The day will eventually come when counter stealth technology defeats stealth technology. Counter stealth may not remain triumphant but it will have its day. It's the way of history; think tank/anti-tank technology. It's always a seesaw battle.
Right now, the F-35's primary asset is stealth technology. But for how long?
http://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-south-china-sea-japan-counter-stealth-2017-1Indeed, Beijing has reportedly even come close to cracking an engineering problem that could render traditional stealth aircraft irrelevant — quantum radar. In September, the South China Morning Post reported that a Chinese military official said China has developed a new form of radar that can detect stealth planes up to 60 miles away. Not only that, but the radar cannot be spoofed with modern technology...
..."We're in a bit of a race here," said Davis. "Stealth aircraft have to continually develop their capabilities to offset counter-stealth systems ... There's a constant battle between stealth vs counter stealth."
Indeed.
It seems the US feels stealth can be countered with new radar as well.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/get-ready-china-the-us-navys-possible-stealth-killer-coming-18966...“It is the physics of longer wavelength and resonance that enables VHF and UHF radar to detect stealth aircraft,” Westra wrote in his article, titled “Radar vs. Stealth.”...
...There is a resonance effect that occurs when a feature on an aircraft—such as a tail-fin tip—is less than eight times the size of a particular frequency wavelength. That omnidirectional resonance effect produces a “step change” in an aircraft’s radar cross-section. Effectively, what that means is that small stealth aircraft that do not have the size or weight allowances for two feet or more of radar absorbent material coatings on every surface are forced to make trades as to which frequency bands they are optimized for.
That would include aircraft like the Chengdu J-20, Shenyang J-31, Sukhoi PAK-FA and, indeed, the United States’ own Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Only very large stealth aircraft without protruding empennage surfaces—like the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit or the forthcoming B-21 Raider Long Range Strike Bomber—can meet the requirement for geometrical optics regime scattering. Effectively, that means the E-2D’s AN/APY-9 radar can see stealth aircraft like the J-20 or J-31...
That second part in bold would be more correct if it said
"can see aircraft like the Chengdu J-20, Shenyang J-31, Sukhoi PAK-FA and, indeed, the United States’ own Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter."So with any of the world's stealth aircraft it's a fair question to ask how effective will it be accomplishing its mission when stealth countermeasures overwhelm the current stealth technology of the Chengdu J-20, Shenyang J-31, Sukhoi PAK-FA and, indeed, the United States’ own Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and tri-service F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
In other words, when the stealth cloak of those five aircraft is stripped away and any two go head to head, which one will win in an air-to-air encounter?
