alt Hacker News> modern air defense environment
Wildly dependent on your definition of "modern", which mostly depends on your potential adversary. The Russia/Ukraine, and the new war in the Gulf have shown numerous ways in which 4th generation jets, and more importantly cheaper missiles and even more cheap drones can perform supression of enemy air defences and/or air support. Unless you're fighting the US or China, 4th gen jets are plenty. And even against US and US defended locations, cheap drones and missiles have been able to influct some pretty serious damage to critical infrastructure (like extremely expensive and rare radar systems). An adversary not crippled by extreme sanctions and corruption for decades might have been able to achieve even more, even with the total lack of airpower.
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Russia/Ukraine war shows that 4th generation jets are not survivable in any current as of 2026 air defense environment.
Presuming that state of affairs will persist though is fraught.
It's quite likely that in about 5 years most military installations will have a mix of weapons to intercept those systems - and depending on a number of factors you could easily end up back at low performance drones being so reliably intercepted as to be a waste of munitions to deploy.
WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking: surely the volume of an army would overcome the machine gun.
4th generation aircraft are not sustainable in modern combat without a wide array of assistance from EW etc. The losses of aircraft in Ukraine on both sides are horrifying. The only reasons the Ukrainians persist is because they have no choice. The Russians can sit outside of the Ukrainian engagement range and lob semi-smart bombs, or air to air missiles at any Ukrainian aircraft that show up on their radar.
The real reason stealth is needed is as a counter to GBAD. Modern anti-aircraft missiles are incredible lethal.