How about no stealth?

[hagaricus]

As an armchair appreciator of aircraft, I believe, with some small technical justification, and a lot of aesthetic justification, that stealth is a passing phase that will soon be neutralised by developments in sensor technology. Just as interruptor gear revolutionised air combat in 1915 but was largely irrelevant 25 years later, so I believe it will be with stealth.

What consequences would this have for aircraft design, would this allow manufacturers to get back to designing beautiful aircraft again? What unbuilt projects might see a resurrection as excellent designs which are incompatible with the current need for stealth?

 

[sferrin]

Stealth, like jet engines, is here to stay.

 

[flateric]

who said that stealth aircrafts are not beautiful?

 

[sublight]

How about, that's ridiculous? Stealth will continue across the spectrum to infra red, visible light, and even UV at some point. (if DARPA hasn't already, my money says they've played with it)

Air superiority has evolved into mastery of technology and no longer guts, bullets, and blood. Welcome to the 21st century.

 

[Michel Van]

Stealth a passing phase ?

it's just start a escalation ladder, between Stealth and Sensor technology
who gonna dominate the Aircraft evolution for next decades !

 

[hagaricus]

OK, so no-one believes that stealth is going away, and beauty is clearly in the eye of the beholder, so let me rephrase:

"I wish stealth would just be nullified by a revolution in synthetic wavelength radar or something, what kind of great aircraft would be built today if the influences of stealth on aircraft design were removed?"

After all, a lot has changed since stealth was first introduced, so current technology matched to aircraft that "don't have to care how visible they are" might look quite extreme. In a world where you can't hide, defensive techniques would have to evolve to be developed. Ultra-agile missile evaders or extreme altitude and speed solutions might evolve.

Then again, maybe it would spell the end of manned combat aircraft, with missiles finally taking over at speeds and attitudes that are hard to hit even if they can be easily detected..

Is that more in line with alternative & future speculation?

Maybe it was a stupid idea in the first place, in which case, thanks for letting me air it here. I can't think of a finer place to make a fool of myself

 

[pathology_doc]

Air superiority has evolved into mastery of technology and no longer guts, bullets, and blood. Welcome to the 21st century.

If you want "no more blood and guts", what you really want is RPVs duking it out on both sides, and whoever is the first to run out of air superiority RPVs, and SAMs suffers a sword held over his head: submit, or be bombed out of hand and without recourse. Sooner or later, somebody's got to die horribly. And whoever runs out of AAMs first is going to lose by default unless they have gun armament as some sort of backup or last ditch.

 

[sublight]

Air superiority has evolved into mastery of technology and no longer guts, bullets, and blood. Welcome to the 21st century.

If you want "no more blood and guts", what you really want is RPVs duking it out on both sides, and whoever is the first to run out of air superiority RPVs, and SAMs suffers a sword held over his head: submit, or be bombed out of hand and without recourse. Sooner or later, somebody's got to die horribly. And whoever runs out of AAMs first is going to lose by default unless they have gun armament as some sort of backup or last ditch.

I think you are misinterpreting that statement. It isn't a reference to carnage. Its a reference to "guts" as the courage and fortitude of pilots to fight to the death in the skies.

 

[AAAdrone]

Stealth is an advantage held by primarily the United States that is an advantage that will NEVER go away. Better Stealth contributes to survivability and even if the opposing force develops sensors to detect current generation stealth aircraft then we will simply make better stealth technologies like improvements in RAM and stealth shaping techniques to more reliably counter radar. It's a part of a vicious cycle of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures. If the enemy finds a way past a countermeasure then we make a better countermeasure to defeat their counter-countermeasure of improved sensor systems.

Stealth will continue to extend to other frequencies as mentioned before. It may be possible to alter IR signatures to confuse IRSTs and IIR seekers on short range missiles. It may be possible to put optical stealth on fighter aircraft as well. Stealth on a fighter aircraft is simply another in a list of countermeasures to increase survivability against ever evolving threats. It allows for more options and tactics to employ against the enemy to ensure victory. It will NEVER just "go away" anymore than armor on a tank will go away.

 

[theponja]

Stealth is an advantage held by primarily the United States that is an advantage that will NEVER go away.

Do you think that? I wonder if the crisis continues for how many time in the future the US can keep that flow of money for weapons.

 

[AAAdrone]

In the present yes. In the future...who knows.

 

[The Artist]

I think the original question was making the assumption that "Stealth" was and is a recent, stand-alone development. Stealth is a development of the field of camouflage but its theories and practices have extended well beyond concerning just the external covering of the aircraft. Even in the past, efforts at camouflage included more than just paint. http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,1384.msg11456.html#msg11456

The need for 'stealth shapes' may be relaxed at some point due to advances in electromagnetic masking fields (cloaking devices) but for now I suspect that such fields are still more within the domain of science fiction.

 

[pathology_doc]

Air superiority has evolved into mastery of technology and no longer guts, bullets, and blood. Welcome to the 21st century.

If you want "no more blood and guts", what you really want is RPVs duking it out on both sides, and whoever is the first to run out of air superiority RPVs, and SAMs suffers a sword held over his head: submit, or be bombed out of hand and without recourse. Sooner or later, somebody's got to die horribly. And whoever runs out of AAMs first is going to lose by default unless they have gun armament as some sort of backup or last ditch.

I think you are misinterpreting that statement. It isn't a reference to carnage. Its a reference to "guts" as the courage and fortitude of pilots to fight to the death in the skies.

True, but isn't that the factor which, all other things being equal, separates the good from the great? And it may be that pilots of RPVs will take suicidal chances because they know it's not their hide which will fry if their plane is hit, which on the one hand will have benefits if the chance falls their way but on the other hand will deplete their nation's stock of combat aircraft if they misjudge matters. Victories have been snatched from defeat because desperate men fought with their backs to the proverbial wall in immediate defence of selves and comrades, and if you take that away... what happens?

 

[Jd_Sec]

Stealth had its problems since the early days of the Have Blue program. I agree that Stealth is a passing phase. And it's not really an advantage if you have to use other aircraft to clear out a mission corridor for your stealth aircraft.


"Stealth" was a great marketing ploy of the 1980s. Nowadays with the advancement of sensor systems and ECM technologies you need "Stealth" less and less. Where's your advantage if your opponent can see you coming?


The thing that makes stealth aircraft relatively ineffective are advances in satellite tech.

 

[AAAdrone]

Stealth had its problems since the early days of the Have Blue program. I agree that Stealth is a passing phase. And it's not really an advantage if you have to use other aircraft to clear out a mission corridor for your stealth aircraft.


"Stealth" was a great marketing ploy of the 1980s. Nowadays with the advancement of sensor systems and ECM technologies you need "Stealth" less and less. Where's your advantage if your opponent can see you coming?


The thing that makes stealth aircraft relatively ineffective are advances in satellite tech.

I'm not going to lie about the issues regarding developing stealth aircraft at a low price. However all new projects experience cost issues and the like. Just look at the F-X program that preceded the ATF. Look at the terrific price tag an XB-70 or XF-108 would have carried had they gone into production. It isn't just stealth aircraft that have these issues.

Would you care to elaborate on how stealth aircraft are so dependent on on-station platforms? With a good ESM suite providing the level of SA affordable by the likes of the ALR-94 and Barracuda systems it shouldn't be too difficult to plan the appropriate routes through enemy air defenses and GCI radars for CAP fighter aircraft. The VLO characteristics of modern stealth platforms are designed to give said stealth aircraft the ability to easily weave through overlapping Search radar coverage due to the decrease in their detection ranges. I'm sure the F-117 didn't need SEAD/DEAD aircraft to take out the Search and FC radars in 1991 and the F-117 loss in Allied Force was a fluke accident and should thus be discounted.

Also keep in mind that stealth has been employed since the beginning of air warfare what with painting the bottoms of aircraft to simulate the sky and whatnot in color. Also note the low observable paint jobs given to modern fighters evidenced in how they're not vibrantly colored anymore and are always a distinct grey color. Stealth in the broadest sense will never go away on fighters. Reduction in RCS is just the big thing now because RF energy is the only form of detection band that can be used to reliably detect aircraft from such great distances away and cue the long range missiles with accurate enough data to actually carry out an intercept from said medium ranges. IR and visual stealth are also important aspects of the modern VLO figher.

Sensors may eventually be able to defeat some stealth technologies, but then again stealth will just continue to evolve to counter said improvement in sensors. Stealth is just another countermeasure and any improvement in sensors will only trigger an improvement in said countermeasure to defeat the latest counter-countermeasure. It is a vicious cycle that has ALWAYS EXISTED IN WARFARE.

ECM is nice, but modern missiles like AMRAAM and R-77 and PL-12 have HOJ (home-on-jam) capability for conventional noise jamming and even DRFM jamming is not almighty as missiles will continue to be developed with better counter-countermeasures (see vicious cycle). If jamming was perfect we wouldn't be so obsessed with VLO aircraft to begin with. Stealth allows for the denial of Situational Awareness to the enemy and THAT is the key to destroying them. Denying an enemy's SA allows the aircraft with superior SA (like the Raptor or Lightning II) to pick and choose their engagements and as such will usually be on the offensive and can easily defeat the bandits (as knowing is indeed half of the battle and not knowing the full picture around you will cost you your life).

Satellites cannot track aircraft...yet. Hence I don't see what you are getting at with that last point.

 

[Hobbes]

OK, so no-one believes that stealth is going away, and beauty is clearly in the eye of the beholder, so let me rephrase:

"I wish stealth would just be nullified by a revolution in synthetic wavelength radar or something, what kind of great aircraft would be built today if the influences of stealth on aircraft design were removed?"

After all, a lot has changed since stealth was first introduced, so current technology matched to aircraft that "don't have to care how visible they are" might look quite extreme. In a world where you can't hide, defensive techniques would have to evolve to be developed. Ultra-agile missile evaders or extreme altitude and speed solutions might evolve.

Aircraft are already as agile as they can be without killing the pilot (with excessive G-force). Missiles these days are more agile than any manned aircraft can ever hope to be.

In the absence of stealth, aerodynamics is the deciding factor in creating the shape of an aircraft. New designs would look not much different from the B-1 and F-15.

 

[Jd_Sec]

Satellites cannot track aircraft...yet.

LOL. If satellites can't track aircraft, it wouldn't be that hard to give them that capability. How do you suppose satellites cannot track aircraft?


I think technology has proven you wrong and will prove you wrong in the very near future.

 

[Byeman]

Satellites cannot track aircraft...yet.

LOL. If satellites can't track aircraft, it wouldn't be that hard to give them that capability. How do you suppose satellites cannot track aircraft?


I think technology has proven you wrong and will prove you wrong in the very near future.

You are misinformed.
Satellites don't track aircraft because there is no satellite constellation that tracks aircraft because it is too expensive. Space Based Radar is suppose to do it but it can't get funded.
Some IR spacecraft have seen aircraft in afterburner which provided an indication of their location but it was a long way from 'tracking"

 

[Jd_Sec]

You are misinformed.
Satellites don't track aircraft because there is no satellite constellation that tracks aircraft because it is too expensive. Space Based Radar is suppose to do it but it can't get funded.
Some IR spacecraft have seen aircraft in afterburner which provided an indication of their location but it was a long way from 'tracking"

And yet satellites can track things much smaller than aircraft with no problem?

 

[Hobbes]

Which satellites do you mean, JD_sec?

 

[sublight]

You are misinformed.
Satellites don't track aircraft because there is no satellite constellation that tracks aircraft because it is too expensive. Space Based Radar is suppose to do it but it can't get funded.
Some IR spacecraft have seen aircraft in afterburner which provided an indication of their location but it was a long way from 'tracking"

And yet satellites can track things much smaller than aircraft with no problem?

Really? As it blazes by at 17,000 mph and doesn't come back for 90 minutes, how is it going to do that?

 

[Dragon029]

LOL. If satellites can't track aircraft, it wouldn't be that hard to give them that capability. How do you suppose satellites cannot track aircraft?


I think technology has proven you wrong and will prove you wrong in the very near future.

While military imaging satellites are more advanced, you have to realise that imaging satellites that scan large portions of the ground, do so by line scanning; not taking photos in one shot, but rather 'filming' a 1 pixel-wide slice of the ground as it passes over, before composing an image from the data; like a scanner or photocopier.

You could very well take pictures like a conventional camera, but that isn't going to provide you with the detail you need - for one, if you can get past the atmospheric and curvature issues by having some wonderful focal system, you still have to deal with the fact that you're trying to take images that are hundreds of MB, if not GB in size. Trying to then process that data into a usable image format and then running that through a detection system is going to require some very specialised and very fast hardware as well. Doing anything fast enough to even be compared to real-time (required for post-detection tracking) is going to be near impossible without using truly expensive and experimental equipment.

 

[Stargazer]

I think the original question was making the assumption that "Stealth" was and is a recent, stand-alone development. Stealth is a development of the field of camouflage but its theories and practices have extended well beyond concerning just the external covering of the aircraft. Even in the past, efforts at camouflage included more than just paint.

I wholeheartedly agree. Stealth is not a fad, a whim or any sort of fashionable idea coming from some smart asses in the Pentagon. It is the normal evolution of war camouflage. Also, it's interesting that the military didn't think too high of the earliest proposals in that direction, and also how they quickly reclassified the Have Blue program from "Classified" to "Secret" when they realized the sheer potential of it.

 

[Byeman]

You are misinformed.
Satellites don't track aircraft because there is no satellite constellation that tracks aircraft because it is too expensive. Space Based Radar is suppose to do it but it can't get funded.
Some IR spacecraft have seen aircraft in afterburner which provided an indication of their location but it was a long way from 'tracking"

And yet satellites can track things much smaller than aircraft with no problem?

No, you are misiformed again. they image objects, they do not track them.

 

[Byeman]

and also how they quickly reclassified the Have Blue program from "Classified" to "Secret" when they realized the sheer potential of it.

I agree with your post, but I don't understand what you mean here. The classification change that you reference is a downgrade, from higher to lower

 

[Stargazer]

and also how they quickly reclassified the Have Blue program from "Classified" to "Secret" when they realized the sheer potential of it.

I agree with your post, but I don't understand what you mean here. The classification change that you reference is a downgrade, from higher to lower

They requalified the program from lower to higher, not the other way round. Are you quite sure "Classified" ranks higher than "Secret"??

 

[Lauge]

They requalified the program from lower to higher, not the other way round. Are you quite sure "Classified" ranks higher than "Secret"??

As far as I am aware, the US does not have a secrecy classification called "Classified". They have one called "Confidential", which is indeed "less secret than Secret". Could this be the one referred to?

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg

PS: Regarding US classification levels, anyone with more experience than me in the US military system is of course welcome to chime in and correct the above, if needed.

 

[Stargazer]

I think you're right, Thomas. My mistake!!

 

[Sea Skimmer]

Radar satellites could track aircraft, the US was studying that pretty heavily for a while under what ended up being called ‘Space Radar’ until they realized that you’d need at least nine satellites in a common orbit to have remotely worthwhile coverage, minimizing the gaps, and even the best case cost estimates for that kind of capability were running into the 60-70 billion dollar range. Later versions of the program looked mostly at going after moving ground targets.
Existing radar satellites have moving target capabilities, but nobody is known to be orbiting them in lines so they just keep flying overhead except some spurs of Soviet nuclear ROSAT launches aimed at tracking warships back in the cold war. Ever improving optics might seriously readdress the cost issues involved, but then you’d suffer from a limited ability to track large numbers of targets.

 

[RyanC]

Stealth, like jet engines, is here to stay.

Some form of shaping, like planform alignment and application of material to reduce RCS signature will always be with combat aircraft (and combat spacecraft in the future).

It's just that it won't be the overwhelming advantage that it was in the 1983-2005 era, where a stealth aircraft could sneak in through the holes in the enemy's radar network caused by decreased detection ranges.

A lot of sensor technology is coming together now -- AESAs are starting to reach service in widespread numbers, and on the horizon are fully digital AESAs with vastly greater capability for waveform shaping and other tricks.

Infrared and optical sensors continue to improve, along with computing technology -- the Intel Atom N270 from 2008 is far far more powerful than the Cray X-MP series of supercomputers from 1983. This means that computationally intensive noise reduction algorithms that can find the signal in the static continue to improve and proliferate.

The fastest bird in level flight travels about 100 MPH. A bird-sized return travelling at Mach 0.72 plus is going to get noticed.

It's also worth noting that stealth aircraft continue to face issues with their coatings and maintenance thereof -- to the point where people have speculated on future combat aircraft coming with variable stealth -- a generalized coating for everyday use that is rugged, easy to maintain; and a 'go to war' coating for that first night of the war that you can temporarily apply.

 

[The Artist]

Stealth, like jet engines, is here to stay.

It's also worth noting that stealth aircraft continue to face issues with their coatings and maintenance thereof -- to the point where people have speculated on future combat aircraft coming with variable stealth -- a generalized coating for everyday use that is rugged, easy to maintain; and a 'go to war' coating for that first night of the war that you can temporarily apply.

And even this variable stealth idea is not new. The Luftwaffe used a temporary black paint on the undersides of aircraft going into certain night operations in WWII. The thinking was that normally, a gray underside would be best as the night sky is not a true black and a true black aircraft passing across it could be noticeable. However, when the enemy is using search lights the last thing you want is a medium to light-medium value underside which would stand out when lit from below.

 

[Jemiba]

It's also worth noting that stealth aircraft continue to face issues with their coatings and maintenance thereof ...

indeed, and that was the reason for the AI article in the January issue, about the "Rotten Raptors" ! But we should
remember, that the development of stealth goes on and solutions for the problems with coatings may be solved
in the (near ?) future by the use of self-repairable materials, which are an expending field of research in the
moment, already giving interesting results.

 

[RyanC]

I think we're more likely to see the type of Stealth that would have been applied to the production B-70A Valkyries -- the epitome of the high and fast approach -- in the future.

IOW, stuff concentrating on preventing "cheap and easy" sensor pickups, instead of trying to reduce signature to extremely low levels.

Regarding the B-70, NAA developed a finish system that was literally gold plated -- it used a 0.00002 inch thick coating of gold substrate, or about 32~ pounds of gold per B-70A.

It would have allowed the finish system to re-radiate frictional heat from Mach 3 cruising flight overboard into an area of the infrared spectrum which was thought to be poorly covered by Soviet infrared detectors.

They also would have applied RAM to selected regions of the B-70A's frontal aspect on later production aircraft, resulting in a RCS signature like the one shown in the attached diagram from Aircraft Design - A Conceptual Approach 3d Ed by Raymer.

The resultant RCS signature would still have been huge, but it would have been a meaningful reduction, preventing 'cheap' very long range pickups of B-70s from a frontal aspect. Side RCS would have been a serious problem, but the Valkyrie would have presented a very problematic crossrange solution at Mach 3.