What a Chinese Stealth Warship Looks Like on Radar

Oddly many adversaries of the US (such as Colombian drug gangs) have fielded stealth boats, but thanks to cost disease the US has fielded only 3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer

That kind of boat disappears in the clutter for a sea-based radar and pulse doppler won't help as much as it helps for airplanes since boats don't move as fast. With satellite SAR the clutter won't be so bad, in fact, the resolution is probably high enough that you see the absence of roughness from waves.

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The US hides modern missile boats from the public eye since they don't bristle with aggressive-looking guns. I saw this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Vincennes_(CG-49)

and many other boats of its type rusting at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. None of them will be made into museum ships, which is a shame.

China, on the other hand, makes action movies like 𝑊𝑜𝑙𝑓 𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑟 2 that show how proud they are of ships that can shoot cluster bombs out of vertical launch tubes.

This is the first time I've ever heard anyone refer to the Houbei-class missile boats as "stealth ships". The author, HI Sutton, has a very good reputation for his knowledge of submarines so this seems like an odd "miss" from him, IMO....Working some basic low-observable features into your superstructure design is common for any vessel these days.

Cool satellite imagery though. 50cm resolution? I wish I could get my hands on some free global elevation data with <1m resolutions....

Stealth is over-rated. It is an unnecessary cost in designing and producing aircraft and ships.

Oh, that's just beautiful, hopefully that'll make Grand Pooh Xi choke on his breakfast noodles.