Stealth technology

[Myth]

So.. How good are the stealth fighters? The bombers? Do other countries possess similar technology? How stealthy are they in practice? Can they fly over conventional SAM sites and not be blown into lego pieces?

[Sir Moody]

Its difficult to judge how good they are as everything about them is pretty secretive but as to who has them - currently the US is the only country with operational manned stealth aircraft (including Helicopters) however Russia, China, India, Sweden and Turkey are currently developing stealth aircraft - most are due to go into service between 2016 and 2020.

[Beskar]

I thought the UK has them too? I am sure BAE has produced them.

[Sir Moody]

I thought the UK has them too? I am sure BAE has produced them.

BAE produced a prototype but it never went into Operation and there are no current plans to produce a manned stealth aircraft (although BAE did show off a unmanned stealth fighter a couple of weeks ago)

[Sigurd]

Horten Ho229...

[Husar]

Well, no details are entirely official but in general, eyes can see them, ears can hear them.

The stealth is mostly a reduction to visibility by radar and usually also infrared devices.

If they fly straight over a SAM site it usually means good night. Even the F-117 and the B-2 usually plan their approach routes around SAM sites, they just consider these SAM sites to have a (much) shorter detection range than they would have against a big unstealthy plane like a B-52. When they open their bomb/weapon bays, there is also a chance that this increases their radar cross section (RCS) and thus, visibility on the radar.

The rest probably depends on the plane we are talking about, the F-117 and B-2 are very stealthy bombers which were able to penetrate e.g. Iraqi SAM sites for the most part, the F-22 is more complicated as a fighter. I'm mostly guesstimating from things I read about it but it seems rather stealthy as long as the weapon bays are closed and no external weapons are carried. That doesn't make it invisible to enemy radar but it's maybe as visible as a golf ball or so, which means that an enemy radar has to ber rather strong/good to see it at a long or even medium range. The plane itself also has a modern radar that is supposedly rather good at enemy detection without being too easy to detect by enemy airplanes although I assume it is still somewhat likely to give the plane away, which does still not mean that enemy jets can fire back as anti-radar missiles are not meant to be used against airplanes AFAIK and usually not carried by fighter airplanes. If the F-22 carries external weapons or drop tanks which are not built to be stealthy, it will be more visible to enemy radars.

What I'm not entirely sure about is the aspect, but the surfaces are all at 48° to reflect incoming radar waves away from their source. Usually the stralth is a mixture of reflecting them away and absorbing some of the energy to reflect less energy overall. Now if the waves of the enemy radar do not hit the F-22 at an optimal angle I'm not sure what will happen, but I would assume it can be detectedf from further away. Since it is built to engage unstealth enemy fighter whose position is known e.g. from AWACS air control, that's probably not a huge issue as it can fly at them more or less head on, where the RCS should be the smallest.

The F-117 and B-2 obviously look somewhat different and may be built of different materials as they also do not fly faster than the speed of sound AFAIK, they're also not meant to be able to engage in dogfights so I would assume that their "skin" material absorbs more radar waves and their form is more aligned to reflect radar waves from ground installations away from the source. Especially the F-117 seems to have hardly a surface that could reflect radar waves back to a radar below and a certain distance away, which is owed to its pyramid-like shape. The lower hull parts of an F-22 on the other hand might be entirely perpendicular to such a radar source and would, I assume, reduce the stealth level of the plane in case this happens. Then again and F-22 might also move and turn so much that it would be hard to maintain such a radar lock in order to guide a missile all the way to it, especially if that radar lock is detected and the warnings in the F-22 go off.

That's the best I can come up with without having any expert knowledge of the topic, just some physics, logic and things I read out of interest.

[Crandar]

So.. How good are the stealth fighters? The bombers? Do other countries possess similar technology? How stealthy are they in practice? Can they fly over conventional SAM sites and not be blown into lego pieces?

Well, they have some weaknesses, in what concerns the Serbo-Hungarian aspect.

[Sarmatian]

Well, they have some weaknesses, in what concerns the Serbo-Hungarian aspect.

What's a Serbo-Hungarian aspect?

[Crandar]

What's a Serbo-Hungarian aspect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani

[a completely inoffensive name]

I don't know anything technical about them, all I know is that my country has the best and your country has the worst.

[Husar]

Well, they have some weaknesses, in what concerns the Serbo-Hungarian aspect.

That was an accident.
The plane was flying home below the radar (they are flat so they fit underneath).
A Serbian soldier who was lost fired a signal into the air that ignited the plane as their skin is obviously made of coal.
The plane then fell onto the soldier and that is why noone ever learned the truth until now.

This entire myth really shouldn't be spread anymore, especially tsince the newer generations fly below the surface to avoid radar detection.

And the Ho-229 is a myth, the Nazis never invented anything useful, that's ideologically impossible.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Stealth is very very good. Radar cross sections are ridiculously small for the size of the objects and their heat diffusion/focus minimizes infrared tracking as well. Add in the usual chaffs and flares and you have a target that is very hard to see and even harder to hit.

That said, nothing can absolutely prevent a "golden BB," nor are stealth craft invisible to mark 1a eyeballs.

[Papewaio]

Silent but violent.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Silent but violent.

Sounds like you've been eating too much Tex-Mex.....

[Husar]

Even tanks have their secrets. When I was in the Army, I heard rumors of Russian tanks with thermal-detection-proof paint and automatic laser-rangefinder detection suites that would lock on to any American tank trying to lock on to them. Such things should be taken with grains of salt, but it goes to demonstrate that perhaps more than anything else, military technology is about evolution and secrets.

Totally exists, even more than that.

[Husar]

Good links? I can't stand to watch most tank documentaries because they're so damned basic. Been hard to keep up.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Radar-Laser-...-/14935/i.html

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

With more I meant that lasers can also be jammed.

also this: https://www.ll.mit.edu/HPEC/agendas/...Submission.pdf