Anti Stealth Radar

[srev2004]

In the future stealth will not be half as important as speed. If you can fly really fast it doesn't matter whether the radar picks you up or not because they won't have time to react.

 

[tphuang]

stealth is still the most important factor. Mig-31 can fly at mach2.8, but would I take it over F-22 or F-35? Not a chance.

Just an idea, China seemed to have come up with something similar to Vera. Any opinion on this?

 

[Big-E]

In the future stealth will not be half as important as speed. If you can fly really fast it doesn't matter whether the radar picks you up or not because they won't have time to react.

With the advent of laser's ability to kill at the speed of light I find speed to be irrelevent.

 

[Big-E]

I think radar as a detection capability will be limited progressing further into the century. To detect stealth aircraft at ranges requires a more thermal approach. Aircraft seperate the air around them in order to commence flight. If one can detect the temperature change in the air using thermal imaging that does not happen under normal conditions one can detect objects in flight. This would be a space based system but the images can be programed into the software for fast recognition of possible targets IMO.

 

[Wild Weasel]

With the advent of laser's ability to kill at the speed of light I find speed to be irrelevent.

Not to mention the fact that hypersonic interceptors are also proliferating at the same pace as platforms and ordinance. Back in it's day, the only things that could shoot down the SR-71- were all the SAM's and AAM's that could be fired at it.
But high speed, and altitude can certainly complicate matters if time and distance are a factor.

But then again, there are also lasers.

 

[Schumacher]

stealth is still the most important factor. Mig-31 can fly at mach2.8, but would I take it over F-22 or F-35? Not a chance.

Just an idea, China seemed to have come up with something similar to Vera. Any opinion on this?

China does seem to put extra effort into developing techs that the US tried to stop them from acquiring, at least the high profile ones.
US stopped the Phalcon sale to China & China seemed to have come up with its own AWACS ahead of expectations. Now we see this Vera type radar from China after the high profile US buy out of the Czechs to prevent China from getting it.
It must be a political decisions at a high level on China's part to fast track these projects. Let's hope the system works & not just a propaganda.

 

[Big-E]

Let's hope the system works & not just a propaganda.

hmmmm... this is just my opinion of course but if they had a decent AWACs don't you think they would have settled on a design by now. Just the fact that they have so many variations tells me that they aren't having much suscess to date.

 

[TheDefender]

Here is a link for Vera radar my be this can help. They have planed the radar in an empty old tin couldn't they find any thing else

http://www.era.cz/en/pss-vera-e.shtml

another link this one is good showing the radar mounted

http://www.army.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=6159

The Vera radar consists of three sets and they must be making a triangle which would be covering 450km of area.The radar must be looking for gaps in the air spaces.

 

[mmmbop]

So does this radar really works?how about Kolchuga?

 

[Wild Weasel]

These radars may have been effective at detecting F-117 level stealth, but I doubt that it would be capable of detecting the much stealthier B-2, and F/A-22 aircraft.
Any advantage that these radar systems could have provided has probably been compromised for quite some time. I suspect that they would also be quite susceptable to stand-off jamming, and other ECM "spoofing" techniques.

Other devices developed in the Eastern-block, such as GPS "jammers", have also been introduced in the hopes to avoid airstrikes, and were proven to be completely ineffectual when put to the test in actual conflict.

 

[DoC_FouALieR]

And even if they are capable of detecting the most stealthier aircraft, they are just early warning radars. They can be override or at least the detection can be delayed by choosing another approach way/by using terrain masking for the mission.
And after all I think that's not the true question. If the ennemy radars onboard aircrafts or SAM systems cannot achieve a lock on a stealth aircraft like the B2 or F-22, the use of a EWR like the Vera is doubtful.
I think too that the capability in air combat to engage the ennemy before he can engage us is the most important, no matter we are detected or not.

 

[Wild Weasel]

And even if they are capable of detecting the most stealthier aircraft, they are just early warning radars. They can be override or at least the detection can be delayed by choosing another approach way/by using terrain masking for the mission.
And after all I think that's not the true question. If the ennemy radars onboard aircrafts or SAM systems cannot achieve a lock on a stealth aircraft like the B2 or F-22, the use of a EWR like the Vera is doubtful.
I think too that the capability in air combat to engage the ennemy before he can engage us is the most important, no matter we are detected or not.

I doubt highly that the system would even be destroyed by the aircraft it was meant to defend against. It's quite likely that the antenna would be destroyed by stand-off range strike weapons, such as TLAMs, CALCMs, JASSM-ER, Affordable Weapons, etc. etc.

There's no need to risk a billion dollar aircraft with crew, when you can minimise your losses by safely poking the OPFORs eyes out first.

 

[DoC_FouALieR]

I doubt highly that the system would even be destroyed by the aircraft it was meant to defend against. It's quite likely that the antenna would be destroyed by stand-off range strike weapons, such as TLAMs, CALCMs, JASSM-ER, Affordable Weapons, etc. etc.

And I totally agree. I was not inducing that this radar shall be destroyed by an attack aircraft, I was just highlighting the fact that such a system would not seriously impair the ability of stealth aircrafts to do their job in the enemy battlespace...

 

[Wild Weasel]

And I totally agree. I was not inducing that this radar shall be destroyed by an attack aircraft, I was just highlighting the fact that such a system would not seriously impair the ability of stealth aircrafts to do their job in the enemy battlespace...

I wasn't doubting you. Just emphasizing your point.

 

[swerve]

I think radar as a detection capability will be limited progressing further into the century. To detect stealth aircraft at ranges requires a more thermal approach.

Detection of stealthy - in the sense of low RCS - aircraft at long range isn't the really difficult bit. JORN does it very well, for example. However, JORN is of no value for aiming missiles at, e.g., an F-22, as it can't give anything like a sufficiently precise location, & the minimum range is considerable. Detecting aircraft with low RCS at short distances is also not such a big deal: IR & electrooptical sensors can do it. However, a stealthy aircraft with a LPI radar might send a missile to kill you without coming within range of your IR or EO sensors.

Stealth is very valuable at medium ranges, i.e. the ranges at which BVR air-air combat takes place. There are ways round it, e.g. bistatic radar, but they all present technological & operational challenges, & at best reduce its value, rather than negate it. So far.

 

[killbill2]

^^ Exactly true. radar guided missiles and standoff weapons will keep them safe. By the way Ir detection of a stealth aircraft is already difficult.

 

[TrangleC]

More dangerous for stealth aircraft than this passive "EM-pollution" radars will be the other kind of anti-stealth radar. The one that doesn't search for the aircraft itself, but for the air turbulences it causes instead. Somewhat like a super sensitive and acurate weather radar.
There is no hiding from that, because every aircraft, nomatter how stealthy it is, disturbes the air and causes turbulences. And since the already existing stealth fighter's and bomber's aerodynamics are compromised by the stealth requirements, they are producing even stronger turbulences than other, normal aircraft of the same size.

 

[killbill2]

More dangerous for stealth aircraft than this passive "EM-pollution" radars will be the other kind of anti-stealth radar. The one that doesn't search for the aircraft itself, but for the air turbulences it causes instead. Somewhat like a super sensitive and acurate weather radar.
There is no hiding from that, because every aircraft, nomatter how stealthy it is, disturbes the air and causes turbulences. And since the already existing stealth fighter's and bomber's aerodynamics are compromised by the stealth requirements, they are producing even stronger turbulences than other, normal aircraft of the same size.

Actually some aircraft in the US inventory are very stealthy and very aerodynamic at the same time.

By optimizing the aerodynamics of the stealth plane, the for the eye invisible turbulence trail in the air, can be kept to a minimum. This way it becomes harder for the very special laser equipment to detect the trail and trace it back all the way to the plane which created it.

http://www.f-22raptor.com/st_getstealthy.php

It should be noted int he future stealth aircraft wil fly at higher altitudes whre there's less air thus resulting in less turbulence. Plus things like this are not real time info. For example a shallow sub moving at 30mph wil cause disturbances at the surface of the water which can be picked up by satellites. However it can only indicate that a submaine has apssed and not good enough for fire control. Now consider looking for the turbulence of an AC that keeps turbulence to a minimum and supercruises at Mach 1.7, and now you;re looking at a whole new ball game. Radars can be jammed and destroyed and lasers can be degraded by bad weather which can be artifically manipulated and blinded with other lasers(think free elctron lasers).

 

[TrangleC]

It should be noted int he future stealth aircraft wil fly at higher altitudes whre there's less air thus resulting in less turbulence. Plus things like this are not real time info. For example a shallow sub moving at 30mph wil cause disturbances at the surface of the water which can be picked up by satellites. However it can only indicate that a submaine has apssed and not good enough for fire control. Now consider looking for the turbulence of an AC that keeps turbulence to a minimum and supercruises at Mach 1.7, and now you;re looking at a whole new ball game. Radars can be jammed and destroyed and lasers can be degraded by bad weather which can be artifically manipulated and blinded with other lasers(think free elctron lasers).

The turbulences are still the strongest right behind the aircraft, so a fire controll system just would have to aim a little in front of what it sees.
No matter how aerodynamic a plane is, it just HAS to disturb the air, because that's what the wings are there for and without doing that there would be no flying.
The difference to seeing water moved by a submarine is that this turbulence has to reach the surface to be detected, while the turbulence of the air is detected in realtime, because it's still radar rays with the speed of light that detect it.
So there really is no hiding from that. Unless you could build a plane that doesn't move the air... leaves you with some kind of space shuttle that flies outside of the atmosphere, but the problem with that is that you can't make such a vessel stealthy in the normal way, because the anti-radar coating can't survive the heat of reentering the atmosphere and you can't build a heat shield that reflects heat but absorbs other EM energy like radar rays. (Don't forget that infrared rays aka. heat energy and radar rays are just the same, only different in frequency.)

So that only leaves you with a space shuttle that reenters the atmospere slow enough not to need a heat shield and that would have it's problems too. Besides the fact that the bombs or missles it would fire towards the earth still would have the problem that they would need to be heat proove and stealthy and still fast enough to reach the target, at the same time.

Solving not just an engineering- but also a physical problem of that proportion might take long enough till there are other ways to detect flying vessels that make that solution obsolete again.

I'd rather expect that there might be a revival of oldfashioned ways to increase the survivability of a attack aircraft, like super low alitute flight or just refraining towards higher and higher speeds, wheich will remain a futile attemt because it will always be easier to build a super fast intercepting missle than building the super fast aircraft.

There will never be the perfect, invincible weapon. The chances of inventing something like that are decreasing drastically since there are very clever and well educated young engineers all over the world.
I have worked in China for a year and i was amazed about what they are already doing in the civil electronic sector. Virtually every little shithole company there already uses the most modern electronic stuff and with their economic growth it can't take a long time till this development reaches the military hardware too.
Also Russia is on the way up again, economically and thus also technologically. Adding the fast increasing number of all the other sources for new war-toys like that small chzechish company that developed the new kind of radar that is the main topic of this thread, and it is pretty clear that the next decades might get quite chaotic and certainly less dominated by a invulnerable western (or rather US-) warmachine as many people seem to believe.

Either the stealth technology will become obsolete by new radar technology or by the fact that all the people you could use it against, are able to retaliate with nuclear bombs, or it's dominance will decrease due to the fact that many military powers use it, or all of it together will happen.

 

[killbill2]

The turbulences are still the strongest right behind the aircraft, so a fire controll system just would have to aim a little in front of what it sees.
No matter how aerodynamic a plane is, it just HAS to disturb the air, because that's what the wings are there for and without doing that there would be no flying.
The difference to seeing water moved by a submarine is that this turbulence has to reach the surface to be detected, while the turbulence of the air is detected in realtime, because it's still radar rays with the speed of light that detect it.
So there really is no hiding from that. Unless you could build a plane that doesn't move the air... leaves you with some kind of space shuttle that flies outside of the atmosphere, but the problem with that is that you can't make such a vessel stealthy in the normal way, because the anti-radar coating can't survive the heat of reentering the atmosphere and you can't build a heat shield that reflects heat but absorbs other EM energy like radar rays. (Don't forget that infrared rays aka. heat energy and radar rays are just the same, only different in frequency.)

So that only leaves you with a space shuttle that reenters the atmospere slow enough not to need a heat shield and that would have it's problems too. Besides the fact that the bombs or missles it would fire towards the earth still would have the problem that they would need to be heat proove and stealthy and still fast enough to reach the target, at the same time.

Solving not just an engineering- but also a physical problem of that proportion might take long enough till there are other ways to detect flying vessels that make that solution obsolete again.

I'd rather expect that there might be a revival of oldfashioned ways to increase the survivability of a attack aircraft, like super low alitute flight or just refraining towards higher and higher speeds, wheich will remain a futile attemt because it will always be easier to build a super fast intercepting missle than building the super fast aircraft.

There will never be the perfect, invincible weapon. The chances of inventing something like that are decreasing drastically since there are very clever and well educated young engineers all over the world.
I have worked in China for a year and i was amazed about what they are already doing in the civil electronic sector. Virtually every little shithole company there already uses the most modern electronic stuff and with their economic growth it can't take a long time till this development reaches the military hardware too.
Also Russia is on the way up again, economically and thus also technologically. Adding the fast increasing number of all the other sources for new war-toys like that small chzechish company that developed the new kind of radar that is the main topic of this thread, and it is pretty clear that the next decades might get quite chaotic and certainly less dominated by a invulnerable western (or rather US-) warmachine as many people seem to believe.

Either the stealth technology will become obsolete by new radar technology or by the fact that all the people you could use it against, are able to retaliate with nuclear bombs, or it's dominance will decrease due to the fact that many military powers use it, or all of it together will happen.

Yes i get what you're saying there but curently it's difficult to sense the little turbulence some planes do produce. By the time it gets to that aerodynamics should improve to reduce turbulence and aircraft such as next gen UCAV's should be able to fly faster and higher. hypersonic flight has already been demonstrated long ago with a manned plane and so has high altiude so you'll have something in the future to tackle the problem. Foreign bases will be reduced as time goes on. So all we have to do right now is just wait and see.

For reasons not yet de-classified, the B-2 charges its leading edge to a very high electrical potential difference from its exhaust stream. It has been suggested (by Jane's Defence) that it augments the B-2's low thrust main engines. It is also a well known phenomenon that an ionised gas (plasma) will scatter a radar beam far more effectively than a solid surface of any conceivable shape. This could be the purpose of the high voltage leading edge. Another possibility is that it is for the purpose of reducing drag, since the leading edge of the B-2 might then move through a partial vacuum of ionised air which may be ionised and repelled by the high voltage. In any case, it is however true that Northrop engineers conducted wind tunnel tests using high voltage on a testbed wing leading edge to reduce supersonic drag as far back as 1968. These tests were with a view to breaking up the airflow ahead of the wing using electrical forces in order to soften a sonic boom. How this applies (if indeed it does at all) to the B-2 after an interval of many years is uncertain. The B-2 is (officially) a subsonic vehicle, so there would appear to be no immediate link, however tantalising the connection. Though intriguing, the true nature of this feature will probably not be known to the public for some very considerable time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-2_Spirit

There might be way to reduce turbulence by this more research into plasma and electricity although I'm not sure. So until then we will just have to wait and see how things unfold.Should be noted the Raptor barely uses RAM for stealth. Also lasers can be attentuated by poor weather(which is now possible to manipulate,farmers make rain when they want to with special chemicals). Radars to see air need a higher frequency and would need to be more sensitive,so there is always the opportunity of ECM and weather manipulation to obscure the radar/laser. Stealth/anti stealth works both ways and it's not one side. they're still aircraft and could use countermeasures just like all other aircraft and weapons platform. The goal of stealth is to make the aircraft more surviveable not necessarily make it undetectable.