Not invincible; they didn’t fly under the radar
The F-35 stealth fighter jet, which the U.S. Airforce plugged as almost invisible to radar, reputation is on the line after a German radar maker claimed he tracked two of the jets leaving an airshow for nearly 100 miles, while hiding on a pony farm.
In addition, he used a new passive radar system called Twlnvis, that analyzes how civilian communications like radio and TV. Broadcasts and mobile phone stations bounce off airborne objects.
The Radar firm claims this renders the Jet’s stealth technology, designed to absorb ground-based radar to stop it reflecting back, redundant.
The F-35 stealth fighters do not come cheaply either at a cost of $100 million per jet.
As this new radar system has no emitters, pilots do not realize they are entering a monitored area.
These F-35’s tracked in 2018 never participated in the air-show, which meant the passive radar system could not detect them at the time, only after they headed home when data was collected from the plane’s signals.
The difference, in a real battle the enemy will not know when to expect the fighter jets to monitor them, so they will be able to fly under the radar so to speak.
Stealth technology has provided fighter jets with the ability to elude radar defenses and the US has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into studying and developing aircraft with this capability, but with reports of this incident, it is back to the drawing board.
Another issue is new radar’s ability to spot jets relies on signals from civilian transmitters, and many war zones are wastelands with not a civilian in sight.
Taking this into account, nations with a stealth craft could easily take out cell phone networks through cyberattacks or bomb radio broadcasting towers to keep their fighter jets hidden.
However, TwInvis is the only one of its kind that has successfully tracked an F-35, and from 93 miles away.
‘As the radar develops and operators refine their tactics, it could become even more effective,’ Popular Mechanics reported.
