Long-Wave Radar Can Take the Stealth From Stealth Technology 275
AbrasiveCat (999190) writes "In the continuing game of cat and mouse between offensive and defensive technologies of war, the technology of radar stealth may have been matched by new multiple frequency radar systems. U.S Naval Institute News reports the Chinese and Russians may be developing such systems. The present radar systems use high frequency waves for accurately locating an incoming target. Stealth aircraft are designed to adsorb or reflect these waves away from the receiver. It turns out longer wave radars can see the stealth aircraft. The longer wave radar lacks the precision of the high frequency radar, but when the two are combined, as the Russians, Chinese (and U.S.) are doing, you can produce accurate targeting radar. The F117 may have been in a golden age for stealth technology, it will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives too late to be effective against other countries with advanced radar systems."
Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Interesting)
A few months ago, 60 Minutes aired a series of interviews with Air Force personnel who were behind the F-35 program. All of them said more or less the same thing about the F-35: it doesn't matter if the F-35 is less powerful or doesn't handle as well as other jets, because it was built around radar superiority and being able to detect Russian and Chinese fighters before they could detect it.
If it's the case that the Russians and Chinese now have radar systems that remove that radar superiority, the F-35 now looks like even more of a gigantic waste of money.
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Interesting)
It still might have an edge against fighters, at least for the time being. It sounds like the dual radar systems are being installed on larger surface vehicles, but there could always be a smaller version for fighters on the way. Of course, if the fighters are able to receive targeting data from the ships then it wouldn't matter (as long as that targeting data isn't being jammed).
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Physics may prevent the antennas needed for long wave radar from working on fighters fast and maneuverable enough to be a threat to the F-35.
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IRST is enough of a problem at mid and short ranges as is.
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Arrays will be steerable enough.
Keeping them small enough to fit on ships, that's fun.
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Interesting)
The real purpose of stealth isn't to be invisible, but is to avoid being visible enough to hit. The bird [wikipedia.org] I worked on, the HAWK missile [designation-systems.net] was a semi-active radar homing missile operating in the military portion of the x-band, 10GHzish and was 37 cm, or 14.5 inches in diameter which is about 10 wavelength in diameter which is the rule of thumb for getting enough angular resolution for to hit what your shooting at. By having to go long-wave any semi-active homer isn't going to be able to resolve the target clearly enough to really hit it, having missiles flying close misses to your aircraft is still freaky enough to make a pilots asshole tighten considerable just like you don't want a blind man throwing knives at your sound, which brings us to the other components of stealth which are not being where your expected to be and not doing what your expected to be doing.
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't.
The F35 is the classic "it tries to do 255 things, so it does none of them well" thing. It needed rethinking for all sort of other reasons already, but by now it has too much political inertia. You'd have to get too many people to admit they made a mistake.
Wrong! The F-35 does exactly what it was designed to do very well: Provide almost half a trillion dollars in corporate welfare to the aerospace industry spread across 45 states. So what if it's not safe to fly, doesn't do what it was meant to do, and is incredibly expensive over its projected lifetime? Gotta keep Lockheed Martin, insider trading Congressional staffers and Senators, et alia, in Cadillacs and Mink coats...
Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Insightful)
Welfare to the poor: bad because it removes the incentive to improve oneself. Welfare to the rich: fantastic!
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't. The F35 is the classic "it tries to do 255 things, so it does none of them well" thing. It needed rethinking for all sort of other reasons already, but by now it has too much political inertia. You'd have to get too many people to admit they made a mistake.
Everyone seems to not understand that that's exactly what the F35 requirements were. Unlike previous so called multi-role aircraft, which typically were designed for the Air Force and then poorly adapted to other roles, the F35 is a true Swiss army knife. The criticism seems to be heaviest for the Air Force version, probably because as I mentioned, multi-roles it replaces were initially designed for them. It cannot take on air-superiority fighters in combat, penetrate or evade advanced air defenses but that is not its role, we have specialized fighters and bombers to do that. The role I see for the Air Force F35 is to support the specialized aircraft, mop up remnants and to take over as front line fighter only when air superiority is achieved. It seems terribly expensive for that role now, but this is a Aircraft that's being designed to have the largest and longest production run in history.
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fixed radar sites may detect it but those in opposing fighters may not be able to. or the fixed ones will only detect it at closer ranges and this will lessen the capabilities for opposing fighters
and fixed sites can be attacked more easily with cruise missiles
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That may be well and good in the air to air role but this thing is supposed to be an attack plane too. And how long is it before the new radar tech finds its way into fighters?
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how long are fighters replaced? every 20-30 years?
dog fighting isn't that big anymore. US has AWACS now to direct our fighters and attack from behind or some other optimum angle. no one sends fighters against each other for a dogfight anymore.
even the F117 could be detected in the gulf war, which is why it flew as part of huge mission packages with jamming aircraft and wild weasels
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"no one sends fighters against each other for a dogfight anymore"
Every generation re-learns the falsehood of that kind of thinking at the expense of pilots and planes.
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we didn't have cruise missiles in vietnam. and not sure about AWACS either.
these days we have more people "managing" the battle than the war fighters because historically most battles have been won or lost before the fighting began
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Ditto. And again.
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Every generation re-learns the falsehood of that kind of thinking at the expense of pilots and planes.
Not true. Only one generation made this mistake. Today, we are making the opposite mistake, believing in the dogma that dogfighting is still important, when it clearly is not.
Prior to Vietnam, missiles were supposed to make dogfighting obsolete. That was shown to be wrong in the skies over Hanoi, as well as during the 1973 Yom Kipper War. But it was only wrong because the missiles weren't good enough yet. Today, the missiles are far better, and the missiles of the future will be better still.
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Insightful)
Dogfighting hasn't been important for a while because none of the top tier militaries have squared off against each other. U.S. vs Iraq was never going to produce a serious air war. Neither would U.S. vs Iran, or North Korea, etc.
But, if the U.S. and Russia ever squared off, you would see dogfighting. Our fighters would try to eliminate their close support and ground attack aircraft. They would send fighters to attack ours. Both would send fighters after each other to suppress them.
The asymmetrical nature of modern wars has kept it from happening, but we would be foolish to ignore that component of air superiority just because we haven't needed it in 40 years. After all, who were we fighting back then? Oh yeah, Russia by proxy.
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If a ground-based LW radar can guide the AAM, Alli the fighter is doing is getting the middle close enough.
GBLW radar can use a lot of computer power to get the middle close enough to burn the stealth, or go IR.
Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:3)
It means you need a hobby. Or your meds are low.
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, the F-35 has forced China and Russia to commit a large amount of time and resources to try and counter it's superiority. From an economic standpoint, if you're forcing potential enemies to dedicate time and resources to try and counter your technology, it's a win. Secondly, just because Russia and China are able to develop technology to detect it doesn't mean it's useless. There are numerous other potential uses that don't involve Russian and Chinese radar.
Not if it costs 1000x more to create the technology than it does to counter it. Nor if the money to build it was borrowed in part from that potential enemy.
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Developing these new radars is not a direct response to the F-35. In fact it has been known that stealth aircraft are vulnerable to this kind of detection since the late 80s, and it was used successfully to shoot them down in eastern Europe in the 90s.
These developments are just the natural progression of radar development, in a world where every new military aircraft is getting at least some stealth capabilities. I think we are likely to see a swing back the other way soon, towards massive ECM instead of t
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Gee, I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the USA didn't already take such technology into account, like they didn't know or expect that changing the frequency of the radar might make detection of "stealth" aircraft possible. The F35 isn't going to be doing missions where this will matter anyway. I'd be more worried about the F22 and B2 platforms.
Having even traditional stealth like the F35 is known to have is a tactical advantage in the realms and missions they are planning to be used for. It's obvious
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:5, Informative)
TL;DR: F-35 would have been picked up by British radars that came into use towards the end of World War II. So much for stealth. The funniest thing? Everybody who knows about radars has known it since day one. All stealth planes suffer from this problem. Once the wavelength approaches the facet size, the fact that the facet is smooth and "points elsewhere" doesn't matter. It produces what amounts to specular highlights.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35 (Score:4, Informative)
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What sibling said, and in addition most stealth-based aircraft carry radar reflectors in peacetime to aid ATC as a safety measure (the F-117's reflectors bolted right onto the sides.)
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Enter the synthetic aperture radar :)
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If it's the case that the Russians and Chinese now have radar systems that remove that radar superiority, the F-35 now looks like even more of a gigantic waste of money
The F-35 was designed to be stealthy, not stealth. It doesn't need to be undetectable, as it's not a strategic bomber, it just needs to be able to get missile lock on it's foes before they get missile lock on the F-35. That doesn't seem like to change any time soon.
While any new military project whatsoever will be ridiculed as a colossal waste of money by the left ("it doesn't cost anything to just be nice to everyone!"), the main problem with the cost of most of the recent programs is a large R&D c
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That was my understanding. Particularly when coupled with lack of payload.
Like they shouldn't bother even painting the thing, as if it works as it should, no one will ever actually physically see the things anyway. Radar lock on multiple targets over the horizon. Fire missiles. Go back and reload. Repeat until nothing else is in the air but actual birds.
The enemy situation should basically be "Uh sir, we have a shit ton of missiles coming at us from out of nowhere!".
That said, I still think the F35 is a col
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Preventing Russia from placing drilling platforms in Canadian waters is a use. If your enemy has air superiority, all you can do is look on angrily like Vietnam does.
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Which unless they are positioned need the Canadian shoreline, near a military base F-35 is not going to be particularly useful, less so in the North, where that is more likely to happen, if anywhere. Besides, seriously, is Canada going to threaten Russian drilling platforms? That is silly.
However to expand on that, lets say for example that is the case, it would be a better case for getting an aircraft carrier than F-35's. Even then, I am not sure how well an aircraft carrier would really function in the no
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Well, the enemy pilots might well understand from longer-wave radar (even current scanning radar) there are F-35s attacking, but need to get closer to get missile lock. Meanwhile, the F-35s locked at far greater distance, already have missiles on the way, and are leaving. But you can design a missile today that would just fly close enough to the F-35s to get a, then switch to terminal guidance (it's a common design strategy, in general) - but with existing radar and F-35s, you have to be content with the
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I just think spending the money on say US heavy lift globalmasters is a much better fit for Canada than F-35's.
Anyone we are likely to get in a tussle with is likely going to have little air power or technological advantage, even using our current equipment. Those that do, i.e. Russia and China etc... well the amount of F-35's we get are likely going to make little difference anyway.
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Canada can always count on the other commonwealth nations for defense assistance as well.
Rest assured!
New Zealand has your back!
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Canada is of course a member of NATO so all the members including the US would come to their defense if necessary.
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If it's the case that the Russians and Chinese now have radar systems that remove that radar superiority, the F-35 now looks like even more of a gigantic waste of money
The F-35 was designed to be stealthy, not stealth. It doesn't need to be undetectable, as it's not a strategic bomber, it just needs to be able to get missile lock on it's foes before they get missile lock on the F-35. That doesn't seem like to change any time soon.
While any new military project whatsoever will be ridiculed as a colossal waste of money by the left ("it doesn't cost anything to just be nice to everyone!"), the main problem with the cost of most of the recent programs is a large R&D cost that isn't spread across enough planes/ships/whatever. I'm not the biggest fan of the F-35, but at least the idea of having one plane that will be used for many roles and by many allies keeps the per-unit cost from being insanely high - it's a wise procurement approach in a time of quickly falling defense budget.
It's no longer all about whether the F-35 can detect a Su-35, J-10, etc. with it's onboard radar first or not. Sure, being able to see the opponent on your onboard radar first is an advantage the F-35 has and it is an important one but modern fighters that operate in an integrated and networked air defense system, situational awareness can flow from many different sources these days other than just your fighter's onboard radar. The Su-35, J-10 (or whatever) can give the F-35 a very hard time if it carries I
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The F-4 was multi-service. Navy variants may even have different refueling probes and avionics.
And its multirole functionality was largely due to avionics and weapons systems.
Look what they did with the F-15/16s, everything but carrier ops.
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I wouldn't jump immediately to that conclusion. Every advance has some countermeasure, but just because you can build a research prototype that's somewhat (we don't know how much) effective at this, does NOT mean that all the eastern bloc air defenses around the world suddenly have that capability. It doesn't even mean they will get it within the next 20 years.
For example the longer wavelength might require large antennae and multiple fix
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Anyways, stealth is far from all the F35 brings to the table. The summary criticizes it for perhaps not being a good dogfighter, but if all aircraft are easy to track, that's even more irrelevant, because something easy to track is easy to shoot down at long range.
If you're shooting at long range, why bother with a fighter when you can buy a drone for a small fraction of the pirce?
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And then they are going to say that the whole purpose of the F35 was to not absorb radar waves, but absorb money waves.
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The question I have about long wave radar is: can they mount it in a jet or is it only ground/ship based? Can it be identified and destroyed by an AGM-88 HARM missile? Do we expect to send F-35 into any country or war zone that would have these radars deployed? The military isn't ever just one plane or ship, it's a series of interconnected systems designed to defeat
it's not a typo! (Score:2)
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Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker (Score:2, Informative)
Longwave radar is not new,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker
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The Nyquist rate (and Shannon's theorem even further) severely bounds digital communications bandwidth in the little bit of usable bandwidth that lies below 100 MHz. The long distance and irregularity of the propagation puts additional bounds on the number of simultaneous transmitters. So there are good reasons other than just censorship and rent-seeking to desire the short-ranges available in the shorter bands, such as the increase in simultaneous talkers (if you don't propagate as far, someone closer by c
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As a ham, I'm not so sure I want to share HF spectrum with Megawatt stations... All the lids and out of band 11 meter guys are bad enough.
Old news (Score:2)
On modern weather radars every so called stealth plane is a sitting dug. ... hm, 1993? Or not so well known, as it is not relevant for a missile fight and the limited lock on capabilities of on board radar systems?
Well known since
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Maybe so, but try to point and shoot a missile at a 600 MPH target using a weather radar that updates every 2 min. Can we say, not going to hit anything? Then figure that a weather radar station is pretty darned big and if anything goes boom it will be the transmitter.
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What the heck is a sitting dug?
Not news (Score:5, Informative)
The F117 that was lost in the Balkans NATO mission in 1999 was shot down by an S-125 modified to use longer wavelenths than the RAM paint on the aircraft would absorb. The issue has been known since then and it's very likely that the F22 and F35 low observability design characteristics have taken this into account as much as physics and material science will allow.
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Other sources say, the shut down was completely random.
'Spies' used cell phones to contact forces in Serbia when the planes started in germany.
Using a simple: 'lets count down the time till they are here' method, they launched thousands ground to air missiles, and the hit was completely random.
However, your suggestion makes sense, too.
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From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
In 2005, Colonel Zoltán Dani confirmed in an interview suggested that those modifications involved using long wavelengths, allowing them to detect the aircraft when the wheel well or bomb bay doors were open.
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google it
F117 was detectable on radar since at least 1990
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Late 1970's tech vs 1960's SAM.
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i was 18 when the ground war started in the first iraq war
during the build up it was reported that the french were able to detect the F117 on their radar. most likely the iraqi's as well
so the USA destroyed the big fixed radar sites in the first minutes of the war and that allowed F117 to roam at will since the other radars had less range
war isn't about numbers and stats. its about smart people using capabilities to outsmart the other guy
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That is exactly how to fight a theater air superiority battle.
Bring in low-observable aircraft and elicit a missle launch.
ECM/maneuvers to survive, hopefully.
Loitering anti-radar aircraft target the missle site and hopefully the control site(s).
Ground probes monitor and report on communications traffic and identify transmitters.
More anti-radiation missles on the way.
Enemy loses its ability to command SAMs.
Ground assaults now only deal with handheld or small arms/AAA.
Profit.
;
Most likely the modern battlefiel
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all the brilliant military analysts on CNN were predicting 30% casualties based on thinking that the US was going to fly in and fight it out
instead special ops sent in a few choppers to blow up the early warning radars and that opened up a huge hole and it was over within the first hour of the air war
same with the ground war. same analysts were predicting 20% casualties on the ground and we sent an armored corps on a huge enveloping maneuver against an unprotected flank just begging to be attacked. meanwhil
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Sure [wikipedia.org], though somewhere on the net I've read a better technical explanation of how the modification was performed and how he Dani kept his equipment running despite intense NATO HARM coverage (basically he observed flight corridors, used short pulses of radar when he knew craft were along those corridors, and kept the main radar on the launcher off until the last second only using remote antennas that were positioned far enough from the launcher that a missile strike would not take out the crew or SAM)
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Though the GP should've included a link or two, finding them for such a famous case is not at all difficult. Here is the Wikipedia's write-up [wikipedia.org], and the source they are citing [wikipedia.org].
Duped article and not insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Articles like this have been around since the 1980s and have appeared on Slashdot before in regards to practically every stealth aircraft in existence including at least the F-117 and the B2.
Here's the kicker though: The long-wave radars that can sort of track stealth aircraft aren't able to track them with the precision needed to get a missile up there to shoot one down. If an adversary already knows that you are sending planes into a general geographic region, then the long-wave radar doesn't really tell them anything that they didn't know already.
Anyone in the military who has dealt with stealth technology will tell you that "stealth" is much more than a coating or wing shape that magically makes your airplane disappear. It's a whole strategy that uses technology + suitable tactics to make stealth work in practical situations. Stealth aircraft are not completely invisible and do not have to be completely invisible to be effective.
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Well said, stealth is abut controlling RF return and IR emissions and using your knowledge of your weapon system and the advisories ability to find you to your advantage. It's about having tactics to give you the most advantage out of what the technology gives you.
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Definitely well known for a long time. I remember seeing an article around 1990 about one of the radar systems that I worked on in the mid-1980s as being able to track the B-2. Both systems were over the horizon radars (very long wave length; antenna arrays stretching for a mile or so). Good tracking accuracy if you looked at it as a percentage of the range but the minimum range was like 400-500 miles (not classified; characteristic of the radar) so even a 1% accuracy means at best a location within 4 or
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Cruise missiles happen which blows up your entire plan. You either need to protect those sites, which the majority of which will be known before any attack, from a cruise missile attack or you need to make your sites mobile.
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it's simpler than that... (Score:2)
It will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives at all.
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And it, probably, should not. Modern technology already does — or soon will — allow sending a "zerg rush" of remotely-operated drones to overwhelm enemy's defenses. Remotely operated by the new generations raised on video-games — and often too fat for personal fighting anyway [washingtonpost.com].
Oh, and it is not just aircraft — the same logic would apply to tanks and ships. Once you no longer need to care about the soft pink body(ies) inside the
Bragging vs secrecy. (Score:2)
Stealth is at heart one of most top secret technologies.
I guarantee you, that people have been trying to improve it since before the Russians realized they could do the combo long/short radar.
The real question is, will the next generation stealth technology be defeated by this method, rather than the current generation.
That, is someth
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From Aviation Week
It wasn’t hard for the Russians to assess the JSF’s stealth performance. By 1995, everyone knew that shape was the major driver of RCS, with materials being used to control local scattering phenomena. As the JSF’s target service entry date arrived, so did the Russian answer, and it was on display at the MAKS air show, held in Moscow in August.
The 55Zh6ME radar complex addresses many of the limitations of the old VHF radars. Although you see three radars—stepping down from VHF (metric) to L-band (decametric) and S-band (centimetric)—the Russians call them modules of an integrated radar system. Each unit is fitted with the Orientir satellite-navigation system, which provides a very accurate location and north reference. That should make it possible to provide sensor fusion—ensuring that when two or more of the radar units detect a target, it will show up as one in the control center.
The VHF part of the system (see photo) has a P-14-sized, 30-meter-wide antenna, but it folds onto an 8 x 8 truck. The antenna has an active, electronically scanned array, so if it gets a hit on a faint target, the array can dwell on it as the antenna rotates (or swings back and forth for a sector search). At the same time, it will cue its L-band and S-band sisters to focus on the target area like searchlight beams.
Some commentators will look at the Russian brochures, note that the reference ranges are against targets with an RCS of one square meter and observe that stealth aircraft have a far smaller RCS, which they do—in centimetric bands. Giving what was probably the least provocative answer under the circumstances, a Russian engineer notes that the Chinese DF-15 short-range ballistic missile has a 0.002 m2 RCS in X-band, but is a very non-stealthy 0.6 m2 in VHF.
Two exhibitors at MAKS were showing passive RF tracking systems. They are intended to exploit active emissions from the target but do not discriminate. Scattered energy from a radar will work just as well. The U.S. Air Force does have a modern facility for testing such bistatic radar signatures, but it was commissioned after the JSF was designed.
Of course, this sort of analysis relies on unclassified data. As the author himself states.
There may be a universe where it is smart to give your adversaries (or their armorer) 25 years’ notice of exactly how you plan to render their defenses obsolete. We just don’t live there.
instead, we live in a world where one must have faith that a trillion dollar weapons program has been designed correctly. How comforting.
Eastern block has always used VHF and UHF radars (Score:3, Interesting)
This is also how they took down a stealth fighter over Kosovo, they used 900MHz-band cell towers, tuned ground radar station to look for the return, and then manually guided the missiles until they were close enough (probably for the heat signature to become evident) to lock on.
I really hope this was all factored into the design of these multi-billion money pit of an aircraft.
117 wasn't golden age (Score:2)
the F117 ushered in the stealth era (after flight surface control tech caught up with Ufimtsev's paper)
F117 wasn't that stealthy as well (Score:2)
it was proven to be detectable by radar before the gulf war started and it rarely went on a mission by itself. most of the missions it flew were part of large groups including jamming aircraft. it was believed that the F117 would never survive on a mission by itself because stealth was always about having a slight edge and not total domination
Long wave radar precision (Score:2)
The lowest frequency you could use to track a target should be on the order of one that results in the target being 1/2 wavelength. Given the F35 is 16 meters long, that works out to about 10 Mhz. I highly doubt there is an effective way to absorb/deflect a radar pulse at such a low frequency (and depth of penetration) in an aircraft.
I've known this since the 1980s... I highly doubt that I'm in any way unique. I expect there are a number of spread spectrum 30-50 Mhz radars out there, just for catching "st
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perhaps a formation of air craft with receivers could be used in the same capacity as a large single structure...
same principal the long range telescopes work on??
I'm no expert but it doesn't seem unreasonable
The F35 is a joke: (Score:2)
The F35 is a joke of an airplane.
It's a wishlist of everything compiled by senior brass, and structured in such a way as to foist off the R&D costs onto partner nations.
The F35 is, and always was, a terrible idea, overly ambitious, and a plan to put everything possible into an aircraft.
It's a giant sink hole of money which the US sucked other countries into considering as an
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I'm surprised most countries have't told the F35 program to go jump off a pier and go find an actual plane which exists and can be flown today.
What would you suggest that is not already 20 years out of date? Remember you need to cover air superiority, ground attack, carrier based, and VTOL. All of these types of aircraft in the US inventory are getting very long in the tooth (with the possible exception of the f22). You can use as many different aircraft as you like. It is very easy to give a simple solution without actually solving the problem.
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Yeah, that was the wishlist. And a pony, and an ice-cream, and a red rider BB gun with a compass in the stock.
That was the American wishlist. This was not the requirements of the client states who got suckered into this program.
At the time this was being peddled round, many other countries could have used aircraft from other countries, or even older existing US aircraft to meet their needs.
What does the US do for their solut
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This was not the requirements of the client states who got suckered into this program.
The requirement of many "client states" is that they, since they will generally be deployed along side other nations and almost always the US, use the same parts and maintenance equipment as the US. It is a huge advantage to be able to borrow parts and equipment from other squadrons.
or even older existing US aircraft to meet their needs.
Do you mean the aircraft that will no longer be built or supported by US industry after the US moves to the F-35? Replacing an obsolete aircraft with a slightly less obsolete aircraft is not an upgrade?
Again, what aircraft would
Yep (Score:2)
Hundreds of billions of dollars, and it's obsolete and useless before it even gets out the hangar.
Not news at all (Score:2)
That stealth technology is vulnerable to long-wave radar is old, old news. I believe that the Aussies' Jindalee (JORN) radar has shown this a long time. Also, back in the 90s, the Russians claimed that there is no stealth for wavelengths longer than 30 cm (1 GHz) AFAIR.
Now the obvious problem is that it's not easy to make a compact radar for a long wavelength but if you can steer a missile close enough with a cumbersome radar then other sensors on the missile might finish the job off. Other sensor technolog
TO late to be? (Score:2)
The F117 may have been in a golden age for stealth technology, it will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives to late to be effective against other countries with advanced radar systems."
Is it just me or "to late to be" sounds odd?
stealth radar (Score:2)
Not much of an issue (Score:2)
Knowing an aircraft is present is one thing, being able to shoot it down is quite another matter. You can't use these low-frequency radars in fighter aircraft or missiles, because the antenna size would be too large. So you have to use a ground station to guide your fighters to an intercept point, and get close enough to use either IR missiles or get close enough for HF radar to work. But by then your non-stealthy fighter will be far inside the detection range of the F-35 and will have gotten a couple of mi
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Oh, it was the "to" that bothered me.
"late to be effective" must be some sort of clause I'm having trouble parsing...
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Last sentence. Semicolon, not comma.
hooked on semicolons; semicolon addict!
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Or they could say "but" after the comma. That still leaves the "to" that should be "too" and the "steath" that should be "stealth", and those were just the most obvious ones. I wouldn't doubt that there are more (nor would I doubt that I made mistakes in reporting theirs, as always seems to happen).
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Also "too," while we're at the GN thing.
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The "L" is hidden from view. That's what makes it so stealthy, or steathy, as the case may be.
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A Wild Weasel and a properly tuned HARM missile from the 1970's might work fine. But in this case a GPS guided JDAM or two would be about all you need once you could get the location fixed.
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Except for one notable case, when has a large conflict started a "sneak attack"? Even Pearl Harbor wasn't really all that sneaky looking back... But you are correct, the ability to launch attacks with no warning is a problem, I just don't think it's as bad as you might think.
I would note that missile subs DO roam close to the advisories shores from time to time. A Russian sub spent a few months in the Gulf of Mexico last year according to Moscow, and I'm sure we returned the favor. We've been doing this