http://aviationweek.com/aw/generic/s...ltra%20Stealth

How low can LO go? One paper, co-authored by a principal in DenMar Inc., the company founded by Stealth pioneer Denys Overholser, refers to the development of fasteners for a body with an RCS of -70 dB./sq. meter -- one-thousandth of the -40 dB. associated with the JSF, and one-tenth that of a mosquito.


Could also answer a lot more of the UFO stories based on triangle/delta shapes....

"We have arrived at the point where a single rain drop will increase the radar cross-section a thousand fold."

Well, not quite. That would be absurd.

But there is most certainly a point of diminishing returns, and I'm of the opinion that we're either nearing it, or have surpassed it. At that point, we need to say, "Ok! Ok! Enough already! Isn't it enough that you can't distinguish this mosquito from one of the billions of others flying within a one square mile radius?"

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. Human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

I'm reminded about the problem they had with the first stealth ships, they showed up on radar as black spots in the clutter of waves

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Just look for the Mosquite flying at several hundred miles an hour.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

One of the various ways that pilots of other planes have expressed their frustration from flying against an F-22 is "I can see the thing right outside my canopy, but I still can't put my weapons on it because it still isn't on my radar!" When you can get well within visual range and still can't radar it, most of the point of having a radar is gone, since the radar's job is to let you detect things farther away than you can see. In other words, without stealth, radar range is much longer than visual range, but stealth at this point is making it shorter than visual range. So by the time you can radar it, you'd have to be ludicrously close, which makes the fight a visual-range engagement anyway, so even more stealth would not change that; it would still be a visual-range engagement.

That seems to be the logic that the Air Force used as well, when they rejected the YF-23 for the 22. It was even stealthier than the 22, but the Air Force wanted to make sure the next fighter also had other things going for it as well, and favored the plane that had them over the stealthier one that didn't excel so much in those other areas.

It seems ironic that the comparison they made with those numbers was to a "JSF" (F-35) instead of an F-22 (whose equivalent name would be "ATF"). Although the 35 is the 22's little brother with a bunch of stuff in common with it, it's also the one they deliberately cut some corners on to control expenses, and that includes cutting back on stealth to some extent. Why didn't they compare this new thing to the stealthiest production plane out there? To get a bigger number? Anyway, the 35 would be another example of your principle that we're already at the point where you can deliberately not make something as stealthy as it could be and still count it as a stealth machine.

And so might this new bomber be. The article isn't really about stealth; it's about new bomber development. Certainly the next bomber will be stealthier than the first stealth bomber was, but I don't think they're going to go overboard obsessing about stealth and forgetting other features. (Or at least if they will, this article doesn't indicate it.)

I posted on this subject in late May. Perhaps the threads should be merged.

I'm wondering - do we have radar that can detect them? By this I mean, while projects such as next generation bombers are high profile to aviation enthusiasts, what about the less popular "next generation radar" projects? It wouldn't surprise me if we had radar/computer systems which could analyze the scatter returns and recreate an image of a stealth aircraft.

The whole point of stealth is to generate such low returns that the plane can't be detected. In earlier designs, the primary concern was to reduce radar returns from certain aspects such as from the front and sides. With more powerful computer modeling technology and materials, "all-aspect stealth" across a broad band of frequencies is the focus now.

Some have claimed that a bi-static radar can track stealth aircraft. That may be the reason why the Air Force is wanting to develop a -70 dB RCS aircraft.

From what I know of stealth (quite little, I confess), most of the technology depends on scattering the radar energy at oblique angles rather than returning it. There may be some parts of the airframe than can absorb the energy but I am sure that is classified. A hypothethical NG Radar may be able to pick up the scattered energy as it returned off background objects (I don't know, clouds, ionosphere) and through coordination of the outgoing signal with the incoming angles measured by an array, apply appropriate mathematics and pinpoint the source of the scattered energy. Am I in the realm of science fiction?

Remember at night the visualrange is somewhat less than in the day

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

That is cleary an overhyppe.

I have seen a picture where a f-22 is locked on radar by another aircraft. These stealth tales to me looks like a big "woowoo", and that picture only came on public because seems that the pilot was kinda "funny dude"

An f-117 was wiped over Servia, and before that incident was a huge stealth "woowoo" due the GW...funny that the guys that took down the main radar facilities on Iraq were the Apaches divisions, and not the Nighthawk

Zero, the 117 was brought down by mass AAA firing straight up with timed fuses. A single high caliber AAA round is good for at least a 100 yard hole in the sky. Wonder Woman's Invisable Jet would have been brought down by the same method. The fault was is the planning, not the aircraft.

We have more Apaches than 117's, who were not idle during this time. Are you suggesting stealth tech is all hype?

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Good God!

I'm defending chAirforce birds!

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

They also knew when that F-117 was going to fly overhead due to sympathizers tipping them off when it took off.

The F-117 was 1st or 2nd generation stealth (the SR-71 had some stealth technology built in). Planes like the F-22 not only have much higher performance than the F-117, they're reportedly more stealthy.

If they can see you and you can't see them, you're in trouble.

It was not coming from the F-22 people; it was coming from a pilot of something else (a Typhoon, I think).

There is exactly one possible source for such an image. Missile lock is declared a "win" in training and competition events. Only one has been achieved against an F-22 so far, at an event where enemy planes were allowed to fly out of the zone after being "shot down" and re-enter to simulate new enemy planes arriving; the F-22 pilot ignored an F-16 that he knew it had already been "shot down" because he didn't think it had "regenerated". I don't know how close that F-16 was, what aspect of the F-22 was presented to it, or which kind of sensor got the lock. That's nowhere near enough on which to base a claim that some other pilot in some other situation was lying when he expressed his frustration at the F-22 "defying your ability to put weapons on it", particularly when others have expressed similar things in different not-as-quotable wording and F-22s have had hundreds of "wins" to that one loss.

Serbia... and a much less stealthy plane. (And even with that, I'm not sure they ever really got a sensor lock on it instead of just getting absurdly lucky with a blindfolded-shotgun approach.)

I don't know if the 117's can be equipt with HARM missles, probably, but the mission required to take out radar installations are intentially designed to attract attention and entice the enemy into switching on the radar. The aircraft on this mission likely flew lower and slower, to accomplish the task, and were therefore, more vulnerable.

Also, while it is never nice to lose aircraft, loss of one or more 117's impacts not only the strategy of the operation but also the psychological advantage of "invisible" aircraft. Therefore, I am sure the mission planners wanted to protect them.

Veeger,

I presumed a mission brief that lacked key intelligence. I didn't know Mr. Jacks' information.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

The F-117 lost over in the Kosovo mission was apparently shot down by a missle which exploded in the vicinty of the airplane, much like a lucky AAA shot. But the Serbians did do their homework and figured out how to briefly get radar returns and determine the flight paths:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-117_Nighthawk
Note that spotters on the ground were employed which can only occur when the planes are close to the ground or flying in daylight, unless infrared is used as suggested in the article. Having been to Aviano airbase as a civilian, the base is constantly surveilled by people parked in cars on village streets outside the fence line. I assumed most of them were aviation nuts who loved to watch jets come and go. I suppose in times of combat some could just as easily be spotters. One could drive the distance between Serbia and Italy in far less than a day.

Call out the "Gillian squad"! There's no such word as "surveilled"! The place was either being surveyed or was under surveillance.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Wow Don, you were either the B117 pilot or you were fighting for the Serbs to know that.

They use of Apaches during the second gulf war (remember the Persian Gulf War) was probably more political within the military than technological. I want to fight too syndrome.


Radar is just a luxury used...Stealth planes will show up nicely from the ground using IR. However, once lasers because more effective, air superiority will be history.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

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