Battleland

Never Mind…

  • Share
  • Read Later

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9rvBLxGs-8%5D

A quartet of experts at Aviation Week magazine, the bible of flying gearheads, now tells us that China’s stealth F-20 jet may not be such a big deal:

China’s newest combat aircraft prototype, the J-20, will require an intense development program if it is going to catch up with fast-moving anti-stealth advances. In fact, anti-stealth will bring into question all stealth designs: How much invulnerability will current low-observability techniques offer as air defense systems adopt larger and more powerful active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars? From the early days of AESA development, a key goal was to build a radar that could detect very small objects—such as a cruise missile at a distance great enough to target and shoot it down—or a larger object like a fighter with a very low-observable treatment. Airborne detection of stealth aircraft may already be an operational capability.

For decades, aerospace experts have debated over just how “stealthy” such radar-eluding airplanes are. It’s important to note that stealth is more like a dimmer switch — it varies based on lots of elements aboard the aircraft, as well as the qualities of the detection devices trying to find it — and isn’t simply an on-off capability. Guess we’ll just to have to wait for a real war — with a foe outfitted with sophisticated air defenses — to see if the hundreds of billions we’ve spent on such aerial Teflon was justified.