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ckfinite -> RE: New Radars, IRST Strengthen Stealth-Detection Claims (4/17/2015 8:00:51 PM)
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quote:
stealth technology represents a false promise of invulnerability
No, it never did - and the only people who claimed that were misguided. What stealth provides is increased difficulty of detection.
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also i did not know until now, that the soviet union "helped" stealth in the USA: Pyotr Ufimtsev's famous work "method of edge waves in the physical theory of diffraction" from 1964 was later translated and studied by US scientists
Notable for the 30 year gap in adoption by the Soviets/Russians. They didn't really realize what they had until the US found it first (very much like the Japanese and the Yagi antenna), and they certiantly didn't have the computer power to leverage it. Furthermore, the techniques for CFEA have evolved substantially since then, as indicated by the more sophisticated shaping of the B-2, F-22, and F-35 that isn't easily modeled within Ufimtsev's framework.
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stealth is not invincible... many AESA sensors can detect VLO aircraft and missiles now.
Any radar can, at sufficiently small range. AESA is not a requirement. Stealth is a physically motivated technology, reducing signal to noise for all systems at all ranges under any condition. This means that a non-stealth aircraft will always be detected before a stealth one.
Now, for the F-35 comment:
First, I want to note that whale.to is about the least reputable source that it is humanly possible to exist (IIRC, they're one of the sources of the hollow earth idea), so I will instead discuss the presentation that you linked instead.
The claim you're trying to substantiate with this source is:
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IMHO the f-35 is toast. anti-stealth tech will neutralize stealth up to zero.
I will take this to mean that you believe that the F-35 will be equivalently detectable to an F-16 with respect to a combination of counter stealth technologies. Let's evaluate this claim.
For the purposes of having numbers about RCS that exist, we will be considering both aircraft in a clean loadout, which on the F-16 is 2xAIM-9, and on the F-35 is 2xAMRAAM + whatever is internal. Any additional load on the F-16 will dramatically increase RCS, though how much is difficult to estimate without detailed information. Already, the F-35 has a substantial weaponry edge for this given level of detectability.
From your presentation, the F-16 has a frontal RCS of 1.2m^2, and the F-35 has a frontal RCS of .005m^2. This applies to all forms of radar, however shaping becomes less important and paint materials become more important as wavelength get longer (and frequencies get lower). This has a number of crucial benefits, as the presentation mentions and are easily seen on slide 12. The F-35 has a dBsm of about -35, all the way to the left of the graph, and the F-16 has a dBsm of about 2, most of the way to the right of the graph. As such, the F-35 would be detected by L-band (the lowest deployed) at ~60 km, compared to the F-16 at 300km. This isn't looking good for the F-16.
The next relevant slide is page 21, which quotes an image from Kopp's laughable analysis of the F-35's shaping from about 3 pictures of it. If you want to see what this should look like, see his computational analysis of the PAK-FA, and compare the quality of the methodologies. This figure and all the figures derived from it are highly suspect, as such, and don't warrant discussion.
Now, multistatic radar. There are problems with the technology that aren't mentioned a lot, most notably the fact that reduced RCS and RAM features mean that the secondary return is also reduced. Additionally, the technology is untried on long wavelength transmissions, with the majority of systems (such as Silent Sentinel) working on cellphone signals in the Ghz range.
ESM is easily countered by a combination of LPI and EMCON - techniques that are becoming steadily more common among air forces. The F-35 won't go flying around banging away with it's radar on 24/7.
Low frequency radar is really the only major concern, as demonstrated by the major interest in the technology. However, as demonstrated by the chart in the presentation, stealth platforms are harder to detect with this radar, and always will by (physics, again). The lower frequency simply pushes the range out from 10 miles to 50 - and they cost enough that at 50 mile separation you can't buy enough of them to surveil a large enough area.
OTH radar is both really uncommon - only the Australians have a good one - and really inaccurate and imprecise. Knowing that there's a contact 500nmi out doesn't help much when the AOI is 50km on a side and you have no information at all about type.
IRST. The problem here is that you're looking through a really tiny straw at a really big sky - it's like trying to find an ant at your feet, given a drinking straw to look for. The systems work great for identification once the target is acquired, but until that point you're squat out of luck. Furthermore, the F-35 likely has a substantially reduced IR signature thanks to novel internal cooling solutions (which, incidentally, cause the fuel temperature restrictions), and a new IR-reducing engine nozzle. These systems provide the F-35 with an IR signature equal to or smaller than the competition - and remember that the F-35 has a bleeding-edge IRST system of its own. Furthermore, western IRST systems are far ahead of the Russian technology, with IIR missiles widely deployed and targeting pods existing at all. The experience of western pilots in IRST equipped Soviet aircraft is that the IRST systems in those aircraft are not tactically relevant.
Note that the dogfight between the Rafale and F-22 was both (a) a dogfight, where stealth is at its least useful, and (b) relying on French figures.
Stealth is not a panacea - but signature reduction technology is important to the modern battlefield, and you've presented no evidence whatsoever that this technology is 100% outmoded the way you claim. The F-35 is the result of a lot of work - work that the Russians and Chinese clearly value or else they wouldn't be developing the PAK-FA and J-20 with similar ideas.
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