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Detecting Stealth Planes
Zurk writes " Newsweek said China's new Passive Coherent Location (PCL) system
tracked the signals of civilian radio and television broadcasts and picked up aircraft by analysing the minute turbulence their flight caused in the commercial wavelengths. cool huh ? " They hope to use it to detect the F-117A and potentially the F-22. Very cool use of technology to fix a problem.
This technology appears to be picking up planes by looking at the turbulence that they leave behind.
Why can't a series of unmanned rockets leaving turbulence all around jam this?
Another issue: if you are following the trail, how good is your fix on its current location? If it was in straight-line flight, OK. But if it was in defensive maneuvers?
Hmmm...how well does it work in different weather conditions?
There are a lot of questions here. Sure it is a cute step, but this is not the final solution and the race will continue.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Of course you can detect a stealth plane. You can detect a stealth anything. It exists, therefore it interferes.
;)
I believe it's the Typhoon class submarines you can detect by listening for silence in the waters. The submarine is so ``stealthy'' that it's more silent than the water that surrounds it. Blammo!
I would have thought that satellites would have been the first to be used to track stealth aircraft. If you track how the earth reflects a radio signal (radar), and then suddenly something breaks the usual reflection (a stealth plane will break the reflection, but it will not reflect much back itself) you know where to aim.
Isn't it just fantastic what can be done with technology today
well.. if they fly low enough, you could just hire some low paid marine to point and say, "Hey! There's a plane!"
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Just because a technology was developed by the Chinese does not mean it's bad. Have you ever considered that what was developed was a press release, or maybe a few well planted leaks? Both sides of the Cold War did this for years, and still do it. Using the media to plant seeds of doubt? Think Viet-Nam, Korea, Tokyo Rose in WW2. None of this is new.
Now if the Chi-Coms have invented and put into practice this technology, it only means we need to find a way to circumvent it. Say, by bombing TV and radio stations first.
Really folks, we have bigger problems to worry about. You know, the Chinese has the first compass. They kept it in a room and never used it until Marco Polo showed up with his. They pulled it out and said, so what?
Don't forget it was a Russian scientist who invented Stealth. He published a paper that inspired our development of the prototype.
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On the other hand, the fact that this technology can only detect the disturbance in the air opens possibilities. Decoys look just the same as real aircraft to the turbulence detectors, and if they're cheaper than AA missiles you can make it too expensive to shoot at things. Another possibility is transmitter technology which can fake the signature of turbulence trails, causing the enemy to "see" aircraft which aren't there. As long as you make them overlook the ones that are there, it doesn't matter much does it?
This also has counter-counter-offensive possibilities for cruise missiles. Cruise missiles are hard to see because they're so small and fly low, but the effects they have on broadcast-band radiation can be seen nonetheless. On the other hand, using the same radiation signatures any aircraft scrambled to intercept the missile can be detected by the offense and the missile signalled to evade them. Missiles (or decoys) which get shot down mark the locations of AA guns which can be avoided by the rest. It's all one big game of one-upmanship, and since the USA already has a system like this proposed for air traffic control (talk about civilian conversion of military technologies!), you can bet that our side has some way to deal with the military issues already under development.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Lockheed-Martin has a web page for their Silent Sentry system. Not much in the way of technical description but it can't be that secret if they put it on the web.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Both the F-117 and B-2 fly with special fittings when they are not in combat duty. In the F-117 this is in the form of small rectangular boxes over the wings. These fittings increase the radar cross-section of the airplane and make it equal to an ordinary civilian plane; to make friendly skies safer to fly by allowing the planes to be tracked by air traffic control, just like every other plane.
Plus, you don't want everyone on the fair grounds to learn about the capabilities of the plane. If you're interested in the topic, just compare the cockpit photos of the Mig-29 demonstrated to the West in 1989, and Mig-29s in actual service with the Russian Air Force. You will be amazed to see how they dumbed down the cockpit layout so that the first Western smart-ass to see the photos would say "Gee, Russians are using 1950s technology in these."
It is amazing how this little known security feature causes people to downplay the capabilities of these aircraft. I remember back when a bunch of F-117s came to Turkey; the armed forces and civilian air traffic control boasted how they could easily detect the so-called "stealth" fighters. As the Iraqi and Serbian can tell, it is not that easy without the fittings.
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A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
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An invasion could be undertaken on the US. It would have problems though.
First you send in infiltrators, who set up airstrips in remote locations, and purchase ammunition. They purchase vehicles and fuel. You then take about two dozen chartered commercial jet airlines, you load them with troops and land them at US airports all friendly like, most likely the east coast. It doesnt take long for 500 or so armed troops to capture an airport, and then fortify their position quickly. The 747's can carry anti-tank/heavy weaponary, and plenty of ammunition. No food, cause that isnt neccessary. These troops are the first wave and will only be the front line for a short period. 10-20 minutes behind these 747's, are standard long range cargo planes, carrying light armor vehicles and more troops, these land at the commercial airports and at the private airstrips you have set up.
Your troops take the LAU's and go like hell towards your assigned targets. Airbases, Army Bases, Naval Bases, Police Stations, Gun Stores.
The trick is to move fast and capture quickly. A night attack on a weekend would be best, as you would capture quite afew bases relatively lightly manned and vulnerable, you might even bring pilots/tankers/sailors with you to take the captured vechiles and add to the chaos. You continue to bring in troops from china by air and land them at your secured areas.
At this stage it gets sticky. Your main mode of transport of large armor and troops is by sea. Getting by SOSUS is quite hard, and you have to deal with naval assests in the pacific. Hopefully you would attack at a time when a carrier isnt present close by in the pacific. You have to get your tanks in, so one way would be by using normal car carriers, who are on scheduled runs to make landfall on the same day as your attack to deliver vehicles. If you were serious about your plan, you might even nuke pearl/guam in the first 24 hours of your attack, to make it easier to move more heavy units from china to the US. This would also allow you to move a chinese carrier closer to the US to provide air support for the grunts and eventually transferring all aircraft to captured US runways.
You have to link up your heavy armor, light armor and infantry to push inland, obviously after securing your captured cities. You then utilise these cities, and the railroads to supply food and munitions to your front lines as they spread inland. Time elapsed is about 48-72 hours, more then enough time for the US army to mobilise and to present a good front line, possibly near the rockies.
Attack of the US is not an easy task, and requires exquisite timing of delivery of assets. It requires china to send troops a huge distance, and to get past pearl with ships. It would obviously be easier to attack with an allie close by, say from cuba or south america, to attack other borders at the same time. This draws units away from your main assault.
Now this is a possible scenario, if, china had the logistical assets to do this. The Chinese army is much like the soviet army used to be. A large club to bludgeon your opponent to death with numbers, aslong as he is relatively close. China has never had to move huge amounts of troops over an entire ocean to attack an enemy so far from home. It isnt easy logistically. But possible. To make it more interesting, an enemy may even release chemical/biological weapons before he attacks. He may poison water supplies. He may release anthrax or similar diseases. He may sabotage power stations, he may cause an increase in terrorism before hand.
There are alot of things in warfares bag-o-dirty tricks.
As for disabling the US nuclear counter attack, that is a tough nut to crack, and would require unconventional techniques im sure. For example purchasing properties near known ICBM silos, buying a few hundred stingers and praying you can cripple a few missles before they hit your country. Perhaps small backpack nukes could be used to crack the silos at close range, but thats debatable, as those silos are hardened and quite well built. Maybe wait till they open up to launch? Who knows.
Naval nukes are even harder to disable apart from an intense naval campaign by your forces to kill the subs, even then, they can launch from almost anywhere, and damn but their quiet.
Carrier based nukes are also a concern. It is unlikely you would attack the US without first developing a good ABM defence.
So in answer to your comment
'It would be exceedingly difficult to come anywhere near the US shore with any kind of sizable force.'
True, but not impossible. Give war a chance!:)
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
"the typhoon is huge"
Right. The largest military sub to see active duty.
"it is nuclear powered rather than desal (sp) powered"
Wrong. The Typhoon boats are nuclear, diesel, and battery powered. Why do you think they were so darned big? The reactor put out enough juice for a city. If that failed, there were two mammoth diesel engines. By mammoth, I mean 12'x10'x6', 10,000+ hp, and enough tourque to drive the boat through the water at 20 knots. Should those fail, there were two large banks of dry cell batteries on either bow. The batteries served three purposes:
"I don't think the largest sub in the world is more silent than the water around it."
Wrong. Here's an example: Let's say that there is a skyscraper in the middle of a field (just follow me on this). Now let's say that the wind is blowing out of the North. Let's also say that you are blind, and walking past the south side of the building (going East to West). There will be a point when the building will start to block out the wind. Logic will tell you that it's no longer windy, and it's also very quiet. You may then deduce that there is a building to your right. Here's a diagram:
**********************
**********************
.........--------*****
.........||||||||*****
.........||||||||*****
....o....||||||||*****
.........||||||||*****
.........||||||||*****
.........--------*****
**********************
**********************
Legend:
* = wind;
-,| = building;
o = you;
. = calm air;
Now, relate that to being in a sub. Since there is always ambient noise in the ocean, the trick is to find someplace where there isn't enough noise. That'll be a Typhoon (or maybe a Charlie) with her plant cut way back. If you know where you are and how fast you're going, you can figure a bearing on the Typhoon. Once you have that, you can use basic trig to figure out range, speed, and mark, in that order. After that, it's simple to sneak up and fire your torps and get back out.
zantispam (who gets waaaaaaaay to into this stuff)
Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
And shortly after this information was leaked, secret double-agent panda Hsing-Hsing committed suicide at the National Zoo. The tricky part was knowing the leak was going to happen months in advance so he could start dying of renal failure.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
of course the next step is quantum stealth
you can detect it, but as soon as you figure out where it is, you cannot know where its going