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I mean...do you? Look at WW2. Past winners prepared for a trench war. Especially in wars, looking at what used to win is just weird. There's been no good environment to establish what actually works and what doesn't.
As I understand it, NATO doctrine is really not well prepared for what's going on in Ukraine
Russia is not firing them at Israeli war planes. Don't know what the etiquette is at locking targeting radars on IAF, but I imagine it's also not done there for obvious reasons (in a war zone, the logical thing is for someone to fire an anti-radiation missile the other way) so Israelis in F-35s wouldn't know if they're being acquired.
Later I thought of another reason for it : trying to pressure arm Turkey into buying Patriots or other NATO system. Looks like it's much more complicated:
https://warontherocks.com/2019/07/the-tale-of-turkey-and-the-patriots/
Turkey has been trying to build Patriots, but wanted some technology transfer to occur. Americans said no, won't let an ally license . So then they threatened to buy Chinese SAMs. Eventually bought the S-400.
I don't mean what people used to win, I mean look at what past winners are doing now. I would trust the Iranians over the Iraqis over what sort of capability is the right trend to go for winning in the region, just as I would trust the Taliban over the ANA. Similarly, I would trust NATO over Warsaw Pact, or Israel over Egypt, on who is likely to have a clearer head on what is more likely to work. I would also point out that this calculus changes rapidly, and we do see that with NATO suddenly trying - and failing - to rediscover the love of 155mm artillery.
With regards to aerial operations, this statement simply is not true. Since Vietnam, we have not seen a single instance of air supremacy being countered by GBAD, with Mole Cricket 19 and Gulf War 1 showing how a full spectrum multi layer GBAD network can be curbstomped by the threat they are supposed to be the hard counter towards, and thats against Phantoms and F15s that have the RCS of a bus. Meritorious arguments about whether those were 'anomalies', such as what Kenneth Pollack does in 'Armies of sand' when he cites specific cultural into organizational into C&C failures of Arabs as specific reasons why those systems failed have been made, so it is up to us to decide whether 'near peers' like the Chinese or Russians are necessarily up to scratch - current Ukraine would point to that not being the case, with most casualties for the UAF being the caused by the excellent Mig-31 mounted R37 air launched missile. I would also point out that many countries in the NATO sphere have their own Air Defense Artillery - specifically Patriot and their own ADA testing, even in adverse conditions, has lead them to conclude that buying into the F35 is still a good decision. I would like to imagine comically large sacks of money changing hands as a smug lockmart exec combs his hair to the WSB dicaprio slickback, but that still means their internal papers have concluded it is better to purchase F35 even though other companies are knocking at the door with their own comically large kickbacks - the last major western aerial purchase scandal was Dassault in the 90s to my recollection, but there has been plenty of investigations launched with no firm conclusion since then.
So your thesis is both 'S400 is so good that it can detect the Israelis without them noticing' and 'Russia is polite so they won't try to acquire the S400 because otherwise its a shooting match'. This literally is the opposite of how routine flight operations are conducted - terrestrial radar - even normal airport tower - stations ALWAYS paint aircraft in neighbouring countries without issue so long as the airspace integrity isn't violated (see Turkey shooting down Russian jets the moment they crossed the border back in 2015 - the Russians were tracked long before they actually physically crossed). My point is that the Russians own presence in Syria allow the capabilities of the S400 in establishing a track on the F35 can be done without needing Turkey to act as the backdoor to upend the Secrets Of Stealth. There are plenty of other reasons for the S400 vs F35 spat that don't hinge on LockMart being nervous that F35 will be exposed for the failure it is.
Ultimately, I feel it is instructive to see the direction of where countries are focusing their efforts on in countering a modern aerial threat environment. More SHORAD solutions against drones, more natively integrated AESA inside stealthy aerial platforms, less dedicated ADA ground stations. Even India has demurred against exercising the option for purchasing the last remaining S400 units, and the Indians are the only major air force with a positive operational history that have not bet big on stealth as their air dominance capability. S400 certainly has its advantages, but it has not been assessed to be the stealth killer by the people actually making the decision to buy the damn things.
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