Long-Wave Radar Can Take the Stealth From Stealth Technology

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."

Comments

Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[timrod]

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

[amicusNYCL]

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).

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[spiritplumber]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[alen]

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

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[myth24601]

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?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Take your pick:
*New systems takes years if not a decade+ to deploy, especially military systems
*Engineering projects often fail for reasons unrelated to the soundness of the underlying technology
*It still works against pretty much everybody else who can't afford to develop the technology on their own

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

> > it will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives to late to be effective against other countries with advanced radar systems.

> radar systems that remove that radar superiority, the F-35 now looks like even more of a gigantic waste of money.

Don't be worried about the money.

We're in a situation where there's no international law and anyone can blow their neighbour because they "know" such neighbour would attack the next day.

We got to return to morality before legality, or else we might face a future without guilt -- but also without neighbours.

And if _that_ is put in money terms, I bet it would be incalculable.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[pastafazou]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[bobbied]

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 to me that the F35's being used in close air support roles will have an advantage over the F18's used now which have radar cross section of a flying tractor trailer truck. Not to mention that in MOST places, they are not going to have the newfangled technology that defeats stealth anyway. Certainly it's going to be a long time before the guy on the ground with the shoulder fired weapon will have this radar (Not that he needs it as most of that stuff is IR guided anyway).

So, if you really want to complain about something, drop the F35 and get ready. I'm guessing we are going to be replacing the B2 over this. Strategic bombers are really expensive and complicated programs. Of course it would be cheaper to go the missile route, but I'm guessing we won't due to treaties we are in.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[alen]

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

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[tibit]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just a fighter plane - it's also a jigsaw. It's a power drill. It's a wood-turning lathe. It's an asphalt spreader. It's 67 tools in one! How much would you pay for a machine that can do all this?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[timeOday]

the F-35 now looks like even more of a gigantic waste of money.

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 fixes from different positions that are far apart, which is a big limitation, especially if you want to build an radar that can fit on an aircraft or missile. I am just guessing here what the limitations might be. But there are always countermeasures, but almost never 100% effective and without added cost and other drawbacks.

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Probably never. Longer waves means larger antennas. You don't have a place in the fighter to fit the antenna there, and even if you did, the stealthiness of the airplane itself would probably be gone, what with a multiple-meter metallic element EM-gaping through the surface - unshielded, because the radar needs to work. However, you shouldn't need it (at least in many cases). There are still data links in play that the airplane should be able to receive.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter anyway.
The F35 engine will be so hot all you need is to look at infrared to find it.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

The F35 is the Wenger Giant Swiss Army Knife of planes. For those that know know heres some pics, every tool that had ever appeared in a Swiss Army Knife, large as a mans foot and absolutly useless as becasue of the size it's too unweildy to be useful.
https://i.imgur.com/xTtmoff.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/889o565.jpg

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[the eric conspiracy]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[0123456]

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?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lisaparratt]

There's a story that the USAF sent a stealth bomber to Farnborough airshow as part of the display. Apparently, the pilots were very surprised when Air Traffic Control got in touch to tell them they were doing the display over Farnham, 6 miles down the road.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

It won't find its way into fighters. Fighters use X-Band radar because the useful frequencies are dictated by antenna size, among other things. Fighters simply can't mount antennae that large. They might be able to do a tricky thing here and there, but by and large they will be far behind in capability to fixed or mobile or marine assets that can deploy the required size of antenna - with X-Band a site vs. a fighter would have 'more processing power, more transmission power' so that equates to possibly better ECCM and certainly more range. For the longer wave radars, a fighter will effectively be the short-sighted guy who forgot to bring his glasses to work and it's so bad that he has to hold the papers 5" from his face to read them.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Sand_Man]

"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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Obscene_CNN]

Long wave radar requires large antennas so it won't find its way into a fighter not to mention a missile which is smaller.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[alen]

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

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the lower frequency radar can often detect stealth aircraft. This is a well-known phenomenon (so well known, in fact, it's mentioned on the Wikipedia page). The things is: long wavelength radar requires a large antenna. And I do mean requires> physics prohibits you from dveloping small high-resolution long-wavelength radar systems. That means it's physically impossible for fighters, such as those the F-35 was designed to fight, to use long-wavelength radars. And forget completely about radar-guided missiles, those simply aren't going to work.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[flyingfsck]

Long waves on short antennas are just less efficient. It means more electrical power is needed for the transmitter on a small fighter plane.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[flyingfsck]

Military IFF also does civilian ATC. No surprise there at all actually.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

It has no superioity, every simulation they've run shows it'd get slaughtered by every other war plane out there, even planes that are being retired.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[ganjadude]

we dont know, perhaps some of these holdups are to try and work on stopping the long wave radar as well as short wave? i dont know, just hopeful i suppose

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the funny part. When a comitee designed the thing to be used by more than one branch, it failed in doing so

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111_Aardvark

When someone design it for one branch, without concessions, but the design is good enough (for the time), it's naturally adopted by the others

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-7_Corsair_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Hercules

So that's why the Jack-of-all-trades approach to the F-35 really doesn't hold in my opinion. Of course, I could be completely wrong.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[DarthVain]

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 colossal waste of money that could be much better spent on other things. If you absolutely must spend it on military I can think of better ways, even if you say it has to be in the air force.

I mean WTF does Canada need F-35's for?! Buy some ships, heavy lift capability, multi-purpose helos. Most of what we do are support activities, aid, and rescue. The F-35 does not increase our capabilities in ANY of those things. If it comes to a shooting war with some country that you actually need F-35's for, Canada would be sort of screwed anyway in theater. However any sort of invasion is more less impossible (unless it comes from the US :) given the logistics of location etc... Even then other assets would be more valuable than F-35's. Not to mention the US being an ally likely isn't going to stand around and do nothing either which is more than a little thing. In fact they ONLY reason I can see this happening, is that the Canadian government needs a convenient way to funnel a bunch of money to the US in a gesture of goodwill or something.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[timeOday]

I do think there's a risk of not getting our money's worth from the F35 if the missions we need to do all continue to be more suitable for cruise missiles (is that a drone?)

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[madhatter256]

And then they are going to say that the whole purpose of the F35 was to not absorb radar waves, but absorb money waves.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[cheesybagel]

IRST is enough of a problem at mid and short ranges as is.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

A good enough analysis of the topic was made by some officers of the Hellenic Air Force (because we Greeks will need a 5th generation fighter very soon since our main enemy has already decided to buy about 100 F35):
Low Observable Principles, Stealth Aircraft and Anti-Stealth Technologies - Konstantinos Zikidis (Maj, HAF), Alexios Skondras (2ndLt, HAF), Charisios Tokas (2ndLt, HAF) - it is in English... so "it's NOT all Greek to you"!

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[amorsen]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL :-) China and Russia wasting money on the F-35. I think you have your facts reversed.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

Ditto. And again.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

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 missile picking a nearby target at random, and no one's willing to do that today.

As far as Canada, hey, what can I say the "it's cheaper to just be nice to everyone" strategy seems to work for you guys, and for the moment the US has your backs. But do expect our military funding to keep falling to the point where you can't count on that, as the US eventually goes broke. Try not to look too appealing or loot-able when that happens.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Savage-Rabbit]

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 IRTS, is connected to a battlefield networking system, backed by AWACS, ground radars and other sensors capable of seeing F-35s and is protected by modern SAMs. The resiliance of such a system is even greater if the missiles fired by the Su-35 can receive mid-course updates from systems other than the launcing aircraft. The Russians already have air to air missiles whose guidance can be handed over to a nother aircraft or a ground or air based sensor system which can be a long band radar since you only need to get the missile close enough to detect an F-35 with the missile's onboard sensor which is what the article is talking about, combining long band radar for situational awareness with short band radars and other sensors for terminal guidance.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder which cost more. F-35 program or China's upgraded radar?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Penguinisto]

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.)

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada can always count on the other commonwealth nations for defense assistance as well.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[TheDarkMaster]

build a ground radar station with long-wave, or an aircraft where the required antenna is part of the wings leading edge. Then build missiles programmed to chase the echoes created by this long-wave radar when it reaches an F-35. And then watch the spectacle of fireworks created by the F-35 falling from the sky.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[DarthVain]

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 north anyway. Maybe this is why Canada is also getting "ice hardened" frigates designed in Norway.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Obscene_CNN]

while what you say is true its an exponential relationship. Rather than accomplish what you suggest it would just be easier to fry the stealth planes from ground radar stations pumping out gigawatts.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[tibit]

Enter the synthetic aperture radar :)

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[DarthVain]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[SydShamino]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jon3k]

Let's not forget about IRST. Turns out no matter how stealthy you build a plane it still has to ignite hydrocarbons to stay in the air.

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 different kinds of threats.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[ShanghaiBill]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like arguments that tout unquantifiable benefits. And those numerous other uses which ones could not have been covered with less of a white elephant.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Dishevel]

Canada would want a Sub for that. Cruise in under the weather and fire a few torpedoes at the legs. Done.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

And that mission couldn't be accomplished with cheaper, longer-range, twin-engine Super Hornets if they were bought new off the shelf and deployed in the high Arctic as a replacement for the current CF-18 aircraft rather than waiting for a still-being-developed aircraft?

There's no way Canada would gain air superiority over Russian aircraft anyway. They could blacken the sky with aircraft compared to the few we would ever be able to afford of any type.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Shakrai]

Which ones would those be? The United Kingdom (combined with France, who is obviously not a Commonwealth member) couldn't manage a bombing campaign in Libya without logistical support from the United States. Heck, they couldn't retake the Falklands without logistical support and their military was a lot better off in the 1980s than it is today.

Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa don't have power projection capabilities either. So what does that leave you with? The British nuclear deterrent? That's certainly nothing to sneeze at but I would submit that you've already lost the war if your only way to win it is to resort to nuclear weapons at the outset.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Situational awareness in modern combat fields comes from WhatsApp and following your enemy's Twitter feed

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[ColdWetDog]

Canada can always count on the other commonwealth nations for defense assistance as well.

Rest assured!

New Zealand has your back!

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just a fighter plane - it's also a jigsaw. It's a power drill. It's a wood-turning lathe. It's an asphalt spreader. It's 67 tools in one! How much would you pay for a machine that can do all this?

2 dollars 99 cents. And I think the price is 2 dollars too much.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Because jobs building the useless F-35, and millions going to into offshore bank accounts.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Except there is no reason, other than this self-fulfilling arms race, that China and America need to be enemies. They are our biggest trading partner. Chinese spending to counter the F-35 is likely not diverted from other military spending, but diverted from civilian spending which would have reduced poverty, improved education and healthcare, etc.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[BellyJelly]

What's the point of being a stealth aircraft if you have a radar shining like a spotlight out of your nose? Then everyone can see you coming, and the response becomes as simple as having a passive radar homing missile.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[delcielo]

Yes.

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[phorm]

Yeah, it's great that you've pushed potential opponents to spend $50,000,000 to counter your technology, but NOT if your R&D + production costs are $1,000,000,000+

It's like the issue with anti-missile shields. If an anti-missile-missile costs $5000, but the original missile costs $150, then you're likely going to lose the economic war of attrition...

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

>Of course, if the fighters are able to receive targeting data from the ships then it wouldn't matter

Or from each other. Get an AWACS bird in the air with a data connection to nearby fighters (the Eurofighters, recent MIGs, F-22s and modern F/A18 variants IIRC), fighters chattering amongst themselves (can cover a target from multiple angles, harder to jam, think the Eurofighters already do this, no idea about others), and basically radar stealth becomes a pipe dream against any hi-tech opponent.

People have been saying that for a while - it's one of the big arguments that comes up whenever there's a F-22 vs Eurofighter internet fight. Great to have against low tech opponents like pre-war Iraq, but in a shooting match between major world powers there's a big question mark over the value.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably never. Longer waves means larger antennas.

Only for reception. Emission is fine, you're below the diffraction limit and thus emit like a point source.

And here's the kicker - you can have as large a receiving antenna as you like (well, within limits) Network the squad's planes. This is pretty much what TFA says it's happening with ground based radar - you want it in the air, do it in the air, as long as you figure out how to track your planes accurately enough.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jklovanc]

Most ATC no longer rely on actual radar. They generally rely on the aircraft reporting their position with a transponder. Even military aircraft have these transponders which are turned off in combat situations.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jklovanc]

Look what they did with the F-15/16s, everything but carrier ops.

And VTOL. The F15/16, which by the way are 2 completely different aircraft, did only two roles; air superiority and ground attack. It is not difficult to design an aircraft that handle those two roles.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

It means you need a hobby. Or your meds are low.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jklovanc]

And that mission couldn't be accomplished with cheaper, longer-range, twin-engine Super Hornets

Which will no longer be built or supported by the US when the F-35 comes on line. Replacing an obsolete aircraft with a slightly less obsolete aircraft is not a good solution.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

Sounds like it would work, and while it would take quite some time to develop, airframes last decades. OTOH, there are good practical reasons that 4 cm radar is used for targeting, and long-wave would be easy to fox. Still, it will eventually make the F-35s less effective against high-tech opponents (and I don't think humanity has quite grown out of that possibility).

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[riverat1]

Canada is of course a member of NATO so all the members including the US would come to their defense if necessary.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

All that sounds right to me. However, F-35s are already visible enough to high-tech, high-power radar for situational awareness - they aren't B2-style stealth aircraft - if only marginally so. Going to longer-wave scanning radar seems to me to be the same as just throwing out 10x the radar energy to get the same result - still important, but not a difference in kind.

Given we usually hit with stand-off strategic weapons and B2s first, that seems OK to me.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[kqs]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

"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. "

And if they DIDN'T put a single dime into that waste of money, and instead put it into education, they could have paid for ALL university tuition in the USA for 7 years, thusly allowing young people to spent money on starting their lives (cars, furniture, services, condos, whatevs) instead of spending their young adulthood as debt slaves working whatever crap job they can get because the US Govt, as a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, the Military industrial complex, and the financial sector, would rather subsidise their aforementioned owners, rather than the middle and working classes, thusly pulling money out of productive parts of the economy and dumping it into useless weapons systems, a casino based financial system, and a dying energy sector that should be scrapped and renovated for a post-carbon future.

Also, wne you plane costs (x) millions of dollars and it can be defeated by a new radar system that costs a tiny fraction of that, you've just wasted a big pile of money. As usual.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Nothing prevents a fighter from towing a long thin wire through the air . . .

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Oh, but that is perfect. First, you borrow money for your superweapon - from the enemy. Then you don't pay - you have a superweapon, after all. Not too good for the enemy...

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[AmiMoJo]

Can't you guys find a way to spend that money on space exploration, a supersonic passenger aircraft, new medicines, a hyperloop, a massive push for EVs and renewable energy or just anything other than more expensive ways to blow stuff up?

The US could be an amazing force for good in the world, and much more popular.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the US wouldn't have a fancy new war machine to trot around the world would they?

PS.
How can China be a "potential enemy" and a source of financing at the same time?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[AmiMoJo]

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 trying to simply hide. Such aircraft have already proven very effective in theatre.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[bears]

Not so. Actual radar, secondary *and* primary, is used by my ATC customer. They have some multi-lateration systems, but to date pay no attention to the transponder reported GPS position.

Perhaps you think we should just equip the controllers with a FlightRadar24 app each?

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you're being sarcastic, but just in case you're not I'd like to point out that if the argument was true, then nobody should have more money than basic welfare level (for lack of an incentive).

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Dorianny]

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.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[nedlohs]

Borrowing it would be perfect. Now you've cost them 1001x the cost to counter the technology while spening 0x yourself and ending up with it.

Assuming you don't pay the loan back of course, and if the plan it to be using F-35s against them why would you be making loan payments?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[angel'o'sphere]

Depends on the wavelength, wavelength longer than antenna size simply does not work, law of physics, you know :) or was it twice the antenna size? Don't remember, does not matter the principle still applies.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[angel'o'sphere]

Sure: Radar lock on multiple targets over the horizon. Fire missiles. Last time I checked the laws of physics hold for everything and everyone. How exactly should radar see/lock something it can't see? E.g. when it is beyond the horizon?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[aevan]

Use of AWACs dates to WW2 with them hooking up radar units on Avengers[TBM-3W]. Was a bit late to see action though. EC-121 was the awac for Vietnam.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Unless it's a multistatic radar, you won't get any spatial resolution worth mentioning from that. Either that, or my RF tech knowledge is somehow severely deficient (which is quite possible, mind you!).

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I was referring to the spatial resolution of monostatic radar configurations. Of course, what you're suggesting sounds feasible, but I'd think that if you get into a dogfight, any link would be practically unusable. However, having said that, I imagine that from a short distance, either short-wave radar (due to short distance and high power) or passive optical tracking should be feasible anyway, so it still sounds like an interesting option for finding and tracking enemies from afar.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[budgenator]

The real purpose of stealth isn't to be invisible, but is to avoid being visible enough to hit. The bird I worked on, the HAWK missile 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

[budgenator]

A fighter jockey is always going to want bullets to shoot even if he only shoots them on the range once a year to qualify, because that's just the way their brains are wired; just like all the Apollo and Soyuz space craft had to have windows.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

How can China be a "potential enemy" and a source of financing at the same time?

By "borrowing" money with no intention of paying it back. You're not that street smart, are you.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[budgenator]

If the antenna is smaller than 10 wavelength, you lose angular resolution. It's not a show stopper, but it makes the bird much more likely to over/under-correct while tracking, which eats up energy for steering and your time of flight on the bird. This shortens your effective range and shrinks your no-escape bubble, to compensate you have to launch multiple missile at each target. The only way to survive on a modern battlefield is to "shoot and scoot", if you have to shoot twice, your shooting when you should be scooting.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada is of course a member of NATO so all the members including the US would come to their defense if necessary.

In theory. Looks good on paper so it must be true.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Please review basic physics before ranting. Long waves = Low frequency.
If you can fit a good directional low frequency antenna (they have to be huge) on a jet then get back to us.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

There is a way to get any wavelength out of any short piece of antenna, even much shorter than half wavelength or quarter wavelength that are ideal, with a coil that creates a longer characteristic length, as done with police car antennas at the base for semi-long wavelengths, or really done with am radio antennas, for huge wavelengths. But as you say accuracy drops, and for precise targeting, you'd need more than one plane interact, via a separation distance between them. You got two eyeballs, and every time I see people who have a really huge spacing between their eyes, and their eyeballs almost drop off at the edge of their face, I think they must have very good stereo and distance vision. Same goes with high performance binoculars, the eye-spacing is enlarged with prisms, or even radio astronomy things where receivers around the globe interact, and two or three of them can get a very good resolution, almost equivalent to as if the space between them was also filled up with radio receivers. So in this sense a key in long wave radar is interaction between 2 or 3 planes, and using the distance between them for more precision, like using the increased distance from a binocular with prisms for better vision. There is no such thing as true stealth, as far as we know it, in the radio-frequency sense, any object, like a fighterjet, is a huge size with a different impedance than free space, and reflects wavelengths that are halfwave of their overall size, no matter what kind of stealthing technology you use. Even in the 1st gulf war, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, there were for sale some Czech long wavelength radars, but there are standard radars that hillbillies use around the poorer Muslim world and places like Africa, and traditional funky shaped stealth technology works great against them, but not against the long wavelength ones, for which it's almost useless to use square shapes, and it's better to go back to aerodynamic shapes and speed, like the Blackbird plane used to be, non stealth, but so fast, that it outran any rocket shot at it. But it's very limited on range, very expensive on fuel, and lacks maneuverability, because it's aerodynamically very stable, and for best maneuverability you need highly unstable fast turning fly by wire planes. One exception to stealthing might be an airplane that you can divide up into tiny objects, so they pass a wave coming at them like Scipio passed Hannibal's elephants at the Battle of Zama, or like a wave breaking wall on a lake passes much of the waves if it has lots of large gaps, and the ratio of pass area to reflection area is high, and then it's harder to find an overall characteristic wavelength. But by their very presence, even the very small wave breaking pillars, that you would use as a loosely connected set of pieces to make out your UAV airplane that passes waves shot at it, even the small amount of pieces there modify the overall "dielectric constant" of free space, and create a disturbance in the 377 ohm impedance, and create a transmission-cable impedance mismatch like reflection, if they don't act like proper Ethernet or SCSI cable terminators, or anti-reflection coatings on a lens. There is a new field in physics, with negative dielectric constants, where, under certain conditions, you can make weird shapes that act and shape waves as if their dielectric constant were negative, and you could use those to balance out the average dielectric constant increase created by the parts of your "sieve-UAV-plane," but there is some really funky math involved, and I'm too stupid to comprehend it, and so is pretty much everybody else I know, or the whole military leadership of the country, but you don't have to comprehend how it works if it works, and you can find smart enough people to comprehend it. Also this negative impedance or negative dielectric constant behavior might be at some characteristic wavelength only, so you would have to sense what frequency beam is shot at you, and adjust the spacing or sieve-mesh of your UAV to match that, and then the game goes to simultaneo

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just leave this excerpt from the monopole antenna wiki article here:

"The monopole is a resonant antenna; the rod functions as a resonator for radio waves, with oscillating standing waves of voltage and current along its length. Therefore the length of the antenna is determined by the wavelength of the radio waves it is used with. The most common form is the quarter-wave monopole, in which the antenna is approximately 1/4 of a wavelength of the radio waves."

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

Jamming ability is always a good thing, but can be dangerous, because if it's coming from you, a fighterjet airplane, it's a simple form or radar, the enemy cut the radar emitters, and listen, and measure your signal triangulated, like cell phone towers measure cellphone position. You'd again need at least 2, or better 3, or better 4 enemy planes interacting via enough distance between them that the signal timing difference is enough to calculate the triangulated(if on same level) or more like tetrahedronated (any 3d position) position coming at them. The more planes in the enemy swarm, knowing the distance between themselves, the better the resolution, just like the more GPS satellites on sensors, the better the calculated resolution.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[NotSoHeavyD3]

My understanding is that the main way in pretty much every war one plane shot down another plane isn't via dog fighting but pretty much dicta boelcke, IE the victim was shot down before he had any idea he was getting attacked. (In other words "Shoot him in the fucking back.")

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

On demand jamming ability is a good way to draw fire though from a pilot in dire straits, even if you invite an attack on yourself with it.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[JoeMerchant]

Ships travel in fleets - updating the relative antenna positions in heaving seas, that's where the fun is...

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

Having windows on a rotating cylinder space station might just be simply annoying, if there is a sundown and sunup every 3 minutes.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a rog.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Euler]

The real question is whether the rules of engagement in various scenarios keep the F35 beyond visual range or not. Military planners like to have that capability, but often in modern warfare, the rules of engagement require visual confirmation. Also, once the stuff hits the fan in a larger conflict, sheer numbers of opponents and battlefield confusion might close that distance quickly. Once the enemy can see you visually, they can target you with a variety or means besides radar and traditional maneuverability and speed become crucial. Also, an opponent having even a low-quality/low-frequency radar hit from a ground station on an F35 will give enough warning for opponent force to take evasive actions.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

What would be a third role for a 1-2 seat Jet aircraft without a cargo bay? Oh, bomber, if you don't need much capacity.

I don't think of the A-6 as a fighter. Not does the F-104 seem to be much of a ground attack craft. It may not be difficult, but true air superiority fighters are nor automatically also serviceable ground attack craft, and some were never multi role

I'm not sure the F-117 is a fighter.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

You're completely right. After the U.S. goes bankrupt Canada will become Briton's police force for world domination, with major supporting rolls from South Africa and Australia. Briton still has to finish conquering Mexico, get more control in Africa, expand Israel, Move in to South America by causing the Mexicans to start a war somewhere in south America. Go Union Jack, Kill Em ALL!

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptnZilog]

All irrelevant - China has the ultimate 'trump card'. If the US starts giving them too much in the way of problems, they simply stop making iPhones, and the 'smart' phone addicts in the US will be begging them for new phones to stare into all day.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptnZilog]

And that mission couldn't be accomplished with cheaper, longer-range, twin-engine Super Hornets

Which will no longer be built or supported by the US when the F-35 comes on line. Replacing an obsolete aircraft with a slightly less obsolete aircraft is not a good solution.

Heh, we'll be supporting those for at least a decade or two after the F-35, we've sold huge amounts of them around the world and I'm sure they'll still be in demand for quite a while.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptnZilog]

Situational awareness in modern combat fields comes from WhatsApp and following your enemy's Twitter feed

Don't forget the enemies youtube videos.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptnZilog]

The military can't possibly let themselves be outdone by NASA and it's Denarius IV Spacecraft

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptnZilog]

The military can't possibly let themselves be outdone by NASA and it's Denarius IV Spacecraft

Oops, my href dissappeared. Denarius IV

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Shinobi]

"Or from each other. Get an AWACS bird in the air with a data connection to nearby fighters (the Eurofighters, recent MIGs, F-22s and modern F/A18 variants IIRC), fighters chattering amongst themselves (can cover a target from multiple angles, harder to jam, think the Eurofighters already do this, no idea about others), and basically radar stealth becomes a pipe dream against any hi-tech opponent."

AJ 37 Viggen had datalink capability in the 70's already, which is just one example of how old that capability is. As for your other example, fighters linked between each other, I think JAS 39 Gripen was the first plane in service to have that capability, 8 planes being able to link together IIRC, though seriously downgraded when in NATO compatible configuration, due to how utterly shitty Link 16 is in comparison.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[davester666]

Is it really a win if they have to spend $1-$10 to counter the technology you develop that costs you $100? I'll bet their radar development costs are easily at least one if not two orders of magnitude lower... Hell, why wouldn't China and Russia split the costs of developing it...

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

The replacement for the F16 is the F22 (which sadly we have far to few of). The F16 was designed as an interceptor, a very different role than an air superiority fighter (and one that has become almost meaningless), but it works well enough. The F35 isn't in the same league as the F22 for clearing the skies, but since we're cutting every military budget everywhere, we can't have nice things.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

"Horizon" is a fuzzy word. The APG-71 radar system, now deployed for 30 years, allows locking on to multiple targets at 230 miles as deployed (twice that as designed, but the antenna actually used isn't ideal). Pick what terminology you want, but I call that "long range".

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptQuark]

Nice try, but the fact that the aircraft are all moving in relationship to each other plus the fact that the interconnect signals are only traveling between them as fast as the radar signals they receive means trying to triangulate with timing differences would be close to impossible.

The reason GPS works is the satellites are synced to an atomic clock source to a billionth of a second accuracy, along with dynamic orbital-correction information to give the exact distance to the satellite. Even with the new "atomic clock on a chip" to give distances, their spacial locations would be unknown. http://www.nist.gov/public_aff...

Newer planes use a phase-array antenna system to give azimuth (direction) to the signal source. With multiple planes receiving directional information and sharing that information between themselves, a location can be determined. As with your timing approach, the more receivers and wider the separation, the better the accuracy. http://www.microwaves101.com/e...

~~

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[CaptQuark]

Or it means he was trying to be funny. The guess military now allows GLBT troops to operate Ground-based long-wave (GBLW) radar. One too many FLA (four-letter acronyms) for him to remember.

~~

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a good idea when the replacement costs far, far more and isn't likely to be any more survivable in combat. After all, if the mission is unopposed you could technically fly in using a Sopwith Camel.

Then you factor in the fact you could have quite a few Super Hornets for the price of a single F-35, and the calculus starts looking quite good.

I will point out that our aircraft are getting to be egregiously overpriced. The B-29 only cost a few million (in inflation-adjusted dollars!).

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[angel'o'sphere]

Long range it is.

And horizon is not a fuzzy word. Horizon is where sky touches ground (or sea level, if you want to nitpick :) )

Perhaps you wanted to point out that 280miles is beyond horizon on sea level, but it is not at 30,000feet height :)

What you can not see (and the radar works exactly like your eye) you can not lock on. However there exist ground based radar that can use tropospheric reflections and can pick up stuff behind the horizon, but can not lock on that stuff.

On sea level the horizon (assuming you are 2yards tall) roughly 3 miles away ...

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jwparker911]

Sadly; most major humanitarian discovery and exploration has actually been funded by the potential military application

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

In the year 2014, even the Russkies have powerful means of digital messaging between land-based radars and fighters. Stealth only works against some little arab tyrant with a crap education system.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

You bet some of the best Russian engineers and scientists have been working on this since 1985 or so.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest version of the Mig29 coupled via digital data links to their semi-mobile long-wave Radars wiill first detetct the F25 from several huindred kms distance, then ambush them with the latest version of their thrust-vectored AAMs. They will attack with both IR and radar warheads to be sure.

And if that is not good enough. the Mig29 will show some of their aerobatic tricks and apply the 30 mm Cannon.

The only real hope of the U.S. is to somehow jam the Radars and the data links. Which is tough given that the Russkies surely have something resembling SINCGARS by now.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Belarus has been doing R&D to make long-wave Radars semi-mobile. YOu betcha the Moscovites have something even more advanced. They can cue their S400s from that. Range 400km.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

They did have all the equivalents of what they have today. NSA even broke the ciphers of the vietnames AD rarads and used it to direct U.S: fighters.

And even then, the Russian SAMs were world-beating, literally.

All of this continues to the present day, conceptually.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[rickb928]

That AC might not twang to quit their day job.

Yes, it was funny. Till it became real.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[im_thatoneguy]

If you borrow money from a potential enemy one of two things will happen. Either you'll just ignore the debt you owe them and not give a shit about them lending to you in the future or they'll be very averse to attacking one of their debtors and knowing that you'll wipe your obligations to them at the first signs of hostilities.

Re: Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jklovanc]

Oh, bomber, if you don't need much capacity.

A small capacity bomber is also called a ground attack or strike aircraft. In general the US designation for those aircraft start with an "A" as in A-10. Bombers generally drop bombs from level flight while ground attack aircraft get much closer.

true air superiority fighters are nor automatically also serviceable ground attack craft

I never said they were. I just said that it is not too difficult to design one that way. Most modern fighters are dual role. The Brits even strapped Sidewinders to the AV-8 Harrier in the Falklands.

Not does the F-104 seem to be much of a ground attack craft.

While not designed as a strike aircraft Canada used the CF-104 in that role.

I'm not sure the F-117 is a fighter.

The F-117 was a bomber much like the F-111

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jklovanc]

The replacement for the F16 is the F22

The replacement for the F-15 is the F-22. And now the replacement for the F-22 is the F-35. Even the F-15, originally a pure fighter, was given a ground attack rile with the F-15E Strike Eagle.

The F16 was designed as an interceptor,

The F-16 is designed as a light weight multi-role fighter. Just take a look at the armaments that the F-16 carries. There are lots of bombs and air to ground missiles in that mix.

a very different role than an air superiority fighter (and one that has become almost meaningless)

You will say something completely different if the US get in a shooting war with Russia, China or Iran.

but since we're cutting every military budget everywhere, we can't have nice things.

We can't have multiple different aircraft when a cheaper alternative is one aircraft that does the jobs to almost the same level.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[jklovanc]

we'll be supporting those for at least a decade or two after the F-35, we've sold huge amounts of them around the world

The only other airforce to use the F-18E/F is the Australian Airforce and they bought 24. These aircraft will be replaced by the F-35. I think you might be confusing the F-18AC/D with the F-18E/F; they are very different aircraft.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[the eric conspiracy]

You worked on the HAWK? That's pretty cool. My father worked on it during the 60's; he was a materials scientist. They were having a problem with the accumulator failing. I remember spending a Saturday afternoon in a field behind Raytheon watching them test accumulators by blowing them up in holes dug in the ground. Amazingly long service life on that system.

During the Cuban missile crises the President of Raytheon was coming to our house in the evening with X-Rays of accumulators which my father would individually approve or reject after viewing them. That work is why the US had HAWKs in service during the missile crisis. Pretty hairy stuff.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[budgenator]

Yes in the Army, I repaired the guidance package, and the launcher, we were the last self-propelled Battalion in Europe durring the upgrade to the Improved HAWK. My Unit had a tactical life expectancy of 19 seconds.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

"it tries to do 255 things, "

You mean it's an 8 bit plane?

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[the eric conspiracy]

United.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

I did not mean satellite GPS, but interplane relative positioning system, RPS, from a reference plane, or center of gravity of all planes, whatever. Friendly planes could be in constant radio/radar contact with each other, and know each other's positions, to where they could relay information about signals received, and use the distance between themselves in the computations to see better, just like radio astronomers looking at the same object across the globe get much better coordinated resolution than a single one by itself. Every plane might have to carry its own atomic clock, and take relativistic effects into consideration when it comes to syncing clocks and such. They would show up on their own radar screens as friendly, together with communication radio signals, and you can combine many frequencies to hop and both act as radar and communication channels at the same time, by listening to the radar echoes on a frequency they purposely exclude from the hopping sequences, until the return signal arrives. That's the easy radar, where you get to wait for a return, but there is also Doppler slight frequency shift effects that cost really serious money, but also measure speed of the target, and come up with an estimate of the next position arrangement of the swarm, and might be kept in mind as an option but not used due to cost reasons. The GPS satellites are too far away for accuracy, but each plane can act as a beacon, at a barely perceptible signal to noise ratio, that dynamically adjusts by counting how many frames are dropped, so the signal doesn't spread to the enemy miles away, but it's easily read within a few hundred yards of each other in the sky. When communicating of course you may need more signal to noise, than when just doing simple radar, and during radio silence, you may switch to directionally adjustable infrared or optical laser communication (by having an DAD detector like setup where, where you pick which LED you wanna shoot from instead of having to rotate something mechanically to aim at the friendly plane) , that does not spread all over the place to the enemy, but stays focused an localized, and in all cases excludes forward direction when stalking up, so stray laser beams don't accidentally get detected by the enemy. Also x-rays or uv-rays might have better decay characteristics in air, so you can use higher amplitudes locally, but if it misses a friendly plane, or the cone or radiation covering the plane is too wide so some of it passes around the friendly plane, just in case you have enemy detectors off to the side not just the forward attacking direction, it would be preferable that the optical or highly focused electromagnetic signal decays and doesn't travel for miles. And you could have a range of devices with various usable frequencies, from x-ray/uv/visible/infrared/terahertz/microwave/UHF/VHF/FM/SW/AM/LW radio frequencies, and pick and choose as you need. You may even hop from infrared to SW (that could be construed as some amateur radio stray signal bouncing off the ionosphere, and you would not be hopping frequencies there, but encode your information on top of some standard radio talk, as stenography) to radar microwave to terahertz ten minutes at a time, so whoever is listening would have radio silence on the other frequencies. Once you used a frequency for communication, and you give away your presence, you might as well get as much out of it as possible, so use to for both communication and radar, but I don't think you can get good radar out of SW, though UHF probably works decent, as UHF and VHF are what the main article topic is talking about, compared to higher frequency microwave. It's impossible to get radar out of AM and LW, unless you're looking at a zeppelin or carrier sized object, and it's not worth the effort. The enemy would have to be listening on ALL frequencies at the same time. Also, for instance, LW throughput is miserable, one Morse code word a minute sometimes, but it's the only thing that works universally for a device that has to function on a fighter plane, th

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Russians have nuclear anti-aircraft missiles, at least in a circle that protects Moscow. They don't have to hit your plane.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

They do. Russians develop some arms with India and China. Good example is BrahMos.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[lgw]

Well, the F22 was built for the same role as the F16 had initially: pure air-to-air combat, but now with supercruise to intercept at a distance. Nothing ever built even comes close. It's a damn shame we built so few of them, as the F35 can't hold a candle to it in that role, but with its operational issues it's understandable that it landed on the chopping block. (Seriously? Computers crashed when crossing the international date line? That's just embarrassing.)

We can't have multiple different aircraft when a cheaper alternative is one aircraft that does the jobs to almost the same level.

Well, that word "almost" is disputed by many. Plus it creates all the normal mono-culture risks: if it turns out to have some exploitable weakness, than all our planes will have that weakness. But given we won't be funding the military at "superpower" levels much longer (arguably we already don't), it will have to do.

Ultimately, the transition to combat drones is well underway, and I don't think it will end up being that big a deal if the F35 is second-rate. It's sort of the stopgap while we phase out piloted combat aircraft over the next 20 years or so.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

I'm a huge fan of having an actual pilot sit inside each plane, or even a body suit of the Mechwarrior game type, and not have too much artificial intelligence, not less but also not more than necessary. Just like Einstein said, a scientific theory should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. Also being able to drop back to full manual mode instead of fly by wire would be a nice feature, together with hand picking and choosing what radio frequencies of uv/infrared/microwave/uhf/sw to communicate on, or use as radar, or letting the plane go into auto mode and hop on all frequencies, or exclude some of them. In this day and age police uses laser radars, so it should not be that expensive to outfit a plane with like 100 of these distributed over the surface, laser LED's that can be automatically picked based on the direction of intended communication. or even manually in fall back mode, and in manual clumsy mode perhaps the cone spread of light beam would have to be very wide to be captured by the other plane. You can think of scenarios that get so manual that the other plane pilot can read the light flashes coming from his teammate as tee tee tah tah morse code signals with his own eyes, and they could be triggered manually by the other pilot. The worst part of any automation is not being able to drop back to robust, but slow speed manual mode, and a lot of automation fails miserably, and if not built modularly, like an old computer motherboard with slots where you can swap out defective sub units without having to understand how they work on the inside, sometimes the whole device is down for forever (having at least two swappable subunits for each function could be a good redundancy, or have spares on hand, and distributing functions into the old Unix philosophy of everything does one thing and does it very well, and then you hook them together to make a functioning whole, could be applied). I understand sometimes modularity is not possible, or it's too much overhead, it all comes down the economics, and a keen sense of profit, or punch per dollar invested, as neither no modularity or full modularity going out of control, may be the proper choice. Same with redundancy, too much redundancy is not money well spent, no redundancy may also not be money well spent. It all comes down to style sometimes, as humans have two eyeballs, redundant(but two gives stereo vision), two ears(two gives directional finding better than a single one that still gets some from the earlobe shape modulation by itself), two kidneys, two hands, but only one heart, or one liver. Also there has got to be a shit load of UAV's wasted in crashes, because of automation and complexity, but also because there is no pilot in them to be very responsible, who's able to drop back to manual mode, else he can't really be responsible for malfunctioning things he cannot control. But a UAV can pull high g-s that makes pilots faint, and could also be dispersed into loosely connected small particles that pass radar aimed at them, something not possible with a pilot.(There are these various acoustic absorber features in auditoriums that deaden sound, something similar with a lot of depth could be used as a radar absorbent skin, to where you don't have to pass the incoming wave all the way through the plane, just deep enough inside absorbing waveguide shapes for it to decay to very low levels and not echo back, and the various frequency absorption features could be stack on each other, as in black paint for uv and visible /ir absorber things/ terahertz absorber things / microwave absorbing features with aperture sizes the same as your satellite dish sensor and UHF absorber craters the size of your UHF antenna, so the plane looks like a giant golf ball with dimples in it, same for VHF, now you're talking VHF antenna sized dimples, and these features can be stacked on top of each other, as in absorption, not reflection at acute angles giving the low radar signature, together with increased dimpled golf-ball like aerodynamic performance from a turbul

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true cynic and right on the button. Very true of almost any government-snouts in the feeding trough, first class on the gravy train and everybody else can go get st******.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[chrisshearar]

Spoken like a true cynic and right on the button. Very true of almost any government-snouts in the feeding trough, first class on the gravy train and everybody else can go get st******.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[whodunit]

THANK YOU. So many people fail to understand that "stealth" tech as incorporated into next-gen fighters isn't for evading detection, but for evading weapons fire from people who very much know where you are.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics doesn't prevent it, but tech might. They've already shown you can use antenna that are measured in micrometers to create waves lengths magnitudes larger, but this is bleeding edge research.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[cwsumner]

... no one sends fighters against each other for a dogfight anymore...

That's what they thought when Vietnam started. The enemy didn't take long to learn how many missiles we carried, then they sent up one more plane than that.
Flying around with no ammo and an enemy on your tail is no fun at all...

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[sillybilly]

One of the issues with vertical takeoff and hydroplane and sand and grass air hockey table things, while at sea, is storm time, so there is an optimum minimum size of an aircraft carrier that efficiently withstands all foreseeable high sea storms. High sea ships are not small contraptions. But you probably should not go much above this minimum when it comes to aircraft carriers, and concentrate all your wealth and power in a few single locations, single targets, where it's possible to efficiently attack them. Distributed power is better, where you are able to make calculated sacrifices.

Re:Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[SydShamino]

And, sadly, that's world we live in.

Semicolon

[bluefoxlucid]

Last sentence. Semicolon, not comma.

Re: Semicolon

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, "too late to be", not "to late to be".

Re:Semicolon

[mythosaz]

Oh, it was the "to" that bothered me.

"late to be effective" must be some sort of clause I'm having trouble parsing...

Re:Semicolon

[jeffmeden]

Last sentence. Semicolon, not comma.

hooked on semicolons; semicolon addict!

Re:Semicolon

[Anubis IV]

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).

Re:Semicolon

[BForrester]

Also "too," while we're at the GN thing.

Re:Semicolon

[bluefoxlucid]

The semicolon hasn't been overused; omitting the conjunction shortens the sentence.

Steath

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Steath Technology a new thing?

it's not a typo!

[orgelspieler]

Looks like they added some stealth technology to that "L"

Re:it's not a typo!

[BronsCon]

and the second o in the "too" in "too late"

Doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

We can just the nuke people who develop these Radars of Mass Destruction.

Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker

[Anonymous Coward]

Longwave radar is not new,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker

Re:Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker

[RobKow]

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 can share the frequency), and the additional bandwidth available.

That said, the 20 m band is plenty fun, even if every idiot in the world can't use it.

Re:Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, of course - I don't have problem with making sensible use of the higher frequencies. The issue I have is with poorly-made equipment or poorly-designed systems (esp. powerline networking) pissing over HF and its manufacturers getting into bed with the regulators so they don't aggressively pursue the bad behaviour. The Soviet bloc spent hundreds of millions of dollars equivalent per year making it hard to use communication equipment which did not require centralised infrastructure - exactly the same thing is happening here.

The 20m band /is/ fun, and will be there as governments and large private institutions rise and fall, providing it is not polluted in a decentralised manner.

Re:Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

In Soviet Russia, you do not share spectrum with megawatt radars; megawatt radars share spectrum with you!

IOW, too bad old bean, they aren't worrying one little bit about your nice bandplan chart you got at the last hamfest. They're trying to spot their enemy, and if it actually goes to a hot war, they'll probably bring out even more power and jamming and other stuff you'll really hate. But by then not one single soul is going to give a stone about you and your contesting or whatever. You don't matter. Your midlife crisis, hobby for people past the average age of dead, will be lower in priority than a postage stamp stuck on a letter in the belly of the Titanic.

Now, back to contesting. Gotta get a grid square first! Go for it!

73s

Old news

[angel'o'sphere]

On modern weather radars every so called stealth plane is a sitting dug.
Well known since ... 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?

Re:Old news

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Old news

[Sentrion]

What the heck is a sitting dug?

Re:Old news

[jon3k]

Uh, what? F-22 has the radar cross section of a ball bearing. It's smaller than a bird on radar.

Re:Old news

[angel'o'sphere]

The screen you see when you get a picture shown on TV or your tablet is updating perhaps every two minutes, the actual radar signal/image is updating as often as you want.
Then figure that a weather radar station is pretty darned big and if anything goes boom it will be the transmitter.
Unlikely, very unlikely :) You can track a stealth fighter with weather radar over thousands of miles ... and the antenna is a 'forest' of simple masts, if you bomb 90 % away the rest still works, just not as good.

Re:Old news

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, the plane has. But not the air turbulence it is tracking behind it :)

Not news

[afidel]

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.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

do you have any sources to cite?

Re:Not news

[angel'o'sphere]

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.

Re:Not news

[alen]

google it

F117 was detectable on radar since at least 1990

Re:Not news

[afidel]

Sure, 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)

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

google it

F117 was detectable on radar since at least 1990

i did google it, and i found a yugoslavian propaganda piece and a wikipedia passage that completely bought it.

got anything else?

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

google it

F117 was detectable on radar since at least 1990

So your saying a plane built suing 1960's technology is detectable in 1990? God what a failure of 1960's technology.

Re:Not news

[mi]

do you have any sources to cite?

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, and the source they are citing.

Re:Not news

[afidel]

Late 1970's tech vs 1960's SAM.

Re:Not news

[alen]

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

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

do you have any sources to cite?

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, and the source they are citing.

i consider the yugoslavian piece cited by wikipedia to be propaganda. no offense, but i think you and the gp have bought into the propaganda. i think the circumstances were more nuanced than either of you are contending. obviously, i would welcome more information.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

Dani didn't modify anything.

They kept the surveillance (What passes for long-wave) radar operating all the time, because HARMs cannot home in on it (their antennas are too small. Physics work against them in this case). They did keep their tracking and guidance radars offline until the last moment, because the HARMs could target those.

They still didn't see the F-117 until it was pretty close.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

The F-117 that was lost in the Balkans was shot down because they kept flying the same route over and over. Once that was figured out it was pretty trivial to put a SAM battery right in that path and shoot once the plane was right on top of the missiles.

Stealth decreases the range at which you can be detected, it doesn't make that range zero. Mission planing is an important part of a stealth mission.

Re:Not news

[rickb928]

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 battlefield, be it air or ground, will see C&C denial the key to victory. Jamming, countermeasures, selective obfuscation, usurpation, spoofing.

The Islamofacists will not trust tech enough to be defeated by this. They will, however, learn to fight the cyber battle against their enemies. Us first-world combatants will keep trying to out-tech them, and end up using overwhelming force. And raising another generation of fascists with a more convenient excuse for murder than just hating everyone else.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

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

It kind of was about some numbers and stats. Like the number of large radar installations the enemy had remaining and the stats about likelihood of the enemy spotting those F117s

Re:Not news

[alen]

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. meanwhile the air war destroyed enough combat power in the trenches that we were able to breach them with almost no deaths

Re:Not news

[jon3k]

Partially correct. It was only seen because the bomb bay doors were open:

From Wikipedia:

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.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

The F117 shot down in the Balkans did not have any anti-radar aircraft flying in support. All the Intruders and Weasels were grounded, the only thing flying that night were the F117's.

Re:Not news

[shutdown -p now]

Well, you can go and see the F-117 wreck in the Serbian aviation museum...

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

heres a hint boy:the islamos are financed by your own or the saudi govts. they are cannonfodder for the mic to ensure funding.

Re: Not news

[rickb928]

It doesn't matter. Islam has been going this way for centuries.

Passive Radar

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about passive radar systems.
Current stealth technology is mostly ineffective against it.

Duped article and not insightful

[CajunArson]

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.

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[Obscene_CNN]

You might add that although a long wave radar can direct fighters to the area where a stealth plane is, the interceptor's radar and missiles won't be able to lock or track it. This is because a long wave radar requires a large antenna(one far to big to stick in a fighter or a missile).

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[lazarith]

That doesn't seem like a show-stopper to me, at least not for a defensive use.

A ground-based long-wave installation could send the data to a fighter or missile using wireless technology.

If you cover your country in long-wave receiver antenni, then you've found your stealthed target and can relay its position to your fighters.

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[Obscene_CNN]

Well the big limitation of long wave radar is its accuracy. Any fighter sent to the area would have to locate the craft visually and use an infra red missile or gun to shoot it down. Note: all infra red guided missiles are short range. This is due to light scattering and IR absorption by co2 in the air that limits the range of the seeker.

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't long wave radar also take longer receive? If the latency is higher then the positional accuracy falls flat because the plane is not traveling at a constant speed nor is it always going in a straight line.

Long wave radar could be combined with ir and satellite recognition but again, targeting is a bitch because the planes are fast.

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[Talderas]

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.

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[Obscene_CNN]

Not really, your latency will be based on the time it takes to receive a few wave lengths (a 10MHz signal would be one ten millionth of a second for a single cycle and one millionth for ten). The radio energy would travel at the same speed as a higher frequency signal however. Accuracy lost to latency of a plane traveling at Mach two would be about 0.68mm since Mach two is about 680 meters per second (assuming a 10MHz signal and you could detect with ten wavelengths).

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[DaveAtFraud]

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 5 miles. Great for early warning but not useful for targeting. Also, not something that can be made mobile; let alone stuffed into an interceptor.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Duped article and not insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Long-wave radar doesn't have to be accurate enough for missile targeting, just accurate enough to direct scrambled sorties.

Long wave = large antenna = immobile large target

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, it's an active emitter, too. Easy-peasy to find and blow up.

Submitter is unable to spell a 3-letter word

[Anonymous Coward]

And can't tell the difference between "adsorb" and "absorb."

Not impressive, but all too typical for the derpy degenerate version of Slashdot we see today, now that all the smart people left.

Re:Submitter is unable to spell a 3-letter word

[scuzzlebutt]

Also, "to" vs. "too". What about "these wave"? Did anyone proofread the fucking summary? Oh, why do I even wonder....

it's simpler than that...

[DoofusOfDeath]

it will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives to late to be effective ...

It will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives at all.

Re:it's simpler than that...

[mi]

It will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives at all.

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.

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 military vehicle, you can stuff if with much more weaponry, make it do things which would've killed the human personnel before (like 20-g turns), and comfortably send it on "suicide" missions.

Bragging vs secrecy.

[gurps_npc]

From what I read, the Russians can definitely defeat the previous generation of stealth technology. This is in fact, nothing new, we have known about this issue for years.

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 something we do not know and can not guess about.

Re:Bragging vs secrecy.

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

Re:Bragging vs secrecy.

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is the unknown unknowns we really need to worry about?

Eastern block has always used VHF and UHF radars

[Zeorge]

I should say, former Eastern Block, that is. But, this is nothing new and has been known for some time now. They have these huge deployable radar arrays that operate in the VHF and UHF bands. Originally, it was due to their limited technology capability but then it was realized that there was specific advantages to using those bands. Notably, no one else is looking for radar in VHF and UHF so you could be being tracked and have no idea.


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.

you aren't going to have airborn long-wave radar

[Anonymous Coward]

and you sure aren't going to fit long-wave radar into a missile warhead

so stealth will still help in a fight, but long-wave radar systems will spot the aircraft (at least in general terms), so it removes the 'sneak attack' factor.

This actually seems like a good thing to me.

The sneak attack factor, even if never used, is destabilizing (which is why there's an agreement between the US and Russia to keep missile subs well clear of each other's shores, and why missiles in cuba were such a concern)

117 wasn't golden age

[jehan60188]

the F117 ushered in the stealth era (after flight surface control tech caught up with Ufimtsev's paper)

Rebirth of the Russian Woodpecker

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, private and public concerns have been trying really hard to push the idea that anything OTA below ~100 MHz is useless because it allows worldwide infrastructure-free transmission - and that's a threat to business and censorship. Ofcom (the UK telecoms regulator) has been shown to deliberately mislead about equipment which does not comply with HF emissions limits, allowing it to be sold even while other countries have used the same EU standards to outlaw equipment.

But HF and lower still remain the most interesting and useful set of frequencies for anything more than satellite/short range point-to-point, both for communication and detection. The Woodpecker was annoying, as were the old Soviet jammers if you lived near enough the curtain - but neither is anything like as frustrating as what's happening to the bands today! Let's hope this technology will bring a new-found respect for lower frequencies.

F117 wasn't that stealthy as well

[alen]

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

Re:F117 wasn't that stealthy as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this why the Kosovo F-117 was shot down? They flew it without ECM support.

This has been known for years

[Anonymous Coward]

The limiting factor was the computational power to asses all the targets since birds, bugs and everything else shows up as a hit.

Re:This has been known for years

[Anonymous Coward]

and the Iran have demonstrated they have this ability years ago.. so i find it hard to believe that China and Russia don't have this already. what i think the real concern is that it may be made into a more portable object currently the stations capable of doing it are large structures

What is "steath technology"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of proofreading?

Re:What is "steath technology"?

[tekrat]

The "L" is hidden from view. That's what makes it so stealthy, or steathy, as the case may be.

Long wave radar precision

[ka9dgx]

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 "stealth" targets.

Re:Long wave radar precision

[Anonymous Coward]

The longer the wavelength the wider the array you need to get accurate positioning. So with the frequencies talked about here, we're talking about fixed land based system. That means stealth still has a large number of tactical advantages. It never perfectly hid an aircraft anyway. It was always about tactical advantages.

Re:Long wave radar precision

[maliqua]

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

Re:Long wave radar precision

[Anonymous Coward]

That problem can be solved: just use the best tank platform (minus turret) you have and mount a 50 meter foldable antenna on the tank. Keep the engine running and whenever a HARM closes in, eject copious amounts of fog and chaff. At the same time, hit the gas pedal and move the tank 100 meters in the chaff-fog. Then the HARM will be HARMless. You might need flat surfaces to keep your antenna intact, though.

Actually, that has been the Russian concept for a long time: Mount all SAM components on tank platforms and keep them moving. That invalidates a lot of advantages of advanced surveillance adversaries.

And with a 50 meter antenna, I can operate very low freuqencies: f=c/l ->f = 300 000 000m/s/50m ~= 10 000 000 MHz. Of course, put a copius amount of GPUs into the antenna-tanks to process signals and steer the beam electronically. You know, they say the father of everything is 3D war games :-)

The F35 is a joke:

[gstoddart]

it will be interesting to see if the F35 arrives to late to (sic) be effective against other countries with advanced radar systems

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 option. And now they've all got massive sunk costs, and no viable aircraft.

Meanwhile, the F35 has been largely rendered obsolete by drones and UAVs.

It's a huge put into which money has been dumped, with no real results, and no actual outcome in sight.

In countries who signed onto this, this is largely viewed as a large swindle perpetuated by Americans and their defense industry to get other people to fund their pie in the sky wishlist.

The F35 is already too damned late, overpriced, and nor really something people should be pursuing. 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.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[Justpin]

The F35 is a government subsidy program for Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin were pretty much given a blank cheque to write for as much as they want. The irony is Lockheed Martin had a completed and viable aircraft the F-22 which could have been modified like the F-15 which grew over the years to become the F-15E

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[jklovanc]

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.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[gstoddart]

Remember you need to cover air superiority, ground attack, carrier based, and VTOL

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 solutions? I don't know, and I don't care -- because I'm not American. That's your problem.

However my government has bought into this pile of crap, and it was never what we needed, and it's so far proven to be vaporware, and therefore a waste of money. It's simply the wrong damned aircraft.

To the rest of the world, this is a bill of goods sold by the Americans, which was trying to be the end all and be all of aircraft, and it's been so long in development that it's likely to either be obsolete by the time it flies, or never really live up to the promised performance.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the US do for their solutions? I don't know, and I don't care -- because I'm not American. That's your problem.

You say that now, but when your country is a smoking crater, it will be too late for you to care! bwa hahaHA!

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[jklovanc]

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 you choose for your country. The minimum requirements would be an air superiority and ground attack aircraft.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[Anonymous Coward]

The F35 is a government subsidy program for Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin were pretty much given a blank cheque to write for as much as they want.

The irony is Lockheed Martin had a completed and viable aircraft the F-22 which could have been modified like the F-15 which grew over the years to become the F-15E

F22s are currently in operation. It will most definitely grow over the years. The F35 program did not kill the F22.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[GNious]

No only Lockheed Martin.

Other companies, in other countries, have won contracts for bits and pieces, usually requiring the home-country of such companies to promise to purchase aircraft or other material. This way, it has become a government subsidy programme for many companies.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[Justpin]

It is in operation yes, in limited numbers. But they aren't making any more and as the costs escalate it seems they might as well make more F-22s than F35s. The the F-22 is tested and operational and mostly does what it was advertised to do. The F35 is still promises a lot of things, for the costs of the F35 you might have been able to replace on a 1:1 basis all the aging F-15s the USAF has.

Re:The F35 is a joke:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dassault Rafale is an awesome plane, is cheap, and is available to buy now.

Anyone who bought the F35 is a total fucking sucker.

F-35? already too late...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's a POS that is out-performed by the latest Hornets. It is a general use aircraft that is best at nothing. Of the new stuff, only the F-22 is worth bothering with as it's generally agile, but even then it's out-performed by the latest Sukhois...

Yep

[msobkow]

Hundreds of billions of dollars, and it's obsolete and useless before it even gets out the hangar.

Not news at all

[virve]

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 technologies are not exactly standing still.

At the same time, it seems that a lot of aircraft performance (and ship aesthetics) are being traded-off for stealth capabilities. I hope I will not have to see how this pans out. Or pay, as a tax payer, for the dumpling aircraft: I'm looking at you, F-35.

By the way, stealth craft are apparently also vulnerable to bistatic radar geometries.

Re:Not news at all

[Obscene_CNN]

Actually very little performance is being traded for stealth these days. The F-22 is just as good as the typhoon at dog fighting.

TO late to be?

[thieh]

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?

Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

On modern weather radars every so called stealth plane is a sitting dug.
Well known since ... 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?

And the reason they show up on weather radars is because they are traveling with their luneburg lenses attached :)

Actual facts are that 1st gen stealth was picked up by a powerful 'long wave radar' at most 60km away. This distance is significant because you can expect next gen stealth to improve on this, and a bunch of the weapons that the F-35 carries can be lobbed either slightly inside or well outside of that range.

Stealth was always a fools errand.

[AutodidactLabrat]

Ferrite and microfiber carbon attenuation never really promised a radar-low cross-section. It promised deflection and heat conversion.
Result was a temporary loss of acquisition range.
Now we have long wave but there was always multiband standing wave transform detection, 1250 nm laser plasma silhouette, multiband adsorption isolation and about 30 other techniques for finding the 'black dot'.
This was always a sales gimmick, not an actual solution.

Re:Long wave = large antenna = immobile large targ

[bobbied]

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.

Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

The S-125 wasn't modified for anything - but you have to get past the propaganda pieces and find the facts. The man who was the battery commander said there were no modifications against stealth.

What happened was simple: This was a mobile SAM site, and NATO had not located it. Further, those F-117s were flying the same routes over and over due to UN requirements, IIRC.

That F-117 flew too close to the site, the site picked it up and shot it down. It was detected at around 30km. Considering the long-wave P-18 radar which was operating non-stop because HARMs can't harm it (ha ha) - they can't home in on long wavelength radars - I'd say the F-117 did it's 'stealth' job quite well. The P-18 has a nominal range of 300km or so against fighters.

Going off of memory, so don't quote me on the numbers.

TL;DR: The F-117 shoot down over the Balkans actually revealed that stealth works as designed ... detection range for F-117 was 1/10th that of other fighters. With a long-wave radar.

too late not to late

[Anonymous Coward]

ibid.

Re:you aren't going to have airborn long-wave rada

[bobbied]

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 to varying degrees for decades and although it doesn't look stable, it's apparently worked so far.

Sealth was busted yonks ao

[Anonymous Coward]

The british sent to tornados (I think, so be in the 80's) to intercept a F114 because it left a hole in normal radar background.
Cellular Mobile Phone tower can also be used detect stealth airplanes for the see reason.

The is more about VHF Radar

[Anonymous Coward]

An example of a current Russian system for targeting 'stealth' can be found here ..

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Nebo-SVU-Analysis.html

it is an integrated system with VHF L-Band and S-Band components.

Very low observability is a terrible idea

[OrtegaPeru]

I mean what if nobody sees it when they do flyovers at the start of football games?

use of high order harmonics in long wave radar.

[Obscene_CNN]

I'm surprised that F-35 critics have latched onto this DARPA paper written in 1985 that talks about using higher order harmonics to get accuracy out of long wave radar. To them it could be gospel for arguing against any stealth aircraft. http://tinyurl.com/Darpa-longw...

Re:Long wave = large antenna = immobile large targ

[Anonymous Coward]

Not entirely accurate, knowing that the plane location accurate to the cm 30 seconds does you some good but your JDAM is going to need another method once it gets closer to the target, gps alone wouldn't do, you would need visual recognition. Drone technology meets JDAM, problem is that you sacrifice maneuverability for speed.

stealth radar

[alw53]

I think stealth just arranges for reflections not to be bounced back at the transmitters. If you have a lot of receivers located in other places you'll still see the bounce. Sweden has a system like this.

Re:stealth radar

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also use multiple transmitters and a single receiver. Like, ya know, radio stations and GSM cell towers. Which is music in the ears of electronic jammer makers, of course.

Now, they could use the jammers' emissions for the radar receivers :-)

Not much of an issue

[hackertourist]

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 missiles up its ass.

Re:Not much of an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it won't be a fighter bringing those IR missiles to the interception point. It will be cheap mass-produced drones. (Cheap compared to piloted planes.) No pilot to loose, so a lost drone is "only money". Launch more than the F35(s) can take out quickly - and F35(s) will be falling from the skies.

And then there is visible light. A human can simply see a stealth plane. So can a drone with cameras - and the cameras don't ever get tired of scanning the skies. . .

The problem with radar installations is

[Anonymous Coward]

that the sort that can detect anything needs to be big and impossible to hide, particularly during operation. This means they are vulnerable to a strike from a hypersonic missile. i.e. The all seeing eye can't see much if you poke a stick in it.

Plus this story is just a beat up from some guys who want extra funding to try something that will defeat even broadband radar, and it will for a while, until somebody works out how to use the actual atmosphere as a reflector that will silhouette even a totally absorbing surface.

Eggs in one basket

[Tablizer]

We seem to be putting all our eggs into the Stealth Basket. The technique used should depend on the situation. If you expect the enemy only has traditional radar (smaller or 3rd-world countries), then stealth is very effective. However, for more modern militaries, the sacrifices in design given to stealth hobble you because the planes can be seen yet are slowed by their stealth design.

We may need a set of planes that lack stealth but are quick and nimble. Then again, perhaps that's the job of drones because they don't have to worry about human limits to G's and can potentially flip and roll like nobody's mother. (Just hope your radio signal is not jacked into.)

Drone 'em!

[MTEK]

Send in the drones, both real and virtual. Overwhelm the adversary with inexpensive fake targets and spoof their radar returns. Let their SAM batteries blow their load on tin-plated paper mâché airplanes and let their interceptors chase ghosts. All the while... watching from far above, waiting for the real GO-time.

Active Electronically Scanned Arrays

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest generation of Radar is the Active Electronically scanned array. No more rotating antenna. The whole unit is about the size of a carton of milk. There are dozens to hundreds of small antennas. They operate on a wide range of frequencies (each can be different). The beamwidth is usually between 120 and 170 degrees. Its a low power solid state device (using MESFET's). Long waves aren't traditionally used, except for over the horizon and ground wave radars. If using RAM (radar absorbing material), low radar cross section and oblique reflection are no longer useful, we still have plasma generators. Plasma's disrupt em rays (like radar). The fun continues...

Who the Fuck Wrote This?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Adsorb"? "To" instead "too"?

Predictions of obsolecence are always true in time

[Anonymous Coward]

Succeeding generations are actually far better at fighting the last war than the next one. The necessity of dreadnoughts and battleships was a foregone conclusion until the development of the aircraft carrier. Similarly, if you are of the opinion that human pilots are currently more effective than missiles or automated aircraft, you ought to provide a little more in the way of reasoning, and to suggest that this is an immutable fact requires a wild stretch of the imagination.

For my part I would say that anyone claiming that a particular mode of warfare is obsolete is likely to be correct, especially if it pits expensive, highly trained, fragile and fallacious humans against the mass production of less intelligent weapons. I would further say with certainty that this century will see the last fighter pilots; you and I will outlive their careers.

Engineers have been warning about this...

[Karmashock]

For literal decades.

The first radar systems were actually long wave radar. If anything much longer wave then anything used today. They required massive antenna arrays and were used to spot German raids on the English coast.

The Russians learned about radar from those systems and while the US and English subsequently went with short wave radar systems, the Russians stuck with long wave radar systems. This is why their radar systems look so very different from ours. They're receiving a different type of return.

There are pros and cons. But the the long wave basically sees everything. The drawback is that the return is very noisy. You can combine long wave and short wave or just employ very good signals processing on the long wave to get a clean picture.

Stealthing an aircraft from long wave have never been accomplished.

This is very bad news for the airforce that has invested a lot in the concept of stealth.

Absent stealth we're back to the old paradigms of speed and altitude. A hypersonic bomber for example would be very difficult to intercept at least without a hypersonic interceptor missile. Add to that all this drone stuff...

And I think I have a better way here... Its crazy... but war is crazy. What about an extreme low altitude bomber drone. I'm talking about a drone that would fly super sonic or hypersonic about 20-50 feet above the ground.

Now, I know what you're saying, "how do you stop that thing from randomly crashing into something." By mapping the terrain from space with extreme precision. Then you work out an exact flight path through enemy territory. By all means have it fly at higher altitudes before the bombing run. But when its going to enter dangerous territory, have it fly as close to the deck as possible as fast as possible. Have it scream in so fast and so low that their radar can't see it and can't intercept it. The bomber would be making course corrections at the speed of a high speed computer. Possibly thousands of course corrections per second. Whatever is needed. The plane would obviously have a lot of momentum so changing course by any large degree of angle is not possible but tiny corrections all the time are possible. And the point of the mapping is to get a course that the drone can handle at that speed and altitude.

Then you fire the drone off like a missile. It travels to the start of the run, drops to the attack attitude, goes super sonic or hypersonic, it will be close enough to the ground that ground effect turbulence might be a factor and that would be something the guidance system would have to deal with, it would drop its bomb which would be one a short delayed fuse, and then it would continue to race along until it got out of enemy territory. Where upon it would pull up to a safer altitude, possibly slow down, and head for a friendly airfield for refueling and maintenance.

The above is my crazy solution to the problem. To those that say "but what about peace"... I have no problem with that. But that isn't the issue here. The issue is how to do fight and win when peace fails. Having something like the above weapon actually makes peace more likely and sustainable because hostile forces understand that if they do something nasty you can hurt them.

Nothing is as likely to make hostiles attack us as the belief that they can get away with it.

VERY old news

[FlyingGuy]

This has been a known Achilles heel for stealth technology since it first came out.

Take a cheap Furuno surface search radar play around with the main frequency and the pulse repetition frequency, and not by a lot, and all of the sudden things that never painted before suddenly appear.

This is one of the main principles of mine detection sonar. You can make fairly large changes in the output frequency to really tune the thing once you know the relative size and shape of the target you are searching for. Torpedo's do the same thing. The search on a relatively low frequency then when the algorithm thinks it has something it switches to frequencies typically 10 to 20 times higher for high resolution aiming. The exact same principles could be applied. AWACS could search and much lower frequencies then vector fighters in with the ability to not change the frequencies a lot, but lower them down to just above the thresholds for the very small antennas. Close enough and no matter how the target is shaped you will get a return.

Might cause a re-thinking of the F-35

[Anonymous Coward]

No. while long wave radars are capable of detecting the presence of stealth aircraft they can NOT be used to target or guide munitions to the aircraft, you need shorter band (e.g., X-band) radar to actually guide a missile to a fast moving target like a fighter jet. X-band radar is effectively mitigated by the low-observability features of the F-35 and F-22.

Additionally, long wave radars are really easy to jam with modern jammers because the wavelengths are so long; the jamming equipment can recognize the radar waveform (and generate a canceling wave) much faster than the radar transmitter can adjust its waveform.

Finally, long wave radar installations need to be BIG. This means they will be fixed, easy to find and easy to neutralize with low risk strike assets like cruise missiles.

Hams have been tracking F22s for years.

[thumper666]

I remember in the early 2000s hams were tracking stealth aircraft in the Nellis pattern by listening to the multipath bounce off them from local rock stations (rock works better than NPR due to the fact that the carrier is more consistently modulated). The state of there art for passive multistatic radar has improved a lot since then with those little SDR dongles being available. Sync the clocks and fine tracking of stealth aircraft is dead easy.

Stealth is old tech

[nsaspook]

The lastest thing is negative index metamaterials. Reduction of backscatter and absorption is the 1980s.

http://www.metamaterials.duke....

Mode C Transponder

[mha]

When flying in civilian airspace they have to have their mode C (altitude reporting) capable transponder turned on, so of course they'll show up on radar. You can't have hardly radar-visible aircraft flying around busy civilian airplanes.

Its good

[drolli]

as long as US and China have technological balance, they will behave reasonably, since no side will have exagerated fear.

You don't need to see well the airplane

[Anonymous Coward]

All you need isd to have enough accuracy to know you are within range of the warhead, which then explode and send shrapnel in a circle.

Re:You don't need to see well the airplane

[budgenator]

At that point you have to go back to command guided, which adds a whole new set of counter-measure oppertunities, and again not something you'll be likely to be able to do in an air-to-air combat.

Actually, it does not 'turn out'!

[udippel]

Hey, this is not news! Of course, if you want to absorb waves with dampening material, you'd have to have a depth of the material of around a quarter of the wave length. This is know in acoustics as well as RF engineering.
So the news would be that some parties are developing radar systems with combined low- and high frequency excitation.

Not

[Anonymous Coward]

At least at this point, both Russia and China have rock-solid finances, while the U.S. let themselves be bankrupted by all sorts of corrupt actors: New York finance, weapons makers, medical industry vultures.

So, reality does not support your argument.

I recently used a low-end Chinese-made oscilloscope for some CAN work and it worked quite nicely. They might not be able to compete with the highest-end HP or Tektronix scope, but sure as hell they know their shit where it matters.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

The ugly chicken also brings Mig21-class aerodynamics on the table.

Actually, the latest ground-based Radars and the latest electronics/sensors and missiles put into Mig21s would probably be more than sufficient to defend airspace against U.S. intrusion.

What's old is new again

[BubbaJonBoy]

I worked on an AN-FPS35 radar in the 70's. It used 430 Mhz (UHF) not microwaves. A nifty touch was it used frequency agility for anti-jamming and pulse compression to attain high Pav while maintaining high target resolution. I bet this thing could nail stealth easy.