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Chinese Researchers Reveal Active Stealthy Material (popsci.com)
hackingbear writes: Even after billions and billions of dollars spent on the stealthy skin used on F-22, F-35 and B-2, the material has weaknesses, and one of those is ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radar, which can pick up traces of the plane that other radar misses. Chinese researchers came to the rescue and created a material just 5/16 of an inch thick that can safeguard stealth planes against UHF detection. The material tunes itself to a range of detection frequencies, protecting against a large swath of radar scans. What's even more amazing? They published this seemingly top secret invention wide open in the Journal of Applied Physics .
I would say they would show real competence by publishing before military dickheads of any one country can monopolize and weaponize the knowledge. War only works as long as one side believes to have a clear advantage.
I don't think "incompetent" means what you think it means. They're competent if this works. And I doubt these scientists care about (2) unless they have some kind of private army. I guess you saw the word "Chinese" and your racism went into overdrive. Because, obviously, every Chinese person is engaged in the secret Chinese plot to take over the world.
Although it was hard to see from where we stood, I think that the exhaust structure had been removed. Compared to some of the pictures I have seen, I also think that they removed features like the bomb bay doors.
Even so, it was a fantastic experience to see one up close. If you ever git the chance to visit the museum, take it. There is a long waiting list, you can't just go there and get in. Planning is required.
Why is Snark Required?
No matter how fast your plane is, there will always be a missile that is faster.
Shifting the balance of power.
China alone can't maintain air superiority against the USA. They can (and will) use the technology but the numbers alone mean the US will keep ahead of them.
But after releasing it to the public, every half-civilized country will be able to make their own stealth fighters. And who has more airplanes: the USA, or the rest of the world? With the cat out of the box, USA will be facing competent opposition in any major conflict involving aerial forces, which will slow down their advance of power, giving China a chance in the race.
China, not being nearly as expansionist as the USA has far less to lose by having random countries all over the world armed with technology to oppose state-of-the-art air forces. This paper directly strikes a blow to USA's assault capabilities while not really hurting China, which doesn't have nearly as much interest in assault capabilities in the first place, concentrating on a mighty defensive force.
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It's still better than nothing. A passive broadband radar will take milliseconds to adapt the coating to any single radar frequency. With more than one it will run into trouble, but again, multiple blips at predictable intervals are quite easy to program, so the airplane would be able to hide from multiple radars.
This can be thwarted relatively easily with a radar that constantly shift frequencies randomly, but... you need to build one. The old infrastructure becomes obsolete, necessitating costly upgrades. It may provide exactly zero battlefield advantage in the long run but if it forces the opponent to suffer costs of performing upgrades of their infrastructure which would be otherwise not needed, it's already a win. And by publishing the paper (instead of costly building air force exploiting the new tech, which *might* leak through the opponent spies (and become obsolete fast), or might remain secret and become obsolete much slower) they are simply running the costs up for the USA.
"Upgrade all your radars to frequency-hopping right now, before anyone builds a plane that will be invisible to them". And the plane *will* be built somewhere, because there are many countries that just can't afford upgrading their radar infrastructure, and their opponents would benefit greatly from planes invisible against them - even if they are useless against the (upgraded) USA radars. And the USA will definitely dislike the option of having 3rd party airplanes in the air which they can't see, even if they don't mean a direct threat currently.
Economical warfare: at relatively low cost for yourself force the enemy to spend a bunch of money on defenses they will probably never need. (but will never need them only if they build them... if they don't, they'll regret they didn't.)
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Oh, which country has the U.S. stolen since WWII, Tibet? Which sea is the U.S. claiming to entirely own, the S. China Sea? And them missiles aimed at Taiwan, the U.S. is claiming to own that as well?
Dodging in the form of guerrilla warfare where you move around all the time seems to work still. It's why it was so hard to find Bin Laden and that there's still ongoing work trying to locate IS leaders.
Bunkers are outdated when it comes to serious assault stuff, but such weapons are expensive and limited in supply so if you can trick your opponent into wasting bunker busters and missiles by fake bunkers and similar then you can at least let things play in your favor.
During WWI it was not unusual to have the "disappearing guns" in fixed artillery fortress locations protecting harbors. They became obsolete with the advent of the bomber aircraft, which resulted in a ceiling on the fortresses to protect against incoming bombs, which was pretty common during WWII. When the battleships got gyro-stabilized guns with high precision and aircraft able to do precision attacks on bunkers they became obsolete too since they now were essentially death traps.
That's why most artillery units (both coastal and land) today are highly mobile. They can be operated by 1-2 men, stop and fire several rounds in under a minute and then be on their way again. (Bofors Archer)
When you look at aircraft today it's a lot of stealth, but the downside with that technology is that it limits the punch it can carry. The A10 is non-stealth, and carries over 1000 30mm rounds, carries rockets externally to the level that it looks like a porcupine while the F-35 has a few hundred 20mm rounds and have to hide every rocket inside the hull. The stealth capabilities are also constraining the aerodynamics so that maneuverability suffers.
However the advantage with stealth is that the first strike may appear with little warning, but after that the advantage is lower - and since the carried payload is lower it takes more missions to get the job done. A war zone is also highly fluid - the weapons you brought with you at the beginning of the mission may not be the right weapons when you arrive in the strike zone.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Yep, the first free elections in Iraq. The Nation spoke. They wanted islamist fundamentalist party at the helm. The USA choose to simply disregard the results of the elections and set up a government of their choice. "Democracy."
"Puppet government" and "government friendly to us" is just two different names for the same thing, depending on which side you're sitting.
"self-interest in survival" is a very interesting way to put their motivations behind remaining friendly to the USA.
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Although, to be strictly fair, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen weren't so much "stolen" as destroyed. Of course, that's not nearly so bad.
As for Germany, if the German people could get rid of political leaders who (for some inexplicable reason) seem to be more loyal to the USA than to their own nation... It couldn't have anything to do with money, do you think?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.