Franco Lolan

s-400 is incredible man. far better than patriot or arrow. it CAN detect 2000 lb'rs and stealth too, at a certain range,. look at their pershing tests (i know its not 'stealthed'; however, detecting + hitting something like that is incredible)

im not saying stealth is "an expensive waste"; however, anti stealth radars have gotten very good

Garry

it is good that western people keep so much faith in Stealth. Hope your engeneers and polititians do. It would make them investing even more in Stealthy Shaped aircrafts... and pay good price in terms of aerodynamics

ps. both upgraded S-300 and S-400 were tested in northern sea, close to UK where both B-2 and F-117 are based. Both systems have probability of detecting, acquiring and tracking these stealthy birds close to 100%

barrowaj

Former Soviet weapons systems are on the decline. While Russia has been able to crank out some impressive aircraft lately, their best scientists have left to go work in western countries. Russia's economy is also far too small now to support the R/D necessary to keep pace with US technology, and also too small to compete in terms of quantity. For example, just look at recent events like the Kursk, and the attempted firing of three ballistic missiles (all of which failed) this spring... Their only hope is weapons export, which they have seen moderate success with.

Since their message is a sales pitch, Russians always boast a lot about how great their equipment is, while in reality, it performs merely adequately. Look at any wars in recent past (Iraq, Yom Kippur, Libya, etc) In the last 50 years, the best testament to Russian jets was their performance in the Vietnam war, and even there the US still had about 2:1 kill ratio.

Garry

I admit everything except for taking recent conflicts as a proxy. Old weapons, poorly maintained and used by untrained personell is hardly a good ground for estimate.

Yes. In general quality/reliability of Russian arms went down significantly in last decade - economics and control is the major reason for that.

Yes. Russia has far less resources for R&D and arms spendings and this will probably last for another decade. However I insist that now some of Russian aviation corporations are many times more efficient in R&D ([time+$ investments]/results) than many of their western peers and themselves in the past. (I do this statement having made a research on this issue.) Though even this greater efficiencies are insufficient to cover the gap between R&D advances in US and Russia, as funds are too scare.

Nonetheless. Antistealth technologies are no mystery. Let me remind you that Stealth priciple is dispersal of radar waves by diverting them at certain angles + some absorbtion of the waves by special covers. 100% diverting of radar the waves is impossible. Morever efficiency of the system depends on position of emmiting radar to the object. Hence we have competition between sensitivity of radars vs. ability to divert and absorb more waves. And assymetry here is that marginal improvement in radar sensitivity is cheaper to achieve that marginal+further improvement in diverting radar waves. Indeed it hard to become more stealthy from what is already achieved, while there is a vast room for further improment of radars sensitivity. Look now AESA radars can detect objects with size of bascketball at a distance of 100km (as well as Russian)!

It was always possible and what is good it is one of those assymentry cases when it really takes cheaper to implement antystealth systems, than to introduce/update a Stealth. Regarding testing - Yes the data from the test of new radars has been sent to Design Beraus, involved in aircraft/missile/avionics. They have been tested by special ship of radar surveillance in neutral waters in Northern sea (B-2 and F-117 are based in UK)

barrowaj

I agree with this. However, I think that while better training and somewhat more modern equipment of the Russian military would make a difference, it would not be such a huge difference to say that Russian eqiupment is better. For example, Iraqi T-72 tanks didn't do very well despite their well trained Republican Guard crews. This was mainly due to not having thermal sights, laser rangefinders, or fire computers, combined with the limited battle intelligence. The most modern Russain tanks are the T-80 and T-90, but most of Russia's tanks are still T-72s. I still find it hard to beleive that the T-80 and T-90 are revolutionarily better than the T-72 to account for these differences.

I beleive you here, because I think that historicall the Russians have always been good at being resourceful at coming up with functional designs that were technically simple. For example the Soyuz space capsule... But I think that ingenuity can only make up so much versus technical superiority. For example, the Su-35/37 are great aircraft, but they are not that stealthy, and their avionics pales in comparison to those on the F-22.

Very cool; I beleive this too. But I disagree that making airplanes stealthier is more expensive than making Radar receivers more powerful and sensitive. Correct me if I am wrong, but here is my math... I don't know a lot about stealth, but I do have a degree in electrical engineering.

If a stealthy airplane can only be detected at a range of 50 km, whereas a normal plane can be detected at a range of 100km, then to detect it at the normal range the trasmitter must be made either 16 times as sensitive, or 16 times more powerful (or a combination fo the two). Since the transmitted signal decreases in intensity by the sqare of the distance, and then the reflected signal also decreases by the square of the distance. Therefore, to detect the stealth plane at twice the distance we have (2^2)*(2^2)=16. What do you think about this reasoning?

Franco Lolan

i dont have any engineering/physics expertise; however, I'm US, and it doesnt hurt believing Russians are kicking our ass.
If they are better than we are right no, and we recognize it; then, we revamp military and get ahead.
If we think they r better but theyre not, and we revamp milit. what happens? nothing we'll kick ass anyway.
never underestimate

The Chap

The inverse square rule does not apply to many contemporary systems.

No more than the EM dispersion of a light bulb applies to a coherent EM beam. Spectral fidelity also has a part to play.

__________________
Where's the bloody gin? An army marches on its liver, not its ruddy stomach.

Hk40

Hold-On Chap - You can't have it both ways - You said Stealth is just a trend alluding to nothing more than non-sense....While we begg to difer. Stealth has proved, and yes will prove to be a very economic/application that will be neccessary for survival (as in F-22 and F-35). Hello?!

__________________
~ Gary Mikami ~
Live 'N Let Live!

Hk40

C'mmon Garry - The same argument works against you....We could hide aircraft with radar sigs of bowling balls now down to the size of ball bearings! Let's get real?!

Hk40

Nic job Barrowaj - That wa the point I was trying to make to Chap. Nothing in LEO has the resolution as yet but not only that - the typical GeoSync Orbital paths are another annoying problem that is a hurdle. A new type of LEO sat that can park and nav to certain area's is needed.

The Chap

Hello HK! Good to hear from you
Check (Cheque? - ) my original statement: "Expensive waste of time."

Never said it didn't (Ooopsie - did I use the past tense?) work.

All that I posit in this thread is that it is an extreeeeeemely bad use of availible funds. Land, sea or air. With the previously mentioned excepion of Subs.

Garry

hard to argue here, too few knowledge about tanks... I might be wrong but I always assumed that Iraqis had very old designs of 60-70-es... I also have little knowledge about Republican Guard training.... to me it seems to me they were trained to fight with Iranians and Kurds - a very different enemy and level of technologies.

Anyway I don't think those are good proxy for performance

thanks for addmitting.
you know my view on investments into stealth.
technical superiority..... if you mean technology my point was that this superiority is function of several factors - Starting point, Funds invested, Time spent, and the last EFFICIENCY OF RESEARCH.... this efficiency is amount of time and money you would need to make some advances.... In Russia and US it was always away from optimal.... both states spend tons of cash on research and nobody every questioned researchers for efficient use of a program funds.... it was almost never the case that researchers spent less than budgeted...... Now Russian researchers really count pensils and paper sheets (I witnessed how they use clean side of used paper as note pads , however if you see look at amount of work done per investments of cash they become increadibly efficient. MKI program is just one of the cases - just compare how much did it cost for Being to produce new modification of F-15K for Korea and what Sukhoi has spent to turn Su-30mk into Su-30mki.....

I never claimed that improvement in efficiency is enough to catch up. In fact I believe that in order to catch up Russia will need to spend many 10 times more than now is spent.... (now all millitary aviation R&D financed from state budget was US$200mln in 2002 and it was spent over 25 programs.....)

Yes i mean it. First radars in UK during the war could see not further than 100 n.miles and only big flocks of enemy. Even clouds were the problem. In the last decade radar technologies improved singificantly due to fast advancement of electronics. The engineer who is working with N-011M radar states that now the speed resembles him the speed for capacity improvement of CPU.... it gets only faster....

Look the same square rule would apply to any object to be detected... right? Lets see how much have radars advanced when abiltiy to see normal (not stealthy) enemy increased from 100km to 200km..... yest exactly same (2^2)*(2^2)=16 times improvement.... moreover I was told that you also miss the size of the object.... it will require much more improvement to double detection distance if the object is small or stealthy.... still modern onboard radrs can detect objects of a size of basketball at distance of 200km..... that was really an improvement. Now the last. If you add to the picture advances in computers which help decoding even slight signials from strong chaos you would agree that hiding is getting more and more difficult. Indeed improving your capabilities is basically improvement of your technology in electronics.... I was told that currently assumed limit for radars would be around 3,000km due to the curve of the ionasphere, however just 30 years ago it was believed to be 500km.....

Now lets see at Stealth side. How much stealthier the shapes can be? To be more stealthier the plane needs to have sharper angles of surfaces - i.e. to be thinner or wider. Here you can measure current size and think how much thinner/wider you can be.... I bet it is much more costly to develop upgraded and flying frame which gets 2 times thiner of current F-117 or B-2 than to improve your electronics to see them....

You had good argument. However this argument applies to any object and factual development of capabilities proves that radars still go too fast......

Maximus

Well, I really don;t think that stealth is a waste(expensive) of time. FOr example, given the kind of stealth an F-22 has, it could basically pass over a SAM site undetected. If you think about it, to counter an F-22 would require numerous SAM sites in a very close proximity to each other.
I think F-22 comes into service in 2005, but is there any technology till now even developed by anyone that could counter it? I mean here we have an F-22 that could actually conduct SEAD or A2A missions in very heavily SAM defended area, and could still get out without anyone even knowing.
Just think about how much money it would cost to counter fighter like f-22. And don't forget that f-22 (and the stealth technology) is being developed by USA, worlds' largest economy and is there any country that could meet the expenses of deploying large number of SAMs at a very short notice. Economically impossible.

It would require a technological leap for any counter to be developed to existing stealth technologies. And that would require money, and lots of it.

Franco Lolan

i think thats assuming f22 is that good. lets not assume, b/c u know what happens when one assumes.

Garry

This technology already exists - modified S-300 and S-400 can detect both B-2 and F-117. Tested with actual US models based in UK.... I doubt that F-22 has any advancement in this regard to B-2 and F-117.... probably it is much less stealthy...

the point is that it requires lots of money to develop it..... but much less money to counter.