Follow Alex Hollings: Facebook Twitter. Your email address will not be published. Read the original article on Military. Follow Military. It just got a lot easier for troops and Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer Search this website. F Nighthawks were already circling in the skies over Bagdhad when the Persian Gulf War kicked off without being spotted.
Air Force photo. Air Force photo by Tech. Jason Robertson. The SR flew so fast it needed quartz windows because glass would melt Lockheed Martin photo. Air Force rendering.
Air Force. Stealth platforms are a logical choice for the U. Army rendering. Pin 2. Alex Hollings Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Lifestyle Read the original article on Military. Modern stealth aircraft have an RCS comparable with small birds or large insects.
Shaping alone offers very few stealth advantages against low-frequency radars that even with signal wavelength more than twice the size of the aircraft, can still generate a significant return. However, low-frequency radars lack accuracy and because of large size, are difficult to transport.
Multiple emitters is another option. Detection can be better achieved if emitters are separate from receivers as in bistatic or multi-static radars. Early stealth observation aircraft used slow-turning propellers to avoid being heard by enemy troops.
The supersonic aircraft have a sonic boom. Modern aircraft engines are more efficient and less noisy. Standard rotor blades in a helicopter are evenly spaced and produce greater noise at a given frequency and its harmonics. Helicopter rotor noise can be reduced by varying spacing between the blades that will spread the rotor noise over a greater range of frequencies. The visual signature is best reduced through camouflage paint or other materials to colour and break up the lines of the aircraft.
Most aircraft use matte paint and dark colours. Gray paint disruptive schemes are more effective. Things like preventing sunlight glinting from the aircraft cockpit canopy had to be addressed. The original B-2 design had wing tanks for a contrail-inhibiting chemical. Later they had a contrail sensor that alerts the pilot when he should change altitude. Reducing aircraft heat signature is required to prevent IR sensor tracking.
The exhaust plume contributes a significant infrared signature. One way to reduce IR signature is to have a non-circular slit-shape tail pipe, to reduce the exhaust cross section area and maximise the mixing of hot exhaust with cool ambient air as is the case in F Often, cool air is deliberately injected into the exhaust flow to boost this process. In some aircraft, the jet exhaust is vented above the wing surface to shield it from missiles observers below.
Another way to reduce the exhaust temperature is to circulate coolant fluids such as fuel inside the exhaust pipe, where the fuel tanks serve as heat sinks cooled by the flow of air along the wings.
Radar-evading warplanes require careful design work, extensive testing and exotic materials for their construction, features that can triple their cost compared to nonstealthy planes. IRST systems may be effective even against stealth aircraft as its surface heats up due to air friction and a twochannel IRST can compare difference between the low and high channels.
Typically, IRST allows detection of non-afterburning aerial target at 45 km range. Stealth aircraft are still vulnerable to detection during and immediately after using their weaponry. While the aircraft will reacquire its stealth as soon as the bay doors are closed, a fast response defensive weapons system has a brief opportunity to engage the aircraft.
This forces relatively extended operations with the bay doors open. Stealth aircraft carry fuel and armament internally, which limits the payload. The F carries only two laser or GPS-guided bombs, while a non-stealth attack aircraft can carry several times more.
This requires the deployment of additional aircraft to engage targets that would normally require a single non-stealth aircraft. This apparent disadvantage however, is offset by the reduction in fewer supporting aircraft that are required to provide air-defence suppression and electronic counter measures.
A heavily defended site normally has overlapping radar coverage, making undetected entry by conventional aircraft difficult. Aircraft detection can be delayed by exploiting ground radars Doppler slot. With knowledge of enemy radar locations and the RCS pattern of own aircraft, a flight route can be flown that minimises radial speed while presenting the lowest-RCS aspects of the aircraft to the threat radar. There are other flight tactics such as manoeuvres combined with chaff dispensation to confuse enemy radars.
The US and Israel are the only countries to have used stealth aircraft in combat. In Gulf War, the Fs flew 1, sorties and scored direct hits on 1, high-value targets in Iraq. Only 2. With U. The example of Stealth shows how the United States produced one critical technology in the past and how it might produce others today. On the moonless night of January 17, , seven aircraft appeared in the skies over Baghdad. The aircraft were FAs, better known as Stealth fighters, and they were part of the opening salvo of Operation Desert Storm.
Iraq had a formidable radar-based air defense system, but its defenses could not detect the Fs. Stealth aircraft decimated Iraqi targets during the Gulf War, and no Stealth aircraft were shot down.
Stealth gave the United States overwhelming air superiority; instead of needing dozens of aircraft to strike a single defended target, a single Stealth aircraft could destroy multiple targets. If the United States could make aircraft undetectable by radar, what else could it do? Thirty years later, the technological and strategic context has changed in many respects, and there is renewed interest in understanding the source of emerging technologies.
0コメント