Yes, while the basic mechanics aren't particularly sensitive in 2022. The exact details with regards to range, penetrating power, accuracy, weight are.
Given this information an adversary can adjust tactics to engage at a range that's more optimal for their rounds, recognize that they should use alternate longer range strikes, or devise long term mitigations.
Given that all of the above actions are expensive, it's a lot easier to take them when you have the exact specs. The problem is even worse with air to air missiles where pilots can be trained to counter most missiles if they have the exact performance characteristics.
You may also make an adversary believe they have a much larger advantage then they do, inviting a conflict.
There is substantial debate as to whether the open development of projects such as the f-35 is beneficial or harmful compress to the secret development of things like the J-20. The congressional interrogations of Lockheed Likely help ensure that the f-35 works as advertised, but adversaries gain insight into the development timeline, problems, and more specs than they would have otherwise.
> The congressional interrogations of Lockheed Likely help ensure that the f-35 works as advertised
I am under the impression the f-35 will never deliver what was advertised since it was a sales effort based on fantasy physics. It probably is delivering the actual intended effect, which is transferring money from taxpayers to military contractors and job votes for certain senators.
Which makes you wonder, how badly are the secret fighter jet programs intended to compete with the F-35 or similar stealth planes actually going?
The MIG-25's capabilities were famously misinterpreted by western intelligence, resulting in the creation of the F-15 Eagle. Undoubtedly similar confusions resulted in the F-22 program through the 1980s.
> I am under the impression the f-35 will never deliver what was advertised since it was a sales effort based on fantasy physics.
It will deliver, though. Because the physics don't matter nearly as much - unless you are talking about radar signature physics. Aircraft today are mobile ordnance delivery platforms. Those Top Gun air to air stunts? Unlikely to happen. Supermaneuvarability stuff doesn't matter at all if you are getting hit before you even know the enemy is there. Or you might know, because one F35 has the radar on, only to get hit from a completely different aircraft that's getting the data link.
What does matter is getting in undetected (while coordinating with your peers), delivering your payload, getting back out. Or doing recon, etc.
They are most likely talking about radar signature physics. Stealth to lower frequency radar requires physically implausible materials. So does the supposedly undetectable radar of the F-35. Plenty of physics-bending specs.
> They are most likely talking about radar signature physics. Stealth to lower frequency radar requires physically implausible materials.
But then the question moves to: what are the weaknesses of those lower frequency radars, and can those be exploited to restore the advantage of the stealth features? The admittedly not-great Wikipedia page about low frequency radar seems to indicate it has a lot of disadvantages like being difficult to transport, prone to noise, and not being precise enough for targeting.
Advances in missile technology, specifically Track Via Missile, means that they don't need to be precise enough for targeting anymore, they can be off by 100-200m+, but as long as the velocity measurement is good, the missile can fly in the neighborhood, acquire the target, and cooperate with the radar to confirm that they are locked into the same target and maintain a perfect track. They are definitely difficult to transport compared to others, but they are now small enough to be integrated into a truck, and communication is good enough they can segmented into more modules that can be on different vehicles and still work, greatly increasing transportability and survivability (the antenna is cheap, so it can be almost sacrificial as long as the processing is done elsewhere). Susceptibility to noise is a much lesser concern now due to the generalization of AESA technology.
We can now also do sensor fusion, so a low frequency radar can communicate with other radars and even higher frequency radars that wouldn't be able to detect the target in search mode but could obtain some data in track mode to obtain almost perfect accuracy, make it difficult to evade, provide redundancy, defeat jamming, and discriminate against decoys and chaff, as well as provide bistatic capability and help in noncooperative identification. Also crucial is to defeat stealthy antiradar weapons an F-35 might fire in self protection by tracking them from a direction they might not be stealthy in and provide warning or even targeting information to shoot down.
Integrated air defences are very scary, and it's actually incredibly concerning for the USAF that they never fought against a real IADS. Russia is doing so right now in Ukraine and it's clearly not easy even against 40+ year old systems not even being used as designed, and for the same reason no Ukrainian fixed wing has been able to launch any incursion into Russian territory, only helicopters flying way below the radar horizon.
That it was possible to make an all in one plane for all branches of military for all purposes, and have verticals take off and landing for the Marines. And have some type of 360 degree futuristic digital heads-up display?
I did not bother with reading into all the details, I just know there have been article after article about the plane failing to reach expectation after expectation for basically my whole adult life now.
Not to mention that drones render human piloted jets much less necessary or useful.
>> Can you be more specific? What about the F35 was based on "fantasy physics"?
> That it was possible to make an all in one plane for all branches of military for all purposes, and have verticals take off and landing for the Marines.
That's not so much fantasy physics as it is fantasy product management.
IIRC, the major result of that was that the program cost way more to end up delivering three different planes that cost too much to fill the roles they were supposed to.
> And have some type of 360 degree futuristic digital heads-up display?
I even worked with military simulators, and they themselves are segregated. The simpler ones use the "marketing" figures for secret stuff (the thing I specifically remember was range for air-to-air robots and turn capabilities etc), whereas some might use the real figures. I don't think even the most high fidelity simulators always use 100% accurate info, especially when it comes to radar stuff which is very very well guarded. Even though a lot of the code can be identical to the "flying code" for aircraft, there is still a lot of physical stuff that needs to be specifically modelled.
Given the actual harddisk size compared with advertised and how nutritional value and calories in supermarket foods are often misleading, it can be safe to say that the specification is hard to be believed.
To an extent. But weapon specifications often have pretty gigantic error bars on them.
After all, the range of a tank gun isn't just a question of how far it can send a shell - it's also a question of how well the gun can be aimed, how hard the shells have to hit when they arrive, and whether the 'effective' in 'effective range' means a 20% chance of a kill or a 90% chance.
By messing around with those definitions, the M1 Abrams tank has a range of anything from 2,500m to 4000m to 8000m. Pretty hard to sanity-check such a wide range of figures.
a huge portion of classified/sensitive material is not all that interesting/cutting edge. But if you'd rather an adversary not know it, or it could potentially be exploited then it'll be marked classified.
