No one is operating 5th gen aircraft that the US should be concerned about. Many countries are operating air defenses that the US should be concerned about. The 5th gen aircraft have credible, but not perfect, defense in-depth against the current generation of air defense platforms, whereas the 4th gen aircraft do not (though they may gain it at some point).

In the specific case of the A-10, it was designed for a world that had extremely primitive sensor systems that couldn’t even reliably lock onto a plane when looking straight at it. We aren’t in that world anymore. Not only is the terminal guidance sophisticated and reliable but the warheads are designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the A-10. Everyone has had 50 years to work on that problem.

Modern Russian and Chinese systems effortlessly deal with an A-10; it lacks the power systems to support modern counter-measures against modern systems. It isn’t upgradable like that because that wasn’t a design objective.

Modern military aircraft like the F-35 have critical combat roles that don’t involve dogfighting. Their sensor suites and processing capabilities are at least as important as any other particular feature, and other aircraft don’t have that. Their systems can measure and exploit their environment to an astonishing degree.

yep, we can also draw some interesting conclusions from the current conflict in Ukraine and that's with a targeted campaign an air defense is only as good as the entire network and system it's built around.

The Ukrainian air force with mostly su-24's and su-27's should not exist or even be able to operate against Russia's supposed air defense capabilities(s-400, s-300, Tor, manpads) but war is almost always a battle of information and the stealth and network capabilities the F-35 has puts it a league of its own. One which only the f-22 could transcend but the raw number of F-35's being pumped out negates that advantage to a degree

The Ukrainian air force is severely limited in it's air operations against the Russians. Similarly the Russians largely don't operate their aircraft over Ukraine. That's because both sides have air defence systems that are highly capable against aircraft of those generations.

> That's because

one side has untouchable radars and AWACS.

Both sides have essentially untouchable radars. The Ukrainians have so far avoided shooting at Russian planes flying much beyond the Ukrainian border, and Russia has the Beriev A-100.

E-3 would never enter the Ukraine airspace (and they are not Ukraine, but totally-we-are-not-the-part-of-that NATO), while A-50/100 would be gladly shot down if the chance arises. So 'essentially' is not the right word here.

Why does it matter? A-x would never need to enter Ukrainian airspace anyway.

Physics says what they should if they need to support something in the Western parts.

They can scan almost all of Western Ukraine from Belarus airspace. The southern most coast south of Moldova, and maybe Odessa is beyond it's published estimated range assuming it flies more than 100km inside Belarus airspace, but not by much.

>scan almost

At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.

Though probably someone already published their routes, but I too lazy to check, honestly. Still my point stands - As can be downed (and everyone would clap, especially in the US) while Es "NO YOU DONT THATS ARTICLE 5"

>At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.

Over distances of 600km the vertical offset due to earth's curvature is about 20km. If it flies at it's operational ceiling of 14km, it can offset most of that but wouldn't have direct line of sight on planes at extreme range flying below 6km. If it has over the horizon capability though, which honestly seems highly likely for a recently updated system, then it should be able to compensate for the remaining shadow with some loss of resolution. Which I'm guessing is why it's estimated range is considered 600km. I'm sure the military analysts making those estimates know about these effects.

Anyway, southern Ukraine can be directly radar imaged from over Crimea so it's really not an issue.