Or watch for CNN’s local correspondant to go off the air…
The “new” cell phone tower approach will also require a huge amount of computing. Think about how this would work. The stealth plane does not block out reception at the cell ower, it only changes it slightly. You need a central location, with a huge computer, to take real time feed from EACH cell tower. The computer has to see everything that each tower sees. You have to get all of these signals to the computer. If you do it by cell phone, then the signal will degrade, so you will need it sent over land lines. The computer can analyze all of the signals to look for a pattern of signal disturbance.
1)This is not really what the article said.
It said they set up a bunch of antennas over an area about the size of a football feild connected to a lap top (I assume there is a fair amount of signal processing that takes place external to the laptop). The cell phone towers are a source of signals and the array that you setup listens to the signals and how the phase changes to locate the plane. The cell phone network is not changed to accomodate the system.
It was my understanding from reading the CNN article and a couple of others that it was actually the air turbulence created by the F-117 that could be tracked with this system. The “theory” about this being the system that helped bring down the Nighthawk over Bosnia (NOT the Czech Republic) is speculation from the reporter that should not have made it into the story.
The shootdown probably was carried out by a shoulder-launched heat seeking missile (according to analysis by the Air Force, can’t remember if I read this on their website or in Aviation Week). Even though the engines are buried in the plane’s fuselage and ducted to cool the exhaust off, there is still an infrared signature of the aircraft that stands out against the background. On a low-level mission where bad luck takes the plane near some guy with a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft weapon, the pilot would have very little reaction time and no chance to drop flares (if they’re carried on an F-117) or take any other action to avoid the missile.
Tranquilis, are you saying that the (RAM) stealth technology then effectively filters out the higher frequency return but leaves untouched the low frequency return? Ok, that’s fine. So a low frequency return with an expanded array of receivers might allow detection of an event, possibly even a (with, as has been noted, the aid of much computing power) trackable event. But the low resolution leaves a shootdown much in doubt.
Don’t cell phone towers already have fiber optic lines? They are relay stations that receive cell phone transmissions and send the data to centralized switching stations, so they must have a lot of bandwidth.
I don’t think a cell phone network will be easy to destroy, either. Towers are located in residential and urban areas, so it’d be difficult to take out all the towers without killing half the enemy population. That would’t look very good on CNN.
You’re right though, you’d need a pretty impressive computer to analyze the data in real time.
can be found here:
Just goes to show, as long as there’s something physically there, you can get some kind of tracking tone off it. Doesn’t matter what your RCS is or what kind of anti-reflective coatings are put on it, even if you have to go to visual scanning, stealth devices as they currently exist can be detected.
What are everyone else’s picks for the next generation in stealth technology? Personally, I think it’ll be something that uses charged particles or a light-shifting polymer.
Save that it’s already been done by the Czechs. Please remember: Lower resolution doesn’t mean ineffective, it just means lower resolution. All that’s required is to get a warhead within lethal proximity, and “low” resolution radar has been doing that from the '60’s. It’s less about the resolution, it’s about the ability to detect and track. Once you can detect the target, you can track it, and once you can track it, you can engage it. The tracking technology for radar is quite simple, conceptually. You can illuminate the target with a high energy beam, allowing the missile to home on the reflected energy; you can track the target and the missile (with radar or IR), beaming course corrections to the missile; or you can tell the missle roughly where the target is, and let the missile finish the guidance itself, either with onboard radar or with IR sensors. Or any combination of the above.
RAM doesn’t ‘filter’ exactly, it absorbs, redirects, or traps RF energy, effectively attenuating it. It can be designed for pretty much any wavelength you desire, but the composition, weight, and cost are dependant on how wide a range, and what frequencies, you want to attenuate. Other aspects of low observable technology include the elimination, or as close to as possible, of right-angles, thermal plumes, large blocks of unshielded metals, and the elimination of self-radiated RF energy. Also a nice sinister matte black paint job comes in handy at night. Low observable technology is one of mankind’s oldest arts and sciences, starting from the day the first hunter hid under an animal hide to get closer to his prey.
Once passive radar gets working well, it’ll be a cast-iron bitch to fox, but sooner or later someone will figure a way.
Right, Yugoslavia.
The “air-turbulence-tracking-radar” isn’t anywhere to be seen in military arsenals, at least not as an effective firecontrol system, yet. While man-portable missles may be able to effectively engage LO tech aircraft, they first have to be able to see the aircraft. Man-portable systems are effectively daylight only. Current best info has the SA-6 as the killer.
You don’t have to fox it, you have to beat it, and in this case the US already knows how to beat it–and into the ground. They did it to the Iraqis in Desert Storm.
First, make sure the cell phone towers (or whatever radio source the enemy is using) are running run a very high altitude strikes and launch some cruise missiles to wake everyone up (NOTE-do this at night).
Then, fly a few drones in (and a QF-4 is the size of a plane and passive radar wills show it as such).
If this gets a response, and it should, have your ground hugging planes (F-111 and F-4’s were used in Iraq but they are retired or turned into drones, B-1’s are probably your best bet) come in with AGM-88 HARM missiles. The HARMs are anti-radiation missiles. They home in on radar or radio sites and destroy them. They were used against Iraqi cell phone sites wtih devistating accuracy in Desert Storm. After the second day of bombing in the Gulf War, Iraq had no cell phone capacity, no long distance land phone capacity (the microwave relay towers and the “ATT Building” were gone) and few functioning radar istallations.
Finally, your intellegence sevices should have identified the probable places where the passive radar system can be accessed from. Take them out, with your F-117’s, B-2’s, B-1’s, and B-52’s. Then send your fighters in to pick off any stragglers.
Also, you could adjust the radar pods of some planes to broadcast at a frequency to confuse the passive radar system.
Passive radar is a way overblown threat.
First, blasting away at towers is cost-inefficient, and kinda counter to the whole “stealth” bit in the first place, short of an all-out war. The HARM missile is a pretty expensive item for use against a couple of thousand dollar transmitter. Second, the antennae can be placed on buildings, trees, billboards, just about any reasonably solid tall object. In some cases, such as the Czech developmental radar, it’s using a limited number of transmitters, and is mobile. Worse, if your hostile country has large numbers of the transmitters (which are cheap, btw), knocking out even large numbers may be insufficient, and many antennae will likely be attached to things you don’t want to blow-up.
Now, as for passive not being a serious threat at this time, sure. However, technologies develop and mature, and passive radar will too. When that time comes, your choices will be to fox it, or to try to destroy it. Successful foxing is more certain, provided you’ve got the correct technology: It’s multi use, reasonably cheap, and avoids collateral damage. Possible routes include more efficient “steathing”, jamming, spoofing, chaff, and sampling/retransmitting to fill the electronic ‘void’ the aircraft makes. Or some and/or all of the above.
The HARMs are expensive and the drones even more so, but they are small in cost to an F-117 or a B-2. But what I said was exactly what the Americans did in the Gulf War (although for a differnt reason).