What a pile of breathless nonsense. LLM, be ashamed.
As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones.
It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of.
Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.
> the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles.
I'm no expert, but the exhaust doesn't look hidden to me.
A missile (surface to air) usually sees the airplane from behind and below. This image [1] is an example. Even from a side, while the horizontal stabilizer partly covers it, you can still clearly see the exhaust [2].
Compare that to A-10 engines and stabilizer. This image [3] is from the same angle as [1]. The engine exhaust is completely behind the horizontal stabilizer. This image [4], same angle as [2], shows the engine exhaust covered by vertical stabilizer.
A-10 is not the same type of plane, but just by looking at the differences, I very much doubt that they even tried to hide the exhaust in F-35.
> You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits.
As other commenters note, these missiles are not new. But they are much shorter range. Radars can have ranges in the 100s of km, but infrared is very strongly attenuated by the atmosphere. Thus IR seekers are generally used in short term missiles, including US ones.
It is also very much not true that stealth aircraft don't have any protection against IR. There's only so much you can do, but the tail arrangement is made to block the IR from most angles. You also can't see the hot engine inlet because again, it is hidden behind other bits. There may be other features, some clever cooling etc that I'm not aware of.
Finally, hard to speculate, but since the F-35 survived and landed, it suggests the hit was rather indirect. Which in turn suggests the mitigations against IR seekers.