As soon as someone learns to detect F35 radar signal, more than half if it's stealth advantage melts away. So far U.S. has only made air-to-ground anti-radiation missiles, but the Russians have tried also air-to-air version.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile</a><p>All this has not gone unnoticed in the Pentagon, so radars like there have probably been in the works for quite some time. F35 sales pitches are probably warming up right now, so news like this are expected.<p>The only surprise for me is that this comes from the army and not the air force or navy. They probably need to worry about enemy droids. And if they worry about those droids using radar, they need to worry about enemy anti-radiation missiles.<p>This is probably part of larger picture of U.S. armed forces to avoid using Infra Red Search and Track (IRST). Because that makes stealth planes look bit silly, when you go past ~0,07m^2 radar cross section. At that point you would get parity with detection ranges of common radars and modern IRST sensors, which would be something like 80km for fighter jet sized object. But this would mean no operations in enemy airspace, as flight ceilings are typically around 20km. F35 has RCS 0,01 and F22 RCS 0,001 which is just great for operating in enemy airspace, if the enemy can't detect their radars and lacks IRST.<p>Currently it seems the best USAF can do about IRST is to pretend it doesn't matter. So if there is any coordination between the branches, the army has to get their own stealth radar against enemy drones. After two decades and gazillion dollars, we probably see subsonic F40-cool-skin, with reflecting mirror finish aluminum body, that eliminates this problem. And power projection and proceed uninhibited.<p>Why mirror finish aluminum? Current IRST sensors can detect current fighters from tens of kilometers away from sun heated surfaces radiating at IR spectrum. Having orthogonal plates means that sun glare doesn't hit the IR sensor directly, the mirror finish prevents excessive heating and smooth aluminum has very small IR emissivity naturally. Conveniently aircraft are already made from aluminum.<p>Right now we don't hear about this aluminum shit, because U.S. is still funding some weaponized lasers. Airborne lasers smelled like "overspending" before, but it's really going to smell like bluff when reflecting surfaces increase power requirements some 400%. They already suffer from bad power/weight ratios. But once naval laser "close-in weapon system" has been fielded (because any chance is a good one when you're desperate) we can go back to airplane design.<p>Sorry, this is bit long. I've had this autistic streak about this subject for past two weeks.