An F-22 Raptor’s Crumbling Radar Absorbent Skin
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/solution-americas...
I'm genuinely fascinated by this, but haven't been able to find more information. Was there an investigation? Did the tooling just get sent to the scrap heap? Who signed off on empty storage containers?
>Moreover, the Air Force is auditing the Sierra Army Depot to make sure that the F-22 manufacturing tooling is secure—and thus far everything is in order. The audit is 85 percent complete and thus far all of the tooling has been found. Earlier, some Air Force officials had expressed concerns that the equipment had been misplaced—however, those concerns were unfounded as it turns out.[1]
[1]https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-us-air-forces...
[0]: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/forget-f-35s-or-aircr...
My interpretation of why the US still builds aircraft carriers is that it's some combination of bureaucratic inertia (so many careers invested in them) and industry lobbying. They are useful for projecting force against third-world countries, but against a country with a modern military, they'd probably be underwater in the first hour of any conflict.
The interpretation I've found is after these battles (with US Carriers vs Japanese battleships in WW2) the tendency was to favor aircraft carriers and phase out battleships.
One big reason is how versatile and integral a carrier is in to a fleet. Carriers can send out scouts, attack, defend from hundreds of miles away from the carrier (where the ship is beyond the horizon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_horizon).
The weakness of a battleship is the target has to be tracked, and I think the best way to do that would be aerial recon. Battleships like Yamato then had pontoon type scout planes, but nothing like a carrier.
Without a carrier accompanying it, Yamato wouldn't be able to create a defensive perimeter of fighters to ward off dive bombers. I don't think it'd be able to effectively counter a fleet with carrier in the end.
More on Yamato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ten-Go
Anyone here know more about this and can link some vids/resources on naval stuff?
Every other capability - over the horizon engagement, force projection, command of the high sea could be handled better by the carrier. Thanks to the surface and underwater defence provided by the carrier group, a carrier is not yet as vulnerable as the battleship of old.
If the carrier within a group becomes too vulnerable, it sure as heck won't be replaced by battleships, vulnerable and increasingly obsolete since the 1930s. Just as certain to be underwater as any newly vulnerable carrier, even with a full scale carrier-like protection group.
What unique capability do you see they could bring?
The least manoeuvrable ship of the fleet, typically the flagship of the pre-WW2 battle group with escort of destroyers sometimes also cruisers, frigates and support depending on what it was up to. A role that has been with the carrier in the post-WW2, increasingly missile world. I don't think any navy now retains any battleships, though most kept them around decades past their sell-by date.
The battleship (group) was the power that was used to project, and could be sent to far flung locations to bombard an inland target 25 or 30 miles away from the ship, conduct a naval battle or blockade a port well over the horizon. This is the doctrine of the late Victorian era and lapsed in the inter-war years. WW2 and Pearl Harbor very clearly put power projection with the carrier group. The job of the dozen 16" (18" in WW1, and Japanese WW2) and dozen or more 6" guns has been replaced post-war by air, and increasingly cruise and anti-ship missiles in the arsenal. A modern destroyer gets just 1-4 6" pea shooters with range only around 10 miles, but a decent selection of missiles, submarine and air defence that more than makes up for lack of gunnery.
Heavy shore bombardment is far cheaper by 16" capital guns than by missile, the last real instance being Desert Storm. In this role a battleship has no peer, it's less accurate than missile whilst flinging an awful lot more weight, but more accurate than heavy bombing. The modern era prefers precision by very expensive munitions. :)
Battleships only exist as mothballed reserves. A battleship was one of the largest ships in the fleet with massive guns and super thick armor. It was meant to fight in the major fleet vs. fleet battles. The name stems form "line of battle ship", because these ships were typically arrayed in a line starting back in the late middle ages. When WW2 showed that airplanes and missiles had made big guns and armor redundant, battleships were relegated to being giant anti-air plattforms that escorted the aircraft carriers. No one built any new ones since then, though "missile battleships" were studied for a while.
A massive step down in size are cruisers, who used to be ships that operated independently form the fleet. There are very few of those around nowadays and they tend to be the core of a fleet instead of cruising alone. You will often see them armed with hundreds of anti-ship missiles nowadays.
The next step down are destroyers, which are still fleet escorts (mostly against aircraft, hence Air Warfare Destroyer) in the major navies and have also taken up the role of going on independent operations. This is because smaller navies tend to not have any destroyers or bigger ships, so sending one destroyer armed with say 64 missiles can be sufficient. A destroyer used to be a relatively small ship that had the job of defending the fleet against other small ships like torpedoboats or submarines. The name stems from "torpedoboat destroyer".
The next smaller categories is frigates. These are the most numerous and are the workhorses of modern navies. They do convoy escort, but also defend bigger fleets from submarines. Many navies also send them on independent missions. They will tend to have 16 or 32 missiles, but won't typically have the big anti air radar a destroyer would. "Frigate" was the name used for sailing ships that couldn't stand in the line of battle. I.e. in say 1750 there would be only two categories: line'o'battleships and frigates.
Those categories are the major ocean-going combat ships. There are lots of smaller ships below that and a lot of support ships, too.
...defined in a way in which all the opponents we've fought real wars against in the last 7 decades are not “real opponents”...
The strategic nuclear triad tends to ensure that the opponents you consider “real opponents” are not our real opponents in the real wars that happen in the real world.
Of course, the same is true of the symmetric opponent, that is the way symmetry works.
I'm rejecting the idea that, for analysis of the utility of US military forces outside of the strategic triad, “real opponents” = “symmetric opponents”, and even casting doubt on the idea that, in the same context, “real opponents” ⊆ “symmetric opponents”.
Even against these weak opponents, however, it's still a big question as to why the US needs 10+ carrier fleets. Again, I strongly suspect the answer comes down to bureaucratic inertia and capture of the government by industry lobbies.
Because the Earth is big and ships are slow (and sometimes out of service), and also because deterrence can be necessary in a lot of places in close temporal proximity. (Whether this is the optimal use of resources considering non-military needs is another question, but there is a real purpose to the size of the fleet.)
(ATC relies on secondary radar - that is, transponders)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen...
The talking heads from the military may talk about 'invisibility', but they are full of shit. Just propaganda for the tax payer.
The problem is the physical size of the jet. In order to absorb the radar the material needs to be the proper size in relation to the wavelength. A B-2 bomber is large enough to absorb useful radar frequencies, but F-35 or F-22 isn't.
What the F-35/F-22 stealth does get, however, is invisibility in the XHF and higher frequency ranges, which is what is used for radar guided missiles. So they will have a major advantage against ground and air launched long range missiles.
The F-22 also has good infrared suppression, which protects it against infrared guided missiles. F-35s have a large IR signature, so they are probably not much better then other US jets. Traditionally speaking it's IR weapons that have caused losses for USA airplanes in modern times.
At VHF and lower frequencies the F-22 and F-35 can be detected, but those radars don't offer enough resolution to make them particularly useful for missiles. People suspect that with multiple angles and computer algorithms it may be possible to target a jet that way, but who knows.
So if you were Russia and you detected something with VHF long range radar and then you pointed a shorter range XHF radard at it... and nothing shows up then you can be reasonably certain that it's a American stealth fighter jet. That doesn't mean they can do much about it, though.
To combat this it is suspected that Americans use a technique that involves 'ghosting' commercial airliner traffic to mask the signatures of their jets against the lower frequency, longer range, radar.
Unless that is your point of course
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_shootdowns#Ir...
Aircraft operating low to the ground and on approach to small airfields, and helicopters, are of course vulnerable to short range rifle fire and MANPADs. There have been losses to that in Afghanistan.
Modern NATO-equipped militaries haven't really encountered a semi modern air defense system since the brief bombing campaign against Serbia, in which they did manage to lose a F117 to a SAM.
The only stealth plane shot down that I am aware of was a F-117 shot down by short range SAM in the Kosovo war in 1999. It was a older 1960's missile design. Probably due to a large part of combination of dumb luck on the side of the SAM operator and the Airforce being lazy and having the jet fly predictable routine routes.
The first Gulf War saw nearly half of coalition casualties being from friendly fire.
I think a distinction needs to be made between proverbial "invisibility" and stealth, and the technical definition. If general conversations included, say, backscatter coefficients you'd start seeing glazed eyes. Or perhaps area equivalence (square-footage? square-metrage?).
> The problem is the physical size of the jet.
Also: vertical stabilizers.
You mean flying under commercial traffic? That's what was likely the cause of French jets downing a civilian plane over Italy in 1980 - while trying to hit a Lybian MIG "hidden" under it. Reportedly, Lybian planes routinely did that in order to reach their servicing bases in Yugoslavia.
American also used this technique to fly military aircraft above french airspace while France was not part of NATO, it is only in 2007 with Sarkozy that France entered NATO (one of his many stupid move if you ask me)
Note that the event is heavily disputed. The British Air Accidents Investigation Board claims that a missile strike does not match the wreckage analysis; instead stating a explosive device in the rear bathroom was the only possible cause.
The missing body parts near the front of the plane suspected to be the missile impact point were found.
The other investigations also doesn't explain the wreckage of a Libyan fighter jet, close to the wreckage of the airliner.
Multiple Italian soldiers were also found guilty of concealing evidence about the event, allegedly by the request of NATO.
It was even admitted by the Italian then-PM (later President) Francesco Cossiga, almost 30 years later, that he was told right away it had been a French jet. This was confirmed later by multiple sources, among them a retired US seaman who was stationed on the Saratoga and feared for his life (a lot of key witnesses have died in suspicious circumstances, including suicide). And the secret-war scenario is the only one that can explain a Lybian MIG crashing in the same area on the same day, which was kept hidden for weeks by Italian authorities.
The historical truth has basically been ascertained, it will simply never be admitted by the involved parties because it is still inconvenient (Lybia still being "in play" between France and Italy).
To combat this it is suspected that Americans use a
technique that involves 'ghosting' commercial airliner
traffic to mask the signatures of their jets against
the lower frequency, longer range, radar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio_frequency_memory
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/computers/article/16726118...
https://www.c4isrnet.com/electronic-warfare/2019/05/15/can-n...
Radars are usually arrays of small radars now that can move the beam without even moving, chirp the frequecy and do all sorts of weird things. I wrote OS software to help control them years ago, which was interesting.
http://www.radartutorial.eu/02.basics/Stepped%20Chirp%20Rada...
its an interesting exercise in signal processing. there are lots of books on the subject: And hey! my radar made a cover.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=radar&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
A much more probable scenario would be of its airfield being blown up by something like Tochka or Luna even before most of the planes will have a chance to sortie.
This is why there is a natural scepticism of airforce centric warfare: a tank will not fall out of the sky the moment its logistic supply is cut.
The second type of radar has an extremely narrow beam and is for targeting. This is the radar that locks onto a plane to direct missiles at it to shoot it down. This is the one that stealth aircraft pretty much entirely defeat. So in short, they can see the planes on occasion, and try to lock, but can't get a target lock. When they try, the stealth airplanes will often release rf tracking missiles and blow them up.
I was a UAV (civilian term: "drone") pilot of the Shadow 200 TUAV in the US Army circa 2001-2005 and Iraq 2003-2004. The Shadow 200 TUAV was what was deemed "effective stealth" in that it had composite material with low radar signature and radar absorbing paint. The exhaust was dampened and came out about 1" from the propeller on the top so unless you were flying above, the thermal footprint was miniscule. We did some drills with our own Patriot air defense units and they said they had to set their radars so low they were picking up big birds. They also told us that simply wasn't possible to do in wartime.
Is it pretty low key compared to an 0311? How high quality are the controls/cameras? Is it high def or kinda grainy?
Like walk us through a typical day, I’m sure many of us would find it fascinating
You should check out the book "Drone Warrior," by Brett Velicovich,
https://www.amazon.com/Drone-Warrior-Soldiers-Americas-Dange...
Which is a great book, by a drone operator/warrior.
Part of an 0311's job is kicking in doors and detaining bad guys. When there are bad guys sniping at them on the roof, they have a bad day. The UAV above them tells them "sniper on the SSW (south south west) quandrant of building 3, hit them" and then does instant BDA (battle damage assessment) to let them know the threat is neutralized or not. Those infantryman came back to the FOB that night and thanked us profusely. We helped them all come back alive.
The most boring part of the job is probably road searches. On the way out to every mission and the way back (as you're flying to the mission coordinates handed down to you by the mission commander) you just look at the main roads. For every 10 hours of looking at roads, you'll see 1 guy digging a hole and emplacing an IED or burying wire under the road. Those "side quest" missions save a lot of soldiers. Additionally, we tend to fly ahead of most convoys if the timing lines up and give them a heads up of upcoming situations. From ~7500ft above sea level, we could roughly read a license plate a mile away. We gave them situational awareness on neighborhoods to go out of their way and just avoid. Things like that.
For every 100 hours of relatively mundane stuff, you get a few really special missions. One of those special missions was when a Kiowa scout helicopter took an RPG to the tail rotor and crashed in Tal'Afar. Most missions I was the AVO (Aerial Vehicle Operator aka pilot), but this was one of the few where I was the MPO (Mission Payload Operator aka camera dude). We saw this as a literal clone of the most infamous Operation Gothic Serpent (Blackhawk down) and all said, "Not on our watch!". And in the end, they made our video a lot less clear and put some parts of it in a Military Channel Special: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0845577/
TL;DNR: UAV Operator is nothing at all like an 0311, but they love us because we do a dang good job of saving their lives. In return, they watch our backs.
Is this something that could be helped by all the recent machine learning computer vision advances? Maybe they can delegate side resources to having automated scanning for flaggable behaviours appearing on screen.
There have been a whole bunch of talks about AI in warfare already, so anybody who is interested in the industry can put 2 + 2 together way better than I can.
That is exactly the thing that Google employees are protesting against.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-google-idUSKCN1...
(More to the point, this is conflating parts with the whole: Google management is in favor of working with both the US armed forces and Chinese censors, while Google employees are against both.)
Systems like the Sx00 are very useful if there are multiple rings of them surrounding a static high-value target and you want to defeat a fleet of B-52s (or certain types of ballistic missiles) that are approaching.
They are borderline useless against any adversary that has low observability aircraft and a modern suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) capability.
Israel has demonstrated this repeatedly, but Russian marketing is very good and (mainly Middle Eastern) countries are still pumping wasted dollars into buying air defense systems.
In years of conflict Israel has launched thousands (2,000 in 2018 alone) of missiles at Syrian targets, and a grand total of one (1) F-16I has been shot down, and that was because the pilots were cocky (both survived) and they were loitering at high altitude doing battle damage assessments.
In response to the shoot-down, the launchers that fired the missile were destroyed the same day. Not only do the Russian missiles keep missing, but Israel keeps using their anti-missile missiles to shoot down the Russian missiles before they can fall on populated areas after missing their targets.
"He who lights up first gets smoked"
As in, once you turn on your tracking radar, you effectively shine a really bright beacon for anyone to see. If you are the ground station trying to get a lock on the thing that the long-range area radar saw, suddenly you are the brightest target in the area. You might have a few seconds before the plane you are trying to hit sends a missile right down your beam. Same for a pilot if he tries to scan for a target.
A decoy RF source wouldn't make much sense. To be a viable decoy it would need to have a similar ERP to the real thing. And at that point it already costs almost as much as the real thing, so you might as well go all the way.
reminded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown#Downing
" According to Lieutenant Colonel Đorđe Aničić, who was identified in 2009 as the soldier who fired the missiles, they detected the F-117 at a range of about 23 km operating their equipment for no more than 17 seconds to avoid being locked on to by NATO anti-air suppression."
Typically (at least in USSR/Russia) a couple of radar stations would take turns each staying on only for those few seconds.
Suddenly, the hunter hunting the hunted becomes the prey :)
Thx a lot - I now think that I understand the issue => it's once more a reminder for myself that often nothing is as simple as it is presented. Unluckily none of the news I read/watched about it mentioned this and I did not think about it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-turkey-trump/trump-sa... - “Turkish operation of the two systems together — and more specifically, when it is in stealth mode — would allow the S-400 to acquire intimate knowledge of the F-35’s radar signature,” Karako wrote.
“Such insights would almost immediately find (their) way back to Russia, and the capability of F-35s around the world could thereby be degraded.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/world/europe/us-turkey-ru... - Ellen M. Lord, the Defense Department’s under secretary for acquisition and sustainment, said the S-400 and its radar systems could compromise the F-35’s stealth capabilities and jeopardize the fighter jet’s long-term security.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/trump-turkey-s40... - 'The S-400 poses a real threat to US national security, analysts said. The Russian system is built to defeat US stealth technology, leading officials in Washington to worry that if Turkey took delivery of F35s, the Russian system could be used to collect valuable information about the fifth-generation fighter jet.'
The real reason is the US doesn't want to set the precedent for NATO countries buying weapons outside of NATO, and you can be sure the military industrial complex has a huge hand in that.
"The obvious question that remains unanswered is whether Russia chose not to engage S-400s, or was simply unable to, whether because of American nonkinetic capabilities impacting those system or some other reason. Given the pre-attack notice given by the Pentagon to Russian forces through a deconfliction line, as well as the fact that no strikes were targeted at the air defenses themselves, analysts lean toward the former."
https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/04/20/who-learned-...
In short, Russia has S400s in Syria. Russian government officials claimed Russia would shoot down the Tomawhawks. Russians knew the strikes were coming. Yet, they did not use the S400.
To me, there are no two ways about it - Russia did not have the capability to engage even the legacy Tomawhawk missiles.
The two countries just don't have a clear enough conflict of interest to want to get into a fight about it.
2. Russian government officials stated they would shoot them down.
3. Russia had NOTHING to lose by shooting down missiles in defense of an ally, e.g. no political risk.
4. Russia had everything to gain by demonstrating the capability to deter a NATO strike, especially given the context of using Syria to advertise its weapons.
Israel is a separate issue, if you want to discuss it. Very nice of Israel to get Russia's plane shot down by hiding behind it.
"If there is a strike by the Americans then... the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired," he told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV. "
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/russia-...
I am aware of what the source is. This did happen though, and you can find more sources if you want. If Russia had no intent, it shouldn't have bragged.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/18/649064034/russian-surveillanc...
Before that incident, a Russian ground attack aircraft was shot down by Turkish F16s near the Turkey-Syria border.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-syrian-missile-wa...
The Arrow system has sufficient range to provide coverage over Syria it’s an expensive way to deal with the S400 threat but it can be used to provide additional protection.
Israel seems to be quite adept at beating Russian SAMs Russia doesn’t have enough assets in the region to risk engaging with the S400 because Israel would definitely target them if they are used as anything more than a scarecrow.
And last time Israel went on a mission to clear Russian SAM sites in Syria it didn’t end up well for the SAM site operators.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19
For the most part what Israel has been doing in Syria so far is a very limited engagement often not even from within Syrian airspace but rather using stand off munitions from Israeli or Lebanese airspace.
I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region.
At the end of the day if push comes to shove Israel can push 400 aircraft into Syria’s airspace and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia.
The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier.
At the end of the day if push comes to shove Israel can push 400 aircraft into Syria’s airspace and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia.
The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier."
This discussion has nothing to do with Israel. It has to do with Russia not engaging US and ally Tomawhawk missiles, in which Israel is not involved.
"I’m pretty sure that Russia understands very well that other than a nuke on Tel Aviv they don’t have the logistics to have an engagement with Israel that does not end in total humiliation and the destruction of all Russian assets in the region."
Yea, but it can nuke Tel Aviv. And Israel can't nuke anything of consequence back, even with its illegal nukes.
It can also saturate all of Israel with conventional artillery. Even a fraction of its forces would overhwhelm the system immediately, and that's assuming it works against anything but SCUDs and slow moving toy rockets.
"and countless ground assets the numbers simply don’t favor Russia."
The last time Israel pushed "countless ground assets" into Lebanon to bomb their hospitals and destroy their tourist industry, Russian RPGs destroyed a number of Merkavas. Cry more about how those were "mobility kills."
In what magical world does an Israel vs Russia ground war "simply don’t favor Russia."?
"The Russian navy is also not in a shape to engage, other than their submarine fleet any naval assets they put in theater would be likely targeted and crippled if not destroyed this also includes their aircraft carrier."
Russia has the best ASMs in the world. This is widely accepted.
Your post is comical even before you consider that most of the technology Israel has is thanks to the USSR diaspora.
The US is the only nation to fire Tomahawks at targets in Syria, or anywhere else other than the US only the UK uses the system and it has never been use in combat.
Israel fires cruise missiles all the time at Syria from it's aircraft and the Syrians claim that their and their "allies" air defense systems shot down all the missiles however it seems that all those warehouses are still getting blown up so it doesn't seem that Russian air defenses are very effective at combating these threats.
>Yea, but it can nuke Tel Aviv. And Israel can't nuke anything of consequence back, even with its illegal nukes.
It can, it will however get a retaliatory strike; and ironically Tel Aviv is likely better defended against ballistic missiles than Moscow is.
>It can also saturate all of Israel with conventional artillery. Even a fraction of its forces would overhwhelm the system immediately, and that's assuming it works against anything but SCUDs and slow moving toy rockets.
From where? Syria? Syrian artillery would be defeated in hours, if Lebanon/Hezbollah would get into the conflict it would take days but Russia has no assets in the area to provide protection.
20 aircraft isn't enough.
>The last time Israel pushed "countless ground assets" into Lebanon to bomb their hospitals and destroy their tourist industry, Russian RPGs destroyed a number of Merkavas. Cry more about how those were "mobility kills."
What does this have to do with anything? Trophy was implemented due to the lessons Israel has learned in the 2006 war and according to Wikipedia out of 45 tanks hit; 5 were deemed destroyed/unsalvageable including 2 tanks that were blown up by IEDs large enough to demolish a building. Are you really going to argue that outside of diplomatic pressure that would end hostilities Lebanon/Hezbollah are going to stand their ground against the IDF? I'm not saying that Israel isn't going to suffer losses but they can bomb Lebanon back to the stone age the same can't be said in reverse.
>Your post is comical even before you consider that most of the technology Israel has is thanks to the USSR diaspora.
What does A have to do with B?
So yeah, if an F-15 blindly stumbles within the effective range of an S400 it will be shot down.
The fingerprint of the S400's radar are detectable from thousands of kilometers away and a nice little icon will be plopped onto the pre-mission overlays before the F-15 takes off.
You don't even have to detect the radar beam, you can detect the data link.
As for casualties, what casualties?
The only casualties a drone launching a glide bomb results in are those on the receiving end.
Now this doesn't mean destroying air defenses is easy. Factor in smaller SAM sites dispersed around th larger ones, as well as enemy air superiority fighter operating in the area and SEAD gets more complicated. SAM sites also sometimes turn their radars off until planes are close and ambush them. But SAM sites alone are not an impervious defense against air power.
2. Non-SEAD RWR is generally limited to "There is light shining on me." Not where it's coming from, let alone providing targeting information.
Passive sensors have advanced significantly.
I am going to admit to moving the bar - but at this point you have MIG-31s in the air looking for SEAD and taking down any AWACS.
It’s worse than that (for the defender). Missiles can loiter and wait, if the emitter is switched off, then strike when it switches back on again.
The other bit of information that might be perhaps missing from some (other!) explanations is that this arises entirely because the ground station has to receive a radar reflection _of the original beam_ from the target. Given that power goes as 1/r^2, this means that in practice range drops off sharply for the ground-based station as 1/r^4. Meanwhile, the aircraft can just _detect_ some sort of blip-over-thermal power spectral density coming from somewhere. Given identical amplifier performance (which, with good designs, should be limited by physics) and you end up with the attacking aircraft "winning" from a back-of-the-envelope point of view.
This ignores the fact that it can be traditionally quite easy to confuse radar by "just" transmitting the "right" signals at the right time. There's a good 1960s video that explains a lot of the basic ideas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyFqaaqqph0
You ignore the same problems with air platforms emitting.
Your claim about detecting the data link is absurd.
Even point to point microwave links can be detected off-axis.
Hundreds of watts of point-to-point means dozens of watts of sidelobes.
Dozens of watts in the middle of the desert is easy to detect.
If the AN/MLQ-40 could do it at tens of kilometers 20 years ago I bet datalinks could be detected from space today.
What part are you confused about?
There is no such thing as a perfectly directional antenna. Radiation profiles consist of multiple lobes which generally point towards a single direction on 3 axes, but there are always side lobes, like so: [1]. You can't hide these, therefore they can be detected and targeted.
There's a whole class of missiles that simply look for RF sources and head that way. The only way to avoid such missiles is to stop being an RF source. But if you do that, you're also unable to target the attackers or defend against those missiles. You also have to turn off your data link and lose situational awareness.
The S-400 is the best air defence currently fielded, but it is by no means magical or invulnerable.
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/wirele...
You don't think the s400 has any jamming capability and protection of its own? You don't think the system can detect when it's being targeted and locked on?
It can definitely be defeated but not without suffering heavy casualties. That's _why_ it's called anti-access/area denial technology.
This is probably not really in your area of expertise, but do you know why they can't design a system to pick up everything larger than a sparrow and going faster than 50 mph? What about wartime makes this harder? Thanks much.
> An aircraft-mounted control unit sends the specific signals to the decoy over a fiber-optic line. Once at the decoy, those signals are translated into radio frequency emissions. [...] For instance, the decoy can first try to generally jam a radar that is in search mode, then it can try to attack it directly to break its lock once it locks on. Then, if a missile locks on in flight, the decoy can instantly turn into a juicy target, or even targets, misdirecting the missile away from the aircraft.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27185/f-35s-most-sinis...
I wonder if anyone has ever accidentally radar-locked a missile onto a bird and shot it down.
One car is painted like a fire truck with reflectors. The other is matte black/gray.
The first one you will be able to spot much earlier and determine things like speed/direction much more clearly. Not to mention that the driver of both cars will see you and your flashlight before you detect them.
It is not that planes are invisible to radar. It is that they can make it much more difficult for that radar flashlight to detect them at long range and/or determine their exact speed and heading.
The heat signature of what, the exhaust? That's very low density, so emissions from the exhaust itself will be negligible.
The plane itself will emit black-body radiation, but that is based on the skin temperature, not the temperature of any interior engine parts.
In the meantime, all of this is for passive detection, so at a distance you'd be asking for the detector to pick an at-best-tiny signal out of the entire sky. Moreover, clouds are opaque.
I guess you have flares, but now its an "AI" problem of choosing the right target.
Don't forget the inverse square law of light, by the time the energy reaches a detector on the ground, the signal has weakened considerably.
Skimming wikipedia for infrared stealth gives me "Infrared Search and Track" systems which are plane-mounted, which makes a bit more sense to me -- if you're closer to the targets altitude and velocity you'll get much cleaner data
Generally, it also helps to fly toward the enemy. This is a bit of extra incentive to not wimp out and flee. :-)
The F-35 is a bit of a failure with the heat signature. The tail heats up from the engine exhaust. There are prohibited maneuvers that damage the tail due to heat.
Aircraft don't have to be perfect about heat signatures. They aren't in a cold vacuum, and the enemy isn't flying the James Webb Space Telescope.
I'm not an expert. I really want to hear the opinions of experts on this topic.
Hacker News is the worst place for this kind of topic. Have you noticed that no-one applies formulas and calculations of any type in this particular discussion yet? Physically you can calculate the radar profile of all of these types of planes, and there are engineering spec sheets (albeit some are classified, but there's enough data out there for educated estimates)
But everyone is talking in terms of "like a bird" or "almost like background radiation" etc.
I'd suggest going elsewhere to engage experts on this topic.
The description of the internal structure also seems to be quite similar to other RADOME even marine ones.
I bet there are a bunch of polymer chemists who know exactly what's going on.
1) The plastics might need to be made out of a very specific material which might not be very stable in the long term.
2) RADARs get freaking bloody hot and even a few % of absorption might be enough to essentially make them into a microwave oven.
I'm guessing some combination of the material, pure heat and radiation might be the cause of these plastics breaking down but I'm not a material engineer however this is something that I've also encountered.
I have had experience with SAR pods and their RADOMEs have had to be constantly replaced due to degradation as well.
In fact in spot/strip mode it wouldn't be uncommon to see actual discoloration of the RADOME after a few flights.
My working hypothesis is more in line with your (1), that plasticizer is the major absorbing component of the plastic, so to make RADOME plastic you just leave out the plasticizer and live with crumbly plastic. But I'm no polymer chemist, so that's really just speculation.
http://www.f22fighter.com/f22cutaway.jpg
whereas the cracking appears to be on the skin covering avionics.
Pod based MLDS systems are essentially made from the same materials as RADOMEs for this reason.
This made me wonder how many disposable small drones could be mass produced for that price. Like in the "slaughterbots" video, or the "hated in the nation" bee drones.
That's a pretty dishonest take. Those drones are incredibly complex.
It used to be the defense industry produced equipment worth having, just wastefully. Now we can't even produce properly designed planes.
This doesn't look like the master of the skies to me. It looks like decadence of the military industrial complex, and bad use of $400 millions of taxpayer money. It looks like the most inefficient way of financing jobs across a country ever...
I would be surprised if any credible source claimed that there was something better than the F-22. The possible competitors are either not in the same ballpark or not really ready for anything other than airshows.
Maybe you should do some googling yourself and you'll find footage of French Rafale wiping the floor with the raptor in a simulated dogfight.
In any case, it will be years before we can say which is the superior plane, since all the good stuff is classified.
The point is, no one has enough data to claim that the raptor is absolutely the most superior and dominant fighter jet. Making that claim simply based on stealth is foolish.
Spend a couple days learning a flight combat sim like DCS and it will become crystal clear that stealth is not only an advantage, it is almost unbeatable by a 4th gen fighter without additional support. If you're in a 4th gen fighter, your offensive options are pretty much nonexistent against a low observable fighter. The best thing you can do is dodge the first 1/2 fox-3 it throws at you, turn off your radar, and get out while you still have a plane. We're not even talking about standoff weapons yet.
Even if you somehow got into a wvr dogfight against an F-22, you'd still lose because it's one of a handful of fighters capable of supermaneuverability. [1]
There are 187 operational F-22, they've been in service for 14 years, and they've had zero losses. Go ahead and try to find anything that comes even close.
"The F-22 achieved Full Operational Capability (FOC) in December 2007, when General John Corley of Air Combat Command (ACC) officially declared the F-22s of the integrated active duty 1st Fighter Wing and Virginia Air National Guard 192d Fighter Wing fully operational.[151] This was followed by an Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI) of the integrated wing in April 2008, in which it was rated "excellent" in all categories, with a simulated kill-ratio of 221–0.[152]"
Given the fact that there have been 0 losses and those planes haven't been sitting idle in storage for the past decade, it's a pretty good bet that their real world perf is better than the simulated 221-0.
The airforce drills for wvr because history has shown that dogfighting is inevitable. That's the basis of Russian airforce program and that's why the flanker airframe is still the most agile and will run literal circles around the raptor.
https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-F-22-Raptor-compare-to-th...
The raptor is insanely overrated and video games aren't going to convince anyone reasonable. Keep the personal attacks to yourself or I'll report you.
It's all about context. Find a stealth fighter that can best an F-22, until then, it's the top of the top.
You mean many of the elite militaries on the planet? Israel for example is not known for buying non-working trash as a primary to defend its skies with. Over time the majority of the best militaries will all fly the F35.
Turkey must be a joke according to your premise, that's why they're so eager to get their hands on the F35. No, in fact Turkey has a top ~20 military in capability.
"Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom currently are in formal partnership with the United States on the F-35 program. Israel, Japan and South Korea have made orders through the foreign military sales process. Belgium also recently signed on to purchase platforms." [1]
The F35 is the second best fighter that can be purchased, behind the F22. Its technology platform is superior to the F22 and far beyond anything anyone else has. Russia can't get their 5th gen planes to operate properly or get them into volume production (despite numerous failed declarations of such, and 20 years of development). China hasn't demonstrated that capability yet either. They're both two decades behind the US in 5th gen planes. The other European powers aren't even on the map when it comes to producing domestic 5th gen, they can't step up to that level at all.
[1] https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/5/24/i...
So yeah, I'm saying all those militaries buying F35s are either stupid or desperate.
Turkey won't be buying F35s because they bought missiles from the Russians. This is going to be a very good thing for Turkey's national security in the long run; they just don't know it yet.
If the following reports are to be believed, the F35 is overdesigned, overpriced, doesn't work, and cannot be made to work. It's a piece of absolute crap. Are all these reports wrong?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17876723
https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/air-force-moving-f-35s-a...
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1015212921071329281.html
https://warisboring.com/the-f-35-is-a-terrible-fighter-bombe...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/america-is-stuck-with-a-dollar...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/f35_software_fail/
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-pentagon-is-b...
https://defensesystems.com/articles/2015/01/28/f-35-joint-st...
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/168...
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-alli...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/navys-f-35-doesn...
Let's take the beloved A-10.
> When A-10 full-rate production was first authorized the aircraft's planned service life was 6,000 hours. A small reinforcement to the design was quickly adopted when the A-10 failed initial fatigue testing at 80% of testing
> Fatigue testing for the new target quickly discovered serious cracks at Wing Station 23 (WS23) where the outboard portions of the wings are joined to the fuselage. The first production change was to add cold working at WS23 to address this problem. Soon after that, the Air Force determined that the real-world A-10 fleet fatigue was more harsh than estimated, forcing them to change their fatigue testing, introducing "spectrum 3" equivalent flight-hour testing
> Spectrum 3 fatigue testing started in 1979. This round of testing quickly determined that more drastic reinforcement would be needed.
This BS went on for a while.
> A fourth, even more drastic change was initiated with aircraft #582, again to address the problems discovered with spectrum 3 testing.
582 aircraft built and they were still fixing major problems!
Let's take another one. F-16.
> Its actual first flight occurred accidentally during a high-speed taxi test on 20 January 1974. While gathering speed, a roll-control oscillation caused a fin of the port-side wingtip-mounted missile and then the starboard stabilator to scrape the ground, and the aircraft then began to veer off the runway. The test pilot, Phil Oestricher, decided to lift off to avoid a potential crash, safely landing six minutes later.
> One change made during production was augmented pitch control to avoid deep stall conditions at high angles of attack. The stall issue had been raised during development, but had originally been discounted. Model tests of the YF-16 conducted by the Langley Research Center revealed a potential problem, but no other laboratory was able to duplicate it. YF-16 flight tests were not sufficient to expose the issue; later flight testing on the FSD aircraft demonstrated there was a real concern. In response, the area of the horizontal stabilizer were increased by 25% on the Block 15 aircraft in 1981 and later retrofitted to earlier aircraft.
F-16 seems to have been more smoothly than most as it was designed to be cheaper to build and maintain, smaller and simpler than other aircraft used at the time.
I will not include the F-14 because this would turn this comment into a book. Even the F-4's classic look is due to issues they discovered during wind tunnel testing.
So chill out. When you are trying to design a system thats way more capable than the predecessors you are bound to run into issues noone has encountered before. Same thing when you are trying new designs (see the Osprey).
You may complain about the costs, and if you are a taxpayer that's fair. It doesn't mean that it's crap. It definitely isn't. The radar alone is worth it.
Surely its better to invest in SEAD (AA suppression) and better counter measures like lasers?
Not sure that would quality as being ready as needed.
Dude, an F-5 would be enough for most of us. These aircraft are amazing.
SEE YOU IN HELL, B*TCH.
Given the effects of UV can be most damaging and aircraft would as higher elevation be at an increased risk of higher UV levels than you would at ground level.