The F-117s modus operandi looks to me as drawing from what Mosquito did in ww2.
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The idea that you need to have thrust vectoring to be truly highly manuverable isn't really correct. Thrust vectoring is heavy and for some aircraft that have very good natural aerodynamic characteristics it s benefits do not outweigh thus weight penalty, or are at least do not enough to justify the extra expense and maintenance costs.
Thrust vectoring, when/if installed, made Su-30 more maneuverable than Su-27/30 versions without the VT, and I think that we can agree that Su-27 family was very maneuverable from the outset. It is not heavy, since we know it was an addition to the aircraft already in production. The '3D' nozzles were installed away from the centre of gravity, meaning that any excessive weight (had it existed) would've made aircraft unstable.
The right excuse for non-installation of thrust vectoring is 'this or that country either does not want to spend money on it, or it does not have the money', plain and simple.
Aircraft like the F-22 which sacrificed a lot of aerodynamic optimisation for low observability shaping, have to use thrust vectoring to brute force their high manueverability. Even then the Typhoon is a superior close quarters combatant, especially during the merge to dog fighting where its manuever ability at supersonic speeds is exceptional.
Is the 1st line an opinion, or proven fact? I'd say an opinion.
After the days of biplanes, Oscars and Zeros, going for a maneuverability as the 1st thing for a fighter was proven wrong. Zeros lost to Hellcats, 109s lost to P-51s, Migs lost to the F-4/15/16.
Typhoon ( or any other 'classic', non-stealth fighter) vs. a stealth fighter means that 'classic' has 1st to dodge missiles incoming, while pilot is questioning him 'who is actually lobbing those missiles at me?'. The wide gapping intakes helping the stealth attacker to get firing solution dozens of miles away.
LPI is only a temporary solution, and highly likely to be rendered inffective in a jamming heavy environment. increases in the effectiveness of onboard signal processing is likely to lead to the point where LPI simply isn't. Whilst straight jamming has far more life time potential than an RCS shaping + LPI combination.
The usage of stealth/low observable A/C does not mean that airborne jammer is somehow forbidden. Quirk might be that having no jammers around, or a low number means that low observable A/C still can operate, the 'classic' is in trouble.
LPI is perhaps two decades around, does not look like a temporary solution.
You could improve the LPI but there is only so much that can be done, and the diminishing returns likely escalate quite quickly, and reach what is effectively a hard ceiling. However your opponent will likely always have access to more powerful hammers and better signal processors.
RCS reduction is of course useful for air combat, but once you start sacrificing aerodynamic performance for it, the costs start to outweigh the benefits. Unless of course you subscribe to the BVR + LPI godmode win strategy being viable.
Too many 'likely' qualifires to make a response. The battle between electronics measures and counter-measures is a see-saw one.
Neither F-22 nor T-50 are sarificing performance because they employ low observability features, neither is slower than Eurocanards. BVR plus low observability result in ability to strike 1st, and was used in last 25-30 years with success, BVR a decade or two longer.
Well that really depends, that statement was possibly somewhat true in the 90s and even early 2000s but subsequently that isn't true so much anymore. Even the USAF has started to push the once vaunted 'super stealth' F-35 as a forward electronic warfare platform.
The USAF has no other combat aircraft to use, so F-35 became do-it-all. BTW, I don't rate F-35 that high - European airforces need an affordbale fighter that is vastly better than F-16C, while USAF needs a bomb hauler better than F-16/F-15E/F-117/A-10 - and IMO F-35 can't do all of that. Toss in the need for the Harrier replacement and cost overruns are not surprising.
The Russians effort has far less LO features than American designs and is very much about keeping aerodynamic capability. The Russians and the Europeans hugely invested in Jammng technology. As is the US Navy. The idea that the stealth costs more than jamming in development is also very wrong. The electronics required for jamming and signal processing is very high cost, and large amounts of money has been poured into that area. If the UK had wanted to it could have had an indigenous deep strike stealth aircraft by now. Money was not the issue, instead that a great deal of people outside the USAF were not on the BVR death spam hype train.
I don't buy it that electronics for jamming are of higher cost than developing a brand new aircraft. Electronics can draw from commercial stuff that makes great strides as we speak, but low-observable A/C can't do that.
I'm not sure why you did not include the USAF into air force that invests into jamming. The BVR is not 'death spam hype', the BVR air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles are in European inventories for decades now. I'm not sure what part of it's armed forces UK will delete in order to acquire, in numbers, an own deep strike aircraft on their own.
The T-50 combines shaping, internal missile bay(s) and Materials in order to lower it's observability. Don't think that non-classified sources can tell exactly how the T-50 compares with, say, F-22 in stealth.
As for the Chinese, I'm uncertain exactly what they are up to. They appear to be following the late 90s American full stealth model. Whether that is because they believe it will be effective from their own research, or out of cargo cultism, I don't know.
Finally none of this to say that radical RCS reduction on aircraft is a universally a bad idea. It is a highly viable strategy for deep strike aircraft like the B-2. Just not really worth the costs for air combat.
As above - not being seen until too late is an asset.