Holy shit.

Umm. As fuck it. I'm staying out IOC this.

Radar to GD is like black magic.

There is a difference between detection, tracking, and developing enough information to employ weapons.

I may be pulling this entirely out of my ass as this is way out of my lane, but I seem to recall seeing a paper (and trying to read/understand it and failing miserably I might add) done by some academic types in a Scandinavian country I think that talked about using separate transmit and receive positions to detect stealth aircraft. Once again I may be totally misremebering or just didnt understand what I was reading, but the idea was you know what the receiver should be "hearing", but because the stealth craft disrupts the natural propogation of the radio waves that can be used to glean some information about a potential aircraft, sort of like shining a flashlight on a white piece of paper hanging in front of a white background. You might not be able to distinguish the paper from the background/wall when looking from the flashlight's (transmiter) perspective, but you can see the shadow made from the wall's perspective. Like I said though, this type of stuff is way over my head and out of my skillset so this may just be me remembering/understanding something entirely incorrectly.

Fog of war, what's that?

Two points:
1) Stealth can compliment jamming
2) Stealth is not the cost driver

Ironic given that you posted a picture of GLCM as an alternative to stealth aircraft in another thread.

Oh I love GD.



People think "stealth" is some kind of magic. You can read a decent physics book and understand all you need to know about it, but I thinks that's far beyond most here.

They don't need to detect wavelengths down to the dust particle size. Radar can detect "atmostpheric structures" quite easily. Doppler radar is used to track thunderstorms, for example. It helps a lot to have a structure many times the size of the wavelength in use, but radar can see, say, a twister that is very narrow, by the atmospheric disturbance it creates.

Radar can detect differences between a moist area and a dry area. By this analogy, I'm guessing radar could be used to detect contrails left by high-flying aircraft. It could certainly be used to detect the roiling air left by most any airframe.

The simple answer is "no".





Attack radar in fighters are Pulse Doppler, but no, they aren't going to be able to pick up disturbed air as a way to detect a radar absorbent aircraft.



 

A drunk Serb did it.

If the source of the disturbance is moving at 600 MPH or so you can assume that it is a man made disturbance.  Then you can call in interceptors in on it.

 

If your plan depends on omnipotent knowledge of the enemy, explain to me how bombers fit into the triad?

You will never have omnipotent knowledge of your own forces, much less your enemy's

We need to watch Under Siege 2 again!

The irony is that you can ignore the ADA if you are truly beholden to strategic bombing concepts.

ADA is relevant only because its a hinderance to bombing the target.
If you can bomb the target and the ADA can't stop it, who cares about ADA?  1000 GLCMs launched near simultaniously 50 feet AGL?  Hell, even at pedestrian speeds.  And we really haven't improved those things in 30 years.

Any opponent of the US is going to center around ensuring the OOB of their ADA forces is not known, and that for every real radar and missile site, there will be several decoys.  The same can't be said for the actual targets of the raid except maybe the actual leaders.  

you say strategic bombing, but you don't mean it.

Don't turn my thread into yet another bitch about tactics thread.
I am genuinely curious about what I started this thread over. If you have input about that I want to hear it.
If not then please don't derail the topic. That goes for everybody.

fair enough.
But it appears your question was answered early on.

How algorithms shape our world.

Thank you sir.

So how could one theoretically go about nullifying the effects of stealth design?

The reason I ask is that it seems to me that we are getting to a point where stealth designs are obsolete if not before they are produced then shortly thereafter due to better detection measures.
My question should have been worded better to ask what detection method will make stealth designs completely obsolete? It seems that radar is always getting better but there may be another method that could be used to better effect.

Stealth also means lots of $ made on maintaining the aircraft surfaces.

stealth, or low observability will always have some value, though it will be diminished as radar technology improves.

the problem is you sacrifice other characteristics (cost and availability being two major ones) in the pursuit of stealth.
for example, we have 16 operational B2s, but only 5 or 6 are available at a given time.

the internal stores requirement probably being the probably the biggest operational detracter (you can hang external if you need to, but, then, why bother)
there are a lot of good open source articles on the subject out there.

They have a military in Australia????

Ah yep.

You just displayed how little you know about bombing and ADA.

Finally someone who gets it.   Geesh guys it is really this simple, quit trying to complicate it.

I think the best way to detect them is to just monitor your wireless network and when the pilot's iPhone tries to connect to your access point, you know he's there.

My brother in law was on a patriot missle battery during Operation Desert Storm.  He said they coud track F117's with ease.  He said they looked for what was "not there" and that they COULD have successfully launched and taken them out.  Don't know the specifics...I'm just a dumb cannon cocker.  But that's what he said.

Lol

this is the part where you would actually inform instead of insult.

but, for some unfathomable reason, you never can bring yourself to do that.  Oh wait, thats right, with 10,000 manuals out there you can't discuss it because you have to go to SIPR because of your vast knowledge.

strategic bombing theory I know.  better than you.  much better.

the current application I probably don't.  the problem being the application is a justication exercise first, a war fighting exercise much latter.

the entire theory of strategic bombing is centered around the bombing of fixed targets at the country's strategic COGs.  none of which have to do with military targets.

now, if you want to start arguing operational concepts that shape decisive operations (read ground), we can go all day.  but the AF was created for the mission of strategic bombing., and that is why they are so expensive and yet so bad at the tactical and operational levels.

so, you can get into the conversation, or you can throw out insults without saying a fucking thing of value other than, "god damn everybody around here is stupid."

fucking worthless.

Aw what the hell.

Let the games begin.

yeah, I just shit on your thread.
sorry.

drive-bys with zero content are grating at times.

That's OK. Might as well get some entertainment in here and I figure a good argument between you and dport fits the bill.

Someone thought of that already.

http://www.funzug.com/index.php/informative-zone/aircraft-detection-before-the-invention-of-radar.html


BTW, the Serbs used a primitive detection system in 1999 to detect and shoot down an F117A.  Nobody wants to talk about it, but I once read a report where they figured out how to use the emissions from the cell phone network to detect and target the aircraft.  Also it didn't hurt that the stealth fighters were following the same flightpath and time schedule day after day, so they basically knew when and where the planes would be and just had to pinpoint their location for a SAM hit.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-10-26-serb-stealth_x.htm

OK - short primer ...

Stealth does not make an airplane invisible to radar, or light.  What it does is reduce the amount of time that it *is* detectible, to a window hopefully too small to do anything about it.

This is done with strict control of shapes and gaps, the use of radar absorbing material, and active measures - jamming, spoofing, & the like.

Radar is really useful because it travels at the speed of light, and even making a round trip, that's fast enough for the data you get from it to be very useful.

Sound detection would, by necessity, be limited to the speed of sound.  This was of some use in WWII, as bombers were cruising at less than 300mph for the most part, and in huge formations - so you could get data in time to activate searchlights, etc, or even to orient the primitive radar sets you had back then to look on a particular bearing.

Modern airplanes travel close to, or in excess of, the speed of sound, so even if the information was processed by computers, it won't get you enough warning to be useful.

When stealth is defeated, my prediction is that it will be with powerful, multifrequency or frequency-hoppping radar sets that can tell when they STOP getting a return in part of the spectrum, but still get a return in another.  I further predict these sets will NOT have the transmitter and reciever co-located, but will rather have many emitters/decoys and recievers, all interconnected and digitally processing the information coming back.

The reponse to that will involve unmanned decoys and jammers flying along the route.

Dport?  You cereal?

There is some controversy over whether the cell-phone radiation was used.  I tend to believe that they launched the SAMs blind, based on notification of the aircraft launch and previous mission flight paths and timing.  They then illuminated when they thought the target was in the area, and thus they were able to get a hit, even with a much shorter range of detection, as the missiles were already climbing to altitutde.

They had probably done previous "dry runs" to get their timing down and figure how far out their X-band sets could get a useful return on the F-117.

This is how

Why? I have attempted to do that on many occasions, so many I have lost count. You simply dismiss everything that does not fit neatly within your construct.

Oh contraire. Others have as well. Again, you dismiss any of their arguments when it doesn't fit neatly into your world view.

This makes no sense. You have repeatedly refused to go to SIPR to discuss. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps it's because it would challenge your world view/construct with facts. And those pesky facts get in the way.

You don't know what I know, for one. And theory is just that, theory. Theory gets messy when you apply it in the real world. Instead you sit up in your fortress of solitude where the world looks much simpler than it is.

No probably's about it.

LoL. This is where you pre-emptively dismiss what doesn't fit into your world view.

This is how you set up the other side's argument and then set out to defeat it. You try to define the terms as stealth=strategic. You do this by arguing that the F-35 and F-22, et. al. are specifically designed to fight a war with China. A war you argue that will never happen because we both have nukes.

First and foremost, stealth applies to much more than just China. And your theory that we will never fight China is just that a theory.

Ask yourself this. What was stealth designed to counter, specifically? What is the history of stealth, and low observables for that matter? Once you answer that question then you take a look around and look at the evolution of that threat and the proliferation.

I could spell this out for you, but you seem to like to read. I'd hate to rob you of that joy.

In that sort of situation F-35 brings more capabilities to the fight than ever before. The avionics are amazing. Much more useful than say, a GLCM. Much more useful than even a LAAR in many respects. Much more expensive as well.

I agree with the last sentence. That doesn't mean the USAF doesn't think about warfighting. It means there are good people operating under a flawed construct. Of

What is worthless is trying to argue with someone who is closed-minded. People who are willfully ignorant are "fucking worthless."

It's not like the air moves, or thermals exist, or anything....

I never bought the story of how the Serbs managed to shoot down that F-117.  The shootdown involved an old SA-3 system.  They are a command-guidance type of system in which the missile is directed by the launcher to its target via data signal.

If the F-117 was visible to the missile crew they may simply have used an optical-direction capability of the missile to down the plane.  You simply visually track the plane with a built-in camera camera on the radar unit and that sends course corrections to the missile to hit the target instead of the radar system sending the command guidance signals.  If the Serbs had any night or thermal vision capability on their missile systems it would have been possible to do.

There was alot of talk about the USAF getting sloppy in routing the F-117 along the same path over Serbia day after day and their being vulnerable to essentially being ambushed by somebody using an optically guided weapon.  It was much the same as when Saddam's gunners started shooting doen cruise missiles because the Navy would fly every one launched in an attack down the same route and after seeing a few fly over the gunners started waiting for the next one to come over.

Point being, stealth is not stupidity proof.  Get lax in how it's employed and it can get shot down because they are still only low-observable and not invisible.

I have changed my opinion on any number of things, when convinced.

I have no doubt that stealth is a nice to have.  My primary point being is we already have 180 more stealth fighter bombers than anyone else.  And the AF demands we buy 1760 more just for them.

Joint has been defined as three services buying effectively the same plane because no one can fight together.

And now we must have Next Gen Bomber to replace our B-52s and B-1s which are suddenly being defined as the COIN CAS provider of choice.

But lets not wander.  Who the fuck do we need 2500 stealth fighter bombers to fight?  stealth is a force multiplier for a narrow construct.  You could fight intelligently for cheaper or just buy thousands of planes to replace legacy planes we bought to defeat the Soviet Union.  

At the end of the day Air Power exists to bomb shit.  How those bombs get there is irrelevent.  
Take away everything the AF does and then rebuild it from the essentials.

we need marines with stealth, super sonic hover craft.
we neeed the navy with stealth expeditionary fighters
we need the AF with stealth fighter bombers.

you would figure with all the advantages a stealth fleet brings, we wouldn't need thousands of them, wouldn't you?

I actually got to listen to the CFACC for Kosovo, LTG Short, describe part of what happened there.  It was a combination of factors of us being sloppy  on a number of factors and our enemies being smarter and more creative than we gave them credit for.  This dynamic still exists right now.

That is certainly a possibility. I think the uncertainty of how exactly it was accomplished led to some interesting consequences.

Some of the theory of how they supposedly did it has basis in fact.

I agree that we do not need a huge number of stealth aircraft. We could gain air superiority by using the F-22 and datalink it to non stealth aircraft. I would think that having the 22 over the enemies airspace while feeding targeting data to the missiles of regular fighters would be a big advantage.
The F-35? Well I am not sure we need this aircraft. What can we do with it that cannot be done by other aircraft or cruise missiles? Do you need a stealth jet to do close air support? If you need a stealth jet to strike a target because of air defenses then you need to lob some missiles in there to take out the defenses. Then you really don't need the stealth capabilities.

I really believe that the Key West accords should be done away with. Then the mission of the AF should be changed to strategic bombardment, nuclear warfare using strategic bombers and missiles, air superiority, heavy airlift, aerial and spaceborne recon.
The Army should be given fixed wing assets for close air support, tactical resupply and troop movement to include aircraft for paratoop actions.
Marines and Navy should keep things the way they are.

Thats the exact problem that the ship Lockheed built had. The radar saw the waves on the ocean and where there was a spot with no waves, there was the ship
ETA here it is Sea Shadow

F-22 is not a fighter-bomber no matter what the advertising was in the 2005 timeframe. The F-22's main advantage is its kinematics.

You raise an interesting point about the mix. However, stealth IS NOT THE COST DRIVER. It isn't the cost driver for acquisition costs and it won't be the cost driver for O&M costs. It's the avionics. The integration for acquisition, and the complexity for O&M costs.

So when you talk of mix, I think about mix of avionics, not mix of stealth vs. non-stealth.

Stealth and low observables disrupts the enemy's kill chain buying you more t. (It's all about d=rt.) Anytime you can buy more t, you have an advantage. Boyd was right, decision loops are essential.

Stealth can be countered, but having stealth limits the opponent's options. It effectively frees resources needed to counter the main option, and allows them to be used to counter the opponent's other options. There's a reason Boeing has pitched an evolved F/A-18 into F/A-XX that would be stealth too.

You're confusing joint acquisition, which was forced on the services, and joint warfighting. Don't. The USAF didn't necessarily want 1760 F-35s. They were told, as were the USN and the USMC that there was going to be one fighter that would do it all to replace the F-16, F/A-18 and AV-8B. That's where the numbers came from.

This is where you start to go wrong. Those legacy planes wouldn't have lasted very long over Germany. That's what started us down the path of stealth even while we were ordering those very planes you cite. We recognized in the 1970s, curiously after 1973, those planes were vulnerable. They were vulnerable to IADS built in the 1960s and 1970s. Now they have much improved EW suites, but then again, the threat has also evolved.

You're concentrating on stealth, which again, really isn't the cost driver these days. It's the 1s and 0s that are driving the cost.

We had what 42 F-117s participate in Desert Storm? How many conventional aircraft did we lose to IADS? 22.
The relative invulnerability of part of your strike force doesn't magically render the rest invulnerable. Stealth disrupts the enemy's kill chain against individual assets.


The requirements that drove the F-35 development aren't bad ideas. They're very good ideas that are enablers for "bombing shit." It's the execution that has been awful. That's partly the services' fault. It's partly the contractor's fault. And it partly the fault of the politicians that forced the contractor and the services into the unnatural act of using "one" airframe for three different purposes.