I'm seeing a trend developing. Moderate stealth, retaining full agility and hopefully lower costs. It appears that cracking the full stealth code is too hard and perhaps costly.
Is that what our competitors are learning from the F-35 program?
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
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More likely full stealth cost benefit ratio is really bad and stealth vs radar balance is shifting in favor radar + radars continue to grow and can be upgraded much easyer than stealth .
ReplyDeleteThe Brits and the US air force are now going to infra red search and track systems that can spot the heat from the F-22 about as far as a radar can. Clearly, spending a lot of dough per airframe is going to be counter productive. We need a large fleet of much cheaper UCAVS.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they figured full aspect LO isn't really worth it?
ReplyDeleteSeeing as the Koreans are doing this with the T-50 couldn't we do the same with a F-16?
ReplyDeleteSo the South Koreans are working on their own F-20 project.
ReplyDeleteHistorically planes that compete with the F-16 for funding/research/contracts die on the vine.
And "full stealth" is a misnomer. Anyone remember pictures of "audible listening stations" where Brits would keep their ears to really big listening horns for the sound of German aircraft engines? Obviously flying supersonic defeats that technology, but not Radar or IR detection. Also anytime a plane presses "transmit" on any radio (for voice/data link, etc) they are saying, "Here I am!"
So "stealthy" makes a lot more sense than "stealth" in terms of actual useage and survivability.