Ruben. You couldn't make them as cheap. It was originally about markets, not effectiveness.

 

Sheesh, what an amateur.

 

You couldn't make them as cheap

Like I said, an amateur.

 

Herald

 

Jesus, if your post was only about the BL EUx program, why the links to exocet, Taurus, ASMP...?

 

And I don't think you'll find anyone who believes that the purpose of the BL EUx program was to produce bombs that are cheaper than US ones. Economies of scale will always favor US (or Russian) weapons.

Its not hard.

 

It goes directly to wrong choices which has been a continuous theme I have about most technological incompetence..

 

Herald

 

 

 

"Early RAM had three major drawbacks, weight, susceptibility to friction damage, poor heat conductivity, and oxidation, all defects, of course, which continue to plague many of the matrices tried by many of America's competitors down to the present."
 

" and thats the issue - you don't "coat" the entire plane - it's one element in a set of signature/emissions tuning and management capabilities.  those who talk about "coating" (and usually they say "painting") the entire plane are absolutely clueless about LO management ...."

 

I was thinking more along the lines of really simple stuff, like putting radar absorbent material on a plane's nose cone.

 

Right in front of the radar where the fighter's outgoing radar waves will be absorbed. And where the radar's return signal will also be absorbed before it reaches the radar antenna. This is like putting sound proofing in front of your brand new very expensive HIFI speakers IMHO.

 

In my opinion what you want for a stealth fighter's nose cone, if you want to equip it with radar that is, is that your radar waves pass through the nose cone unhindered and your opponent's waves are absorbed by the nose cone.

 

That is quite a design problem. I wouldn't blame the F-117 designers if for that reason they went with an IR sensor only. If you don't solve this in some way then either all stealth planes will be without radar. Or you can only reduce radar cross section to the return of the plane's radar equipment behind the nose cone.

 

As a non-expert, that's one of the problems I would expect to run into when designing a stealth plane. But then, non-experts like me often get it wrong so maybe it is not a problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It is a problem. In a weird universe where light is absorbed, polarized,  where the photovoltaic effect is a known one, where photons can be absorbed and re-emitted at different frequencies, how would you handle it?  

RAM principle and shaping to scatter return is not the re-radiation or rubber ball bounce analogy at all.

 

Herald

 

 

 

Exactly.  This is why you see AESA radars on U.S. aircraft that look like this:

 

APG-79 on Block II F/A-18E/F:

 

APG-81 on F-35 (seen here installed on a flying testbed):

 

 

The radome has to be permeable to the wavelength used in both directions.  If you're going to take advantage of an AESA as an electronic warfare system, that means a reasonably wide frequency which threat radars will likely use.  So you can't block the signal.  But what you can do is orient your array so that it doesn't present a giant reflective slab from a head on aspect -- electronic beam-steering allows a certain flexibility in that regard.

 

Here is an example of an AESA which is not optimized in that regard:

 

 

Cough  "Or redirected" Cough..

 

The APG-77s array is angled? That's news to me! Thought the APG-79 was the first one with an angled array, followed by the -81.

 

It helps if you know what you look at, MK.

 

Herald

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