Apparently the Iranians managed to tag an F-35.

As I mentioned in 2019, [stderr]

stealth aircraft typically are mostly “stealthy” from the front, and some of them are quite un-stealthy from some angles, or if they have weapons bays open. It appears that the Chinese system is listening for faint echoes off of less-stealthy angles, and doing “data fusion” on them. That’s plausible, and each aircraft – even the stealthy ones – would tend to have a specific “signature” because you’re collating as many angles of signal as you can get.

and

Meanwhile,  there is some interesting and vague news about an Israeli F-35 apparently being hit and damaged by a Syrian missile during an incursion into Syrian airspace. [ni] As you can imagine, that has really set the cat among the chickens – initially Israel tried to claim that the aircraft was damaged by hitting a bird. Of course what everyone is wondering is “what about the F-35’s stealth?” But it sounds (to me) like what happened is exactly what I predicted: someone took a rear-shot on the departing aircraft with something infrared-homing.

Eventually the US will lose a B-2 or B-1, similarly. What’s happening with these things isn’t magic: they are stealthy inbound and stay high and fast, then turn and GTFO out of hostile air space as soon as they drop whatever nasties they are delivering. An antiaircraft system (the complete system from sensors to operator to missiles) would practically have to know when and how high the attack was coming, and have pre-stationed hunters – which, not being stealthy, would result in the attack being re-scheduled.

[source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/B-2-Bomber-reflection-4_fig3_375462852]
Is the secret to detecting a B-2 to be at a 45 degree angle in its rear arc? And how much hot air
do those engines blow out?

I seem to have slipped slightly over the line into the prognostication business, so why not: the next big sneaky hit against a US stealth plane is going to involve some stealth on the defending side. That, and some basic intelligence operations. I will say for the record that I, and some of my wargamer buddies, cooked up this idea in high school (around 1978) so it’s hardly state of the art – here’s what you do: you have a couple of people near the airfield that the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s fly out of – they don’t need to be particularly close – and when they see a couple of the big black things go up into the sky, they text message (  <- that’s the fancy part)  someone who spreads word that an attack is inbound. Since the big bombers don’t exactly perform a vertical take-off, there’s probably a pretty good observation zone near the airports. There is also satellite and internet dweebs who will cheerfully post that the B-52s are at Diego Garcia again, or whatever.

Option 1: the quick hit. Get a smallish force within a reasonable distance and attack the parked aircraft with a couple of drones. I am surprised that has not happened yet. Basically, the US stealth strategic bomber fleet has gotten away with their global terror campaign mostly because of luck. Here’s a fun part: hypothetically if a small Iranian force was able to infiltrate close enough to some B-52s to put up 3 or 4 attack drones, they are not “terrorists” they are special operations troops engaged in legitimate war-time attacks as long as they are wearing their uniforms and carrying military ID like dog tags, etc. In principle the US would not be allowed to gun down such troops if they were detected and surrendered. If they really wanted to play fair, and not use fake ID and fake uniforms, it makes it much, much harder – they’d need to establish an operations base somewhere where they could buy a small plane and get their gear together. It does make one wonder if perhaps the US government is not utterly stupid keeping an eye on boats from Central America. Oh, who am I kidding? Also, a completely legal-in-wartime option would be to sneak a few heat-seeking MANPADs into the takeoff path of stealth bombers. Then blow two out of the sky and run like hell.

Option 2: the mousetrap. A relatively innocuous-looking spotter texts a code to a number, when the bombers go up. In my imagined scenario, there’s a guy who’s a pretty hardcore hiker/bicyclist. He bikes out or hikes out with his backpack, pulls over, puts on his uniform and dog tags, and observes aircraft. On the other end of the connection is the commander. Commander’s got 3 more guys like the first guy, and those guys are watching where the midair refueling planes are flying out of. It’s basic math – you gotta know how long the bomber will fly before it tops off – lets say 4 hours – and if the fuelers leave a certain base in time to meet them, then you know the approximate path. That also goes to the commander. Commander and his dudes do some map-looking and come up with a couple candidate courses into the country. Let’s imagine they have been doing this for a while. So, they have some antiaircraft batteries on speed dial and call them up and tell them to look for thermal signatures way high up. They also put a few interceptors up in the path, hauling old AIM-9 Sidewinders, which are infrared homing. Slaughter happens. If the bombers take a slightly different path, slaughter doesn’t happen. But eventually, it will happen. We (those who watch these things) know that the bombers are careful-ish. A couple weeks ago I saw something about how the bombers that hit some target in Iran returned by flying the length of the mediterranean, going past Spain, then hanging a right and going north, then over Ireland and into England, where they are not involved in the war but hang bombs on American bombers and allow American stockpiles of bombs, etc.

Option 3: the more complicated version of #1. Hit the bombers at their base in England or Spain. Use 3 or 4 Ukrainian-style drones. Boom. I don’t know how hard it would be to get a small special operations squad into England. I’m guessing “not very” and then it’s rent a car and drive up to the air base. The Moron base seems to have some nice vineyards around; I wonder how good their site security is. You’d want to test it first, with a young couple, maybe, looking for a good place to make out; see if anyone notices.

All of these would be legal under whatever passes for “the laws of war” but I’d guess there’s a good chance that the US, at least, would simply announce that the strike squad were “illegal combatants” or such, and do something horrible to them. Because, as everyone has been noticing now, the US are a bunch of utterly horrible war criminals whenever they get the chance, and they would not respect someone’s surrender. So, then the thing to do would be to find some pissed off former MAGA rednecks with guns and have them hang outside the bomber base and fire at the bombers when they are taking off. C’mon Fred you can show us that cool ass .50 cal you bought at the gun show, and the APIT rounds you got for it.

This is, of course, another case of “bringing up the Force Protection Problem.” Or, as I used to say when I worked in computer security: “distributed systems have distributed vulnerabilities.”* The US has built itself a military that has global reach and rapid strike power, because it’s stationed all over the place. Every one of those places is a valid military target. When or if things get worse here, some citizens may [shall I do a review posting on some of Rousseau’s notions on the legitimacy of the state?] may decide that the US Government is no longer their government and represents an occupying power. International Humanitarian Law says that people under occupation can attack the military of the occupier and it’s not a war crime for them to do so. Of course the US would still scream “terrorist” and disappear anyone who did that.

* Someone had been making news about hackers having a copy of the Epstein Files that they allegedly obtained through a physical “black bag job” on an FBI office. For various reasons I am inclined to think that’s a cover story for some insider who just chose to leak.

I saw some footage someone shot and posted on Instagram of a B-52 taking off from a base in England. There was a smallish crowd of gawping brits. Boy would they be surprised if someone from the small group of “students” pulled an AK and told everyone to hit the ground, then 2 of them pulled out Stinger missiles. It would be, literally, impossible to miss a target that big and that hot, as it was taking off, they’re practically moving at walking speed to a heat-seeking missile.

[Moron air force base in Spain. Some of the patterns are google maps’ default fill for things you are not supposed to see. It’s located here. The gray pad area just up to the right of center looks like default fill. The taxiway out, that goes under the two covered pads, is probably where the bombers park to load, so a satellite can’t see what’s being hung in them.]

It is possible that Sun Tzu does not have any dicta that cover the Force Protection Problem. I’m also fairly sure that Napoleon’s various military maxims don’t – but my memory may not be working. The FPP really applies to insurgency and counter-insurgency warfare; Napoleon’s forces had considerable difficulty with “irregulars” in the Spanish campaign, and similar problems with the cossacks in Russia, but I bet that was one of those things he didn’t want to talk about.

There are videos on youtube purporting to be B-52s taking off from an airport in the mediterranean, escorted by NATO F-16s and in communication with the local tower controller. Since all of that stuff is coalition “battlefield communication” and the tower controller would not be expected to have military crypto gear, there’s a good chance – let’s say around 100% – that those comms are all in the clear. The reason Option 2, above, is such a big problem is because it responds to the often-flung trope, which “it’s OK if battlefield comms are in the clear, nobody would have time to react usefully to any information gathered.” Oh, really? That does not apply if you’re taking off on the beginning of a 2-hour run into Iran. In fact, you txt the commander responsible for the antiair missile batteries and they have 2 frickin’ hours to get ready for some heat signatures inbound and to get friendly aircraft out of there.