyone else… Yikes
Not when you’re flying the second most expensive type of airplane that is so expensive they can only build a few of them and whose strength is supposed to be undetectability.
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.”
Seems like technological advancements of the past few decades are making US tech obsolete.
