Stealth might be Overrated

The Navy never really liked stealth. The Navy likes to jam. The theory is the enemy knows you are up there anyway, so the goal is to make your aircraft hard to track.

Robert Gates cut back on the F-22 and ordered more EF-18.

a reply to: gariac

Until recently stealth coatings and shipboard life didn't play well together.

from his statement it seems more like Drone Jets will be a thing of the future. Why risk pilots to deadly Gs when an Armchair wizard with a joystick can do the job just as well eating cheetos and drinking monster well manouvering 13 tons of steel around the globe.

Code red emergency! I'm out of mountain dew, Im remotely sending a drone to pick up a pack right now hold on il put the fighter drone on auto-piolet and let Jeeves deal with the rest well i eat my pizza.

"What does that next strike fighter look like?" Greenert asked. "I'm not sure if it's manned, don't know that it is. You can only go so fast, and you know that stealth may be overrated. … Let's face it, if something moves fast through the air, disrupts molecules and puts out heat – I don't care how cool the engine can be, it's going to be detectable."

Yeah manned jets will die out. Even airlines will scrap a lot of pilots for remote controlled A.I. Just wait. It will happen. Pretty soon.

Just as soon as self driving cars will come out lol. Well not to sure when that's coming out but i can't imagine it won't be to long.

The Army of the Drones

February 24, 2015

Before 9/11, the United States had only a tiny number of experimental drones that were never used in combat. The 9/11 attacks and the wars they engendered changed this. Today there are more than 7,000 American drones, some 200 of which are armed and which have killed thousands of people.

New data shows how armed drones are proliferating around the world and why international standards to govern them are overdue.

Read more.

I'm not sure Stealth will be relevant when we can just mass produce drones.
No need of elminating potencial pilots based on physical disabilities or suseptabilities like high blood pressure ect.
Pretty much almost anyone can fly a drone. Which is why it's so appealing and is being done today. And why so few jets remain.

I believe the Jets are a smokescreen. Yes A smokescreen to divert attention away from the drones and the impending droneocolypse that is occuring right now.

People laugh and are moderately scared of the amazon drone and privacy invasion. But that's only a slice of the cake. The military aspects to it as well as also frightening.

If a drone crashes there's no loss of a pilot. And if manufacturing is crazy fast, A new one just rolls off the assembly line.

This is the future we are headed towards. That and mech/Biologically enhanced super soldiers.

a reply to: noeltrotsky

I remember reading years ago that Checkoslovakian scientists together with Russians developed radar that detects any stealth

Which explains why Russians never bother making their own stealth

a reply to: LotToTell2

You haven't bothered to keep up I see. The Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighter begins delivery next year. It's been flying in testing for several years now.

a reply to: noeltrotsky

I dare say that the number of F-117s and B-2 not lost in air battles because of stealthiness is more due to them not being in air battles than their invisibility.

Non-visibility to radar is a nice gimmick to have on your a/c, a must have actually since radar is the first line of detection by complex military defense equipment in this day, but it is a primitive system nonetheless, third after the human eye and human hearing. As such, it is bound to be superseded by vastly more sophisticated sensing units that can operate in a dozen different ways, far outside of standard human sensibilities. We have the thermal fields, chemical vapor fields and electromagnetic fields to consider as potential ways to know what is moving around in the air.

The widely known phenomena that digital cameras can pick up invisible ("cloaked") UFOs (whether theirs or ours) is a clear indication that there are other systems of "stealth" out there, but in this example, defeated by a rather simple means.

a reply to: Aliensun

And they flew thousands of combat missions with one loss. They didn't exactly sit on their laurels doing nothing

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gariac

Until recently stealth coatings and shipboard life didn't play well together.

Nice theory, never the less SECDEF killed the F-22 and bought more jammers. EF-18 rather than EA-6B. The only reason the Navy is using the F-35 is the alternative was nothing.

Lots of good tidbits of info mentioned by posters to attract interest. Thanks!

a reply to: gariac

I'm well aware of what he did and what the Navy had done. Nevertheless early attempts to put stealth on ships is one of the reasons the Navy has been against it. They would have had to pay two or three times what the Air Force paid to maintain them.

I think i see a issue with optical camo for a fighter jet. It uses PLASMA correct? now what does PLASMA do to a metal skin that is not insulated against it? Dont it cause it to char and melt at times? Below is some info on types of optic camo.

A Claoked Bird of prey?

LOL and this site is So cheesy It is prolly Legit.

Herry Potter!

IMHO as the price of digital signal processing fall and it's processing power increase exponentially (SDR is now in hands of amateur using cheap USB stick), the future is passive distributed opportunistic radar using all available spectrum. Also cheap very small atomic time base are being developed. It may be extremely difficult to keep a plane stealth against this new paradigm.

Also the price of far IR focal plane array is decreasing, availability "for all" of very low NETD capable FLIR may not be far away.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: penroc3

And what do you think it does to your visual signature of you put a light here and there on the fuselage? There are only so many frequencies a visual system can use.

You're over thinking the problem. You don't have to physically change your planform, only make the seeker THINK it doesn't match what it's looking for.

I recall a story from the 60s about trying to make the Loach less visible using Christmas lights and it turned out relatively effective. That with some changes in the main and tail rotors and they were used to tap enemy lines with some success.

a reply to: Flipper35

During WWII they found that torpedo bombers could cut their detection time down to something like three to four seconds before weapons release by lighting the plane up.

That's always been the way of war. One side finds a potential advantage, the other side finds a way to thwart it, and so on and so on. I imagine that the use of drones will continue to rise, and that "the enemy" will figure out ways of defeating their stealth qualities.

And then I imagine that somebody will figure out some way to use compressed nitrogen or something else to cool the hot surfaces of the drones, once again making them hard to spot. Back and forth.

a reply to: Blue Shift

well you can add a simple 3 layer coating to the drones. bottom layer insulates it from the drones skin. in the middle liquid oxygen or nitrogen,and then the top layer seals it.

a reply to: yuppa

what happens when you start venting your gas/liquid out the side of your drone and there is a HUGE cloud of super cold gas lighting up IR detectors(in reverse)

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: gariac

I'm well aware of what he did and what the Navy had done. Nevertheless early attempts to put stealth on ships is one of the reasons the Navy has been against it. They would have had to pay two or three times what the Air Force paid to maintain them.

Doubtful. Do you have a document to back up your cost estimates?

Stealth is only effective on the 3rd world. You would never attack the DPRK depending on stealth.