Will Stealth Survive As Sensors Improve? F-35, Jammers Stake

Good 'back and forth' between Deptula and Friedman in this long article...

Will Stealth Survive As Sensors Improve? F-35, Jammers At Stake By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. 27 Nov 2012

http://defense.aol.com/2012/11/27/will- ... -at-stake/

"..."People need to understand stealth is not invisibility," Deptula told AOL Defense. As current sensor technology improves, he said, "you're going to be able to detect aircraft with current levels of low-observability at further distances." That said, non-stealth planes are much bigger targets, he said: "It's a piece of cake for an adversary with a sophisticated air defense system to engage and kill a 4th generation aircraft; it's very difficult for them to do that with a 5th gen aircraft. Will it get easier in the future? Possibly."

"You can't make something disappear, all right?" echoed Friedman. "What you can do is reduce the signature you get back [on the enemy's sensor screens]. More powerful processors buy you back part of the signal" – and thanks to Moore's Law, the processing power available to do that doubles every 18 months. The more powerful the processors and the more sophisticated their algorithms, the more effectively they can sift meaningful data out of the static. And no matter how stealthy an aircraft is, it still makes some noise, it still emits some heat as infra-red radiation, and – most critically – it still reflects back some portion of an incoming radar beam...."

ONLY a small part of it. Go read.

More to the point, how will non-VLO platforms handle improved sensors?

1st503rdsgt wrote:More to the point, how will non-VLO platforms handle improved sensors?

Q. Why did the west pursue stealth, 25 years ago?

A. improved missile defenses and radar installations

The moment you can identify every Golf Ball sized object flying in the sky on radar, if you notice any golf ball moving too fast (e.g. 600+ mph), you know something is not right.

The question is can you process the info and relay the information back to the operator in < 1 sec and pass that info along to any of your offensive weapons system to do something about it.

If you cannot, you're going to be blown up and your radar, SAM's, maybe even your airbases will be gone before you can retaliate.

It's a matter of response time to threats.

1st503rdsgt wrote:More to the point, how will non-VLO platforms handle improved sensors?

Jamming.

kamenriderblade wrote:The moment you can identify every Golf Ball sized object flying in the sky on radar, if you notice any golf ball moving too fast (e.g. 600+ mph), you know something is not right.

The question is can you process the info and relay the information back to the operator in < 1 sec and pass that info along to any of your offensive weapons system to do something about it.

If you cannot, you're going to be blown up and your radar, SAM's, maybe even your airbases will be gone before you can retaliate.

It's a matter of response time to threats.

Search up radar clutter.

That can be a new form of jamming, just clutter their radar so all they see is one giant amorphous blob.

=D

"People need to understand stealth is not invisibility,"

That's exactly the point, stealth is not invisibility, it's less visible. Thus it's always useful as sensors improves, it's always better to be less visible. Better detection of enemy and better stealth from enemy detection benefit every battle unit, aircrafts are no different from others. Foot soldiers wear camouflage, battle ships do emission control, all for same purpose: stealth.

Also, processing power only helps detection to a certain degree, beyond that, it's the radar emitting power to be increased.

maus92 wrote:

1st503rdsgt wrote:More to the point, how will non-VLO platforms handle improved sensors?

Jamming.

And when their radar returns are just too large to jam advanced radars?

count_to_10 wrote:

maus92 wrote:

1st503rdsgt wrote:More to the point, how will non-VLO platforms handle improved sensors?

Jamming.

And when their radar returns are just too large to jam advanced radars?

Jamming/spoofing requires less power since you are trying to trick the radar with a false return signal, which means some absurdly tiny fraction of the energy radiated originally.

Plus as your RCS goes down, the lower the power requirement to spoof a return.

How would a jammer protect itself from an AAM in home-on-jam mode?

count_to_10 wrote:

maus92 wrote:

1st503rdsgt wrote:More to the point, how will non-VLO platforms handle improved sensors?

Jamming.

And when their radar returns are just too large to jam advanced radars?

Spoofing. Signal injection. And other techniques, collectively know as electronic attack.

popcorn wrote:How would a jammer protect itself from an AAM in home-on-jam mode?

What band would that missile be homing on? Is it frequency flexible? How long could it maintain a decent pk if jamming is intermittent?

Their are physical limits to both optical sensors and what can be detected by radar at what range no matter how much computer power you throw it. The whole point of Stealth is to sneak up on the enemy and you can't do that with your Radar pinging away giving away your position. So with Stealth aircraft you are limited to how and when you use your radar much the same way a submarine is limited in how it can use its Sonar and pierscope.

maus92 wrote:

popcorn wrote:How would a jammer protect itself from an AAM in home-on-jam mode?

What band would that missile be homing on? Is it frequency flexible? How long could it maintain a decent pk if jamming is intermittent?

What frequencies would the jammer be operating on? Will it be frequency flexible? What happens to the non-stealthy strike force when the jammer's coverage becomesitermittent?

The only point,I'm making is that anything that emits is detectable and potentially vulnerable.