The end of stealth aircraft era?

[Skybird]

If this is real, then yes.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/passivradar-nimmt-stealth-jets-die-tarnkappe-a-855711.html

This video was recorded at the ILA in Berlin this year. It shows radar tracking of a Zeppelin via passive radar - no active radar beams, only radio transmissions from civilian infratructure around.

The article claims the demonstration of socalled passive radar shows that it has reached a technical developement state that now it is able to track stealth aircraft without even sending own radar beams.

Passive radar uses the reflections of radio waves and comparable electromagnetic emissions and thus does not give its presence and activity away to the enemy. Since these signals come from a myriad of different directions and just any source and origin, the special geometry of stealth aircraft does not offer protection anymore.

The Cassidian system is expected to be ready for production in 2015. Demonstration and evaluation systems already have been delivered to the Bundeswehr. The equipment, depending heavily on latest algorithms and super brute force calculation power, has just recently become affordable for mass production and is not more than what can be packed onto a pickup van or a small transporter.

The article also refers to an essay by a marine corps Ltn-Col, Arend Westra, written in 2009. He wanred that the progress made in passoive radars threatens to erode Americxa'S superiority in stealth tchnology, and that one should not rely to conduct military operaiton in the fguture under cover of stealöth-basded air siperiroity. He recommended back then that instead of pumping giant ammounts of money into new stealth platforms, the focus should shift towards research to understand passive radar better, becasue the next egneratiuon of Russian and Chinese stealth aircraft easily could be of American standards of today and then it would be good to have a passiove radar system oneself. For offensive operations, his advise was: "Let's prepare to conduct ground combat operations without cover provided by air superiority."

In the light of all this, the already hilariously expensive stealth fighters like F-22 and F-35, appear to be even more a giant waste of money.

[Kloef]

Stealth was doomed from the beginning, it's much easier to build better detection systems than design a new aircraft with the latest stealth technology, when the aircraft is finished 15 years after it was designed it's not up to the latest anti-air technology.

What boggles the mind is that the designers never recogized that, maybe they were afraid to lose their job.

In war quantity beats quality, build alot of bombers and fighters so your enemy has too much targets to shoot at, a proven concept.

To design something stealthy is not a bad choice, the more stealth the harder it is to track you or for a missile to track you, but you should not concede too much so you end up with a flying platform that is incapable of even entering a dogfight, like the JSF.

At least the Russians get it, a little stealth, a good airframe at half the costs of what anybody else builds ( T-50), and a backbone of good aircraft like the SU-35, quantity wins..

[Skybird]

One could start to love the Eurofighter in comparison, seen this way.

[Kloef]

I've allways loved it, even though the design is old.

My choice however would be the F-18E/F, but i'm afraid we are neck deep in the JSF program..

[Skybird]

In the early 80s we had a comic series over here, "Major Cooper", about an Air Force major and his adventures. In there I first saw a Hornet and thought: "terrible tail, lovely nose".

A solid platform, no doubt.

[Platapus]

It depends on what you mean by stealth.

If by stealth you mean an aircraft completely invisible to radar, then stealth never existed. There is simply no way to make an aircraft with an RCS of zero.

This is why the cognoscenti use the term "low observable" for that is actually what stealth does. It makes what an aircraft would normally look like... well .. not look like that. Specifically to make the RCS of the stealth aircraft not look like the RCS of a non-stealth aircraft. This is usually done by reducing the RCS of the aircraft, but it can't be eliminated.

What this article was probably referring to is Bi-Static Radars. In this case, where the emitter is a commercial emitter. There is nothing new about bi-static radars and their effects on LO technology is well understood.

[Stealhead]

Stealth is like any other tool of warfare once it is developed someone is going to have a need to develop a counter to it.With stealth the counter is easy radar that has the ability to see a very small return and determine if that return is an actual aircraft or natural anomalous effect like a flock of birds.In the old day the technology to do this did not exist especially in the USSR because they lagged far behind the West in terms of microprocessors.The story is different now though.You have to remember that the USSR had to observe thousands upon thousands of miles of airspace no small feat even when only having to worry about big fat returns now throw in a plane that has a very small one and you have a whole new headache.

Of course as Platapus already stated "stealth" is a bit of a misnomer because it really is making the plane appear to be something else rather than truly disappear.It is much like the term "bullet proof".Stealth still has many advantages such as greatly increasing the time that an air defense system has to identify an aircraft or strike force and that can more than enough to have a massive effect on the effectiveness of the defenders reaction in many cases a nation has a matter of moments to react to an air threat for some nations such as Israel the reaction time is extremely short.

Take a plane like the B-2 and give it a stand off weapon where it may only have to just penetrate enemy airspace and they likely simply have no counter.

[Kloef]

Stealth has allways been about being as hard to find as possible, making it difficult or time consuming for the adversary to target, and more important track you and fire a missile that can be guided through tracking or active radar of it's own, then you still have to collerate, is my missile doing what i want it to do? There lies the challenge. Being hard to track can also be done by aggressive manouvres but they are time and feul consuming, let alone dangerous..

In dogfights the whole thing changes, the stealth advantages in the design will work against the aircraft in most cases but the F-22, the JSF will have a problem dealing with that and will lose against an aircraft like the SU-35 because of its manouverability.

It's also about being hard to see, look at how the Italian Airforce used their old starfighters in their late career, they would send up two starfighters along with a Tornado ADF and let it sit in the back playing awacs for the starfighters, they would leave their radar switched of and because the aircraft is small and hard to see head on it would make for a difficult aircraft to target, and it was backed by the Tornado in any case..

The only stealth weapon is a nuclear submarine..

[Skybird]

Cassidian: http://www.cassidian.com/en_US/web/guest/Passive%20radar%20from%20CASSIDIAN%20remains%20inv isible

Stealth: in airplanes it gets acchieved by materials as well as geometry of surfaces that is designed to disperse incoming radar beams and to reflect them at directions where they do not reach back to the active radar station sending the beam.

But these planes are moving inside a constantly present, artificial, active electromagnetic environmentdue to modern infrastructure, bombarding their surfaces FROM EVERY ANGLE, that is why they are also reflecting at every angle. The reflceting energy levels may be low, but are such that Cassidian now seems to be able to catch them up.

At the same time, it does not give away Cassidian's presence and activity mode.

The military relevance should be obvious.

[Kloef]

The S1850M Long Range Volume Search Radar is able to detect them as well, since 2009..

They are build to be installed on the new R.N carriers.

It can detect a metal ball the size of a tennis ball 100 miles away..the saying is a F-35 looks like a metal golf-ball.

The S1850M is an improved version of the Dutch build Smart-L by Thales..

The Smart-L was also capable of detecting stealth technology but Thales was ordered to filter this out, at least that's the rumour, and it was 10 years ago.

More important the Smart-L can detect a missile at 2000 miles(!) making it the best Radar in the world to this day.

During trails it picked up a U.S balistic missile (launched for the test) at 400 miles away and tracked it outside the atmosphere it also calculated its complete trajectory, this is the only way to be able to do anything against such a missile.


S1850M:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1850M

[Madox58]

And if you really believe that all this has not been taken into account years ago?

Your only kidding yourselves.

The Stealth stuff you see today is only what you are allowed to see or know about.

What you know about today is already decades old.
:haha:

You think they just stopped working the tech back then?
:har:

[soopaman2]

A friend of mines father used to work for Bell Labs and always told us that the stuff they tell you about now, is already outmoded, otherwise they wouldn't tell you.

[Madox58]

I still have friends in some places.

I ain't worried about this new stuff radar crap.
That's so behind the NOW level that it's laughable!
:har:

[Gargamel]

Wonder what the RCS of a all fabric and composite plane would be, or and old one like the wright flyer.

[Kloef]

Yep that would be nice to see, fabric is usually treated and painted and the cables would make for one big emission..

[Takeda Shingen]

The only stealth weapon is a nuclear submarine..

Nuclear-powered submarines generate, on the whole, more noise than their AIP counterparts when submerged. The primary reason is that plant noise is a constant due to the need to pump coolant through the reactor unit. The AIP submarine does not generate power through a reactor, and does not have to worry about that sound source. Therefore it is safe to say that modern conventional submarines are 'stealthier' than their nuclear counterparts.

The tradeoff is that nuclear submarines have far greater underwater performance in speed and, generally, depth. They also have unlimited submerged endurance, as they also generate their own oxygen.

[Kloef]

AIP is the ultimate form of stealth i guess, but endurance wise it's still in its infancy, this technology is hard to master..

But we agree on subs being the stealthiest weapon around, diesel subs with snorkel offer the best thing next to AIP and most conventional subs are still diesel powered, AIP is offered as an upgrade for many boats and offered by a variety of manufacturers around the world as Wiki says, didn't know the technology was in that state at the moment, interesting thing:)

[Takeda Shingen]

AIP is the ultimate form of stealth i guess, but endurance wise it's still in its infancy, this technology is hard to master..

Yes. I think that, ultimately, AIP is the future of submarine design and all submarines will be of the AIP variety as soon as the technology matures to allow for greater performance.

[Skybird]

They also have unlimited submerged endurance, as they also generate their own oxygen.

Ähem - food...?

[Betonov]

Ähem - food...?

They fire a harpoon trough the torpedo tube and cut the whale up in the airlock

[Karle94]

Endurance is not the only limitation of AIP subs, performance as well. No AIP sub has ever exceeded 5 knots. At that speed, one can`t do much, unless one has accurate information of an enemies movements.

[Skybird]

Endurance is not the only limitation of AIP subs, performance as well. No AIP sub has ever exceeded 5 knots. At that speed, one can`t do much, unless one has accurate information of an enemies movements.

ELINT. Commando operations. And sitting in ambush in water straits, naval bottlenecks - there are so many possible scenarios, also consider those places where a big SSN cannot operate - extremely shallow waters for example.

Also, I doubt that speed limit. The 212 for example did the trip from Eckernförde to Rota in 2006 (while staying submerged for two weeks), and plotting a simple course through the English channel and straight over the Biskaya Bay, not following the coastline that is, gives you a minimum range of around 2000 nm. 2000 nm in two weeks has you ending up with an average speed of 6 knots. Now, the 212 has an electric engine which gets the electricity it runs by either from the boat's Diesel, or the fuel cells. So the critical factor is the fuel cells' capacity. The faster you drain them, the sooner they run dry. But I think in principle the engine is capable to reach maximum speed no matter whether using the Diesel or the fuel cells - since it always comes down to electricity as fuel. 6 knots possibly hints at the economical best compromise between speed and durability of the fuel cells. But the public data sheet indeed lists 20 knots as maximum speed when submerged.

The real limits of course are kept secret.

The Swedish Gotland boats use a Sterling engine with AIP capability. Their maximum speed when submerged also is listed with 20 knots, public data.

I'm eager to learn about the A26, their new improved Gotland class that is under construction. The Gotlands and 212s probably are the closest rivals to each other in their league.

Concerning usability, one should not see SS and SSN as contradictory, but complementary, I think. Each class has things it can do better than the other, and each class has characteristics where it is inferior. What boat would you choose in the Baltic? And in the middle of the Pacific? And never forget - a 209 sailed from Germany into the Gulf of Mexico, and back.

[TLAM Strike]

ELINT. Commando operations. And sitting in ambush in water straits, naval bottlenecks - there are so many possible scenarios, also consider those places where a big SSN cannot operate - extremely shallow waters for example.

No one said an SSN has to be huge. Just look at the old Skates, those were roughly the size of an Fleet Boat. :salute:

[Cybermat47]

LOL, so the Americans went to all the trouble of copying Nazi designs, passing them off as alien spaceships, for nothing!

[Karle94]

No one said an SSN has to be huge. Just look at the old Skates, those were roughly the size of an Fleet Boat. :salute:

The Skipjacks were only slightly larger than todays SSKs. Between 60-70 meters long.