NonCredibleDefense
A community for your defence shitposting needs
Rules
1. Be nice
Do not make personal attacks against each other, call for violence against anyone, or intentionally antagonize people in the comment sections.
2. Explain incorrect defense articles and takes
If you want to post a non-credible take, it must be from a "credible" source (news article, politician, or military leader) and must have a comment laying out exactly why it's non-credible. Random twitter and YouTube comments belong in the Low Hanging Fruit thread.
3. Content must be relevant
Posts must be about military hardware or international security/defense. This is not the page to fawn over Youtube personalities, simp over political leaders, or discuss other areas of international policy.
4. No racism / hatespeech
No slurs. No advocating for the killing of people or insulting them based on physical, religious, or ideological traits.
5. No politics
We don't care if you're Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Stalinist, Baathist, or some other hot mess. Leave it at the door. This applies to comments as well.
6. No seriousposting
We don't want your uncut war footage, fundraisers, credible news articles, or other such things. The world is already serious enough as it is.
7. No classified material
Classified information is off limits regardless of how "open source" and "easy to find" it is.
8. Source artwork
If you use somebody's art in your post or as your post, the OP must provide a direct link to the art's source in the comment section, or a good reason why this was not possible (such as the artist deleting their account). The source should be a place that the artist themselves uploaded the art. A booru is not a source. A watermark is not a source.
9. No low-effort posts
No egregiously low effort posts. These include Social media screenshots with a title punchline / no punchline, recent (after the start of the Ukraine War) reposts, simple reaction & template memes, and images with the punchline in the title. Put these in weekly Low effort thread instead.
10. Don't get us banned
No brigading or harassing other communities. Do not post memes with a "haha people that I hate died… haha" punchline or violating the sh.itjust.works rules (below). This includes content illegal in Canada.
Other communities you may be interested in
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Nothing in international law says you're not allowed to shoot at something you can't see. Almost all radar based air defense missile systems can not see their targets.
There's multiple ways of identifying targets without looking at them. Radar cross sections are not all the same, you don't just get a target size back. Modern radar systems can make pretty accurate assessments of what they're looking at - down to different models of planes. Take into account altitude and speed of your contact and you can be very sure what's out there.
It's also highly unlikely that an F35 would try to identify a target on its own. They're heavily networked with ground based radars, other airplanes and there's almost always going to be an AWACS looking much further and with a more powerful radar. Modern BVR weapon systems also have a two-way data link, so you could abort an attack right down to the very last second.
But, most importantly, civilian airliners have transponders that broadcast an identifying signal. Even a shitty little Cessna has one.
As for the gun: it's there because people can't let go of them. Same reason why most air superiority fighters have them. As a last ditch weapon. We have zero confirmation of an air-to-air gun kill from Ukraine, a modern conflict between near peers (and most of those planes are old, compared to the F35). If the F35 is used the way it's meant to be used it will not be in visual range of any of its targets.
As for the F4 Phantom – AA missiles just weren't ready yet.