Forum: Technology

Over the last few years, I have seen claims that Russian and other Ground Penetrating Radar technology would make all aircraft detectable. I have also seen claims that using the absence of natural radiation, the same can be done. I would like to see what others have found regarding these technologies.

By Ground Penetrating radar, I mean radar which is used to find objects underground being used to find aircraft after modification.

The other type would be at least a partially passive array, that would detect the hole in the radiation that is naturally present in the atmosphere created by the radar absorbant coatings on stealth aircraft.

Also, I would like to discuss any technology that would be able to identify an aircraft by shape WVR, if mounted on a missile and launched toward the proximity of an aircraft in the absence of an exact location or tracking capability upon launch.

These are a few things which I have discussed with others, and I am curious to their advancement. Shocked

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eleanordriver wrote:

By Ground Penetrating radar, I mean radar which is used to find objects underground being used to find aircraft after modification.

You might find that physics might put a dampener on this one - for a start the pulses would have to pass through certain materials - and if they get through would depend on the properties of those materials - which means the pulses just cant pass through certain materials.
Secondly if you could get a pulse through, what would you be getting your return from - most things return radar pulses - what out of all those signals would be the thing you require?
In usual circumstances the object is in front of everything else so filtering out ground/sea return is relatively easy.

eleanordriver wrote:

The other type would be at least a partially passive array, that would detect the hole in the radiation that is naturally present in the atmosphere created by the radar absorbant coatings on stealth aircraft.

This reminds me of under siege 2 where he uses a satellite to find where the air was being displaced around an F-117.
Radar sends out a pulse and then hopes to get an echo pulse back after its rebounded off another item out there - a pulse hitting a stealth jet gets deflected away or absorbed so the radar unit gets a limited to no return. What you are suggesting here would mean getting returns from the air surrounding the jet - not sure that's possible - but hey im sure some scientist is giving it a try!

Here are two articles describing an L-Band radar, which is the same frequency band (UHF) as some ground penetrating radars use.
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-140909-1.html
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-06.html

The radiation that a passive array would detect, could be that coming from space and bouncing around within the atmosphere (ionosphere specifically). This would be similar to finding a white aircraft shape in the static of a television that has lost signal.

Remember the white noise that was being transmitted by the soviet union during the cold war? Low frequency noise was emitted all over the planet. This would give a significant background for a void caused by radar-absorbant material to show up on.

I'm in no way saying that the russians have the technology to detect 5th gen fighters any better than they could before, I'm wondering about the capabilities of these technologies.

Think of all the spare change and lost jewelry they could find!?! And everyone wonders how they're going to fund the T-50... TEG

maybe they can find all the nukes they've 'lost'

Forum Veteran Joined: Dec 15, 2006 - 12:28 AM Posts: 760

eleanordriver wrote:

maybe they can find all the nukes they've 'lost'

Using ground penetrating radar they’re more likely to find their own fighter aircraft.

I would think that the best approach to detecting stealth aircraft would be the use of networked, full 360 aspect recievers.
Sorry that I can't reference an artical on this, just me thinking.
So instead of manufacturing 20 search radar sets that all transmit/recieve identically, each one would include a unique signature+time code in it's search frequency.
When the broadcast wave from Radar A strikes an aircraft specifically designed to reflect that wave away from the source(Radar A) it makes that echo available to possibly be recieved at Radar B, C, D and vise-versa.
You would need to data network together reflected returns from other radar sets (not your own) so that you can calculate the physical location of a candidate track, based on the known positions of the radar sets and the times of the bounced signals.
This would take some processing power but it could be done.
This would also be very effective against any air object, not just stealthy ones.
If memory serves the RF signal amplitude drops as a square of distance so you would be wise to start with a fairly hefty amount of signal power, but other than the signal carrier signatures it wouldn't need to be special.

Forum: Technology

Aircraft VS Ground Penetrating Radar