Corsair1963 wrote:element1loop wrote:spazsinbad wrote:I'm interested in what needs to be done in the opinion of the critics about RCS reduction (given limited info from graphic).
Stop kidding themselves that a carrier's massive and unavoidable RCS can be hidden from a radar seeker. Then stop wasting money on geometric structures, and put the time and money (and the space saved) into defense technologies that will defeat the RF seeker, altogether (preferably at source).
Actually, the point isn't to hide the ship from radar. The point is to reduce the RCS of the ship. To a point you can't distinguish it from much smaller ships and crafts. In short you want the warship to appear like a small fishing boat (trawler?) or something similar on radar.
This makes the job of picking out the warship and targeting it much much harder!
Take the Persian Gulf for example. You know how many ships of various sizes are operating within it any given time??? Now if the warship looks like a fishing trawler on radar. Yet, the gulf is full of fishing trawlers. Then which one is the target and which one isn't....
Vertical sheet steel and 90 degree angles of the much larger hull area does this? I'm acquainted with the concept that signature reduction aims for lower sticky-out-ish-ness. You've tangentially re-made my point. Wondering if you're just feeling scrappy?
IMO, the sort of country that decides it's in a position to shoot at a shoe-box shaped F-35B light carrier, not withstanding the cool leaned-over hair styling atop (which could trigger feelings of ambivalence), has other sensors and data to sort wheat from chaff and the RF seeker alone will not definitively find the correct target and will not be reasonably expected to do so in 2020, or more like, 2025 to 2050.
The USN faced objective reality and (mostly, not entirely) avoided genuflecting to the structural designer-art garnish.
I respect this structurally and functionally frank assessment of the priorities.
11 Aug 2020, 06:14
