this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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If you can detect, you can intercept. If you can detect, suddenly a whole host of interception strategies are viable.
Your second sentence is mostly accurate, your first is not.
Just because tracking radar identifies something, does not mean it's automatically vulnerable to interception, and it definitely does not guarantee that targeting radar will be able to create a missile, or weapons, lock.
But yes, the ability to track something is a critical first step in an anti-air kill chain.
Your claim is that if I can track something to within 20m, I can't send a fighter (or multiple) up to engage with it?
No, my assertion is that airspace is very dynamic battlefield.
Just because you can track a possible stealth aircraft several hundred nautical miles off you're coast, does not guarantee your ability to intercept it with aircraft before it drops it's payload, or that your SAM sites will be able to get a missile targeting lock.
It's just a first step.
And this is also true of conventional jet intercepts. Point being, the problem of stealth is basically no longer a problem.
Interceptors haven't been a thing since the cold war. BVR engagements have been the air to air norm for many years, and that requires a weapons grade targeting lock.