stalker wrote:While I'm not a huge fan of stealth, this doesn't really prove anything.
The purpose of a Raptor's stealth is to avoid being detected by enemy radar system in the first place, whose wavelengths are far longer than IR.
Typhoon wrote:Not nessasarily, with the advent of infrared search and track targets can be aquired visually and missiles cued using this equiment, today this means aircraft flying at a distance of up to 50-90 km can be engaged though even older aircraft can aquire targets on the boresight using the missiles seeker directly.
The F-22 has often been noted to include features to reduce its thermal signature, though videos like this make you wonder if any costs incured in the adoption of these systems is a worth while trade off...
While I am a fairly strong critic of the obsessive focus on LO in American aerospace development, this quote from
The Strategy of Technology is appropriate:
The Strategy of Technology wrote:Another common method of achieving surprise is through the exploitation of small advantages. Sometimes very small technological differences can be decisive; for example, in air combat during World War II, a speed differential of 20 miles per hour was crucial, even though it was only a small percentage of the total speed of the two airplanes involved. A 10 percent performance advantage in a radar can work a similar result. In war, there are very few prizes for having the second best equipment, even if it is almost as good as the enemy's; if before the combat you thought yours was better, the resulting surprise could be as disastrous as the actual inferiority.
Sometimes surprise can be achieved by deliberate manipulation of the expectations of the enemy, through the design of military equipment to maximize certain crucial variables at the expense of others. The Spitfire was designed to have a faster rate of climb and more firepower than the Messerschmitt, yet it was inferior in most other respects. It was then employed in an operational environment which made use of its advantages and minimized its disadvantages. The result was the disaster to the Luftwaffe that we call the Battle of Britain. Yet, to an aeronautical engineer or an aerodynamics scientist, the Messerschmitt was clearly the better airplane. German scientists and pilots alike were victims of a deliberate policy of technological surprise.
The above example is worth studying. In particular, it should be noted that victory was produced by the combination of aircraft design and strategy, which required careful analysis of far more than aerodynamics and engineering. The victory was won by military decisions, not scientific theories.
The Strategy of Technology wrote:Small Advantages
The notion that small advantages cannot be decisive stems from an imperfect understanding of the military arts. There is no prize for second place in combat. A system that is second best in each of ten areas is excellent until the moment it must be used in combat; then it is nearly worthless. Many examples of small decisive advantages come to mind: for example, in an air battle conducted with air-to-air missiles at long ranges, a two-mile difference in radar ranges can result in one side being destroyed before it even detects the other. Small percentage improvements in missile accuracy can result in enormous increases in target kill probabilities. Moreover, if you have misgauged your position on the technological S-curve (see the section on the nature of the technological process), what is expected to be a marginal improvement may in reality be quite a large one. Refusal to make small improvements usually stems from lack of desire to improve the force at all; that is, from failure to conduct technological pursuit and exploit your advantages to leave the enemy well behind.
The F-22's reduced radar and infrared signatures give it the following advantages:
1) Reduced distance of detection, in turn reducing the time to intercept. This increases the enemy's OODA loop (observation component).
2) Reduced target for tracking systems, which in turn reduces the Pk of anti-air systems against the F-22
3) F-22 can detect bogies before they detect the F-22, making BVR combat asymmetric in favor of the F-22
Of course, these advantages do not exist at a vacuum. It must be asked at what cost these advantages come, and not merely financial cost. Shaping an airframe for LO necessarily reduces the aerodynamic performance of the airframe, in turn increasing weight as well. Materials needed for stealth are costly to manufacture (the F-22 mid-fuselage requires 20,000 man hours of riveting) and maintain. The increased cost of procurement reduces the number of aircraft that can be procured. As sortie rates increase exponentially with aircraft numbers, this represents a geometric decrease in firepower.
- By JohnRawls
- By Potemkin