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Czech Passive Radar Detecting B-2 at 150 miles (2015)

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Re: Czech Passive Radar Detecting B-2 at 150 miles (2015)

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear.... Never heard of this but I'm glad the cold war is over. "Alright chaps, let's bury some 10 kiloton nuclear mines in Germany in case the Russians come.", From wikipedia: "deny occupation of the area to an enemy for an appreciable time due to contamination" "It was judged that the risks posed by the nuclear fallout and the political aspects of preparing for destruction and contamination of allied territory w…

I present you https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/the-littlest-boy/ which also was to be deployed into prepared shafts to make some area impassable. The keyword here would be " Wallmeister " for the people tasked with that mission.

Entertaining. Excerpt:

> Cold War strategy was filled with oxymorons like "limited nuclear war," but the backpack nuke was perhaps the most darkly comic manifestation of an age struggling to deal with the all-too-real prospect of Armageddon. The SADM was a case of life imitating satire. After all, much like Slim Pickens1 in the iconic finale of Dr. Strangelove, American soldiers would strap on atomic bombs and jump out of airplanes as part of the opening act of World War III.

> From the Army's perspective, the problem was that bombers and missiles were managed by the Air Force and the Navy, leaving the ground force out of arguably the most significant development in the history of war, even as its soldiers would be chiefly responsible for stopping a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Fortunately for the Army, many U.S. strategists still saw nukes simply as bigger conventional bombs, and America's post-Hiroshima mastery of the cutting-edge science of atomic destruction had filled weapons designers more with a sense of the possible than the prudent. The result was a series of odd creations that made their way into the Army's arsenal, from atomic artillery to nuclear-tipped air-defense missiles.

Re: Czech Passive Radar Detecting B-2 at 150 miles (2015)

#122
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An airplane at altitude doesn't blot out stars. Optical sensors are nearly useless, especially against a black aircraft at night.

Not to sound skeptical, but I've seen some stuff Ratheon was putting out at least 10-15 years ago and I think it had some pretty impressive optical sensors. Are we including the various infrared frequencies?

Optical and infrared sensors have improved a lot and can be a useful supplement but due to limited field of view and interference from weather you generally can't count on them for primary search. Unless the target is really time sensitive, B-2 mission planners try to fly at night in bad weather when those sensors are seriously degraded.

Re: Czech Passive Radar Detecting B-2 at 150 miles (2015)

#123
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pilot severely limits the kinds of maneuver the craft can perform, where the craft can be deployed from, etc.

F-15s have pulled well over 10g without killing the pilot, however it damaged the airframe beyond repair. An aircraft that could routinely pull high-G manoeuvres would have to be reinforced to the detriment of its weight (and thus its size/range/load capacity) and cost. The expected direction of drones is as loyal wingmen (i.e., to carry sensors, weapons and/or fuel) and to be low-cost (i.e., disposable). If your dro…

Reference?

Re: Czech Passive Radar Detecting B-2 at 150 miles (2015)

#124
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-15s have pulled well over 10g without killing the pilot, however it damaged the airframe beyond repair. An aircraft that could routinely pull high-G manoeuvres would have to be reinforced to the detriment of its weight (and thus its size/range/load capacity) and cost. The expected direction of drones is as loyal wingmen (i.e., to carry sensors, weapons and/or fuel) and to be low-cost (i.e., disposable). If your dro…

Reference?

http://google.com/

Re: Czech Passive Radar Detecting B-2 at 150 miles (2015)

#125
post #58
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, detecting a stealth aircraft is very different from shooting at a stealth aircraft. This radar would likely not have the location accuracy of where exactly the B-2 was to accurately engage it with a missile. Your accuracy would be limited by the rate of RF pings the B-2 is putting off, and then the margin-of-error of these RF waves and receiver. This is one difference between the B-2 and stealth fi…

If you can localize down to the range of a km? Can't you just shoot down optically? A giant dark plane blotting out the stars...

A lot of Russian planes have Electro Optical systems for targeting. Usually they are IR based locking onto hot engines and such like a typical Fox 2 (Heat seeking missile) Range of IR tracking is pretty small for head on planes and more importantly your missile needs to know where to look in the first place to acquire the target. Also stealth aircraft have reduced heat signatures making it harder to pick them out against the background. Also you have problems with determining contrast against the background due to diffraction.

Essentially the passive array in this article is in the class of "Early Warning Radar" which is used to alert Combat Air Patrol aircraft and SAM sites where to start looking for the contact.

If you wanted to use this with a networked radar guided missile you would have problems with terminal guidance. If the missile could acquire the target as it came into radar range for the radar cross section of a stealth aircraft, there is very little chance it would have the energy to track the target. It would essentially need to make a right turn midair to track on the target. All the while the missile's radar will be making the plane's RWR light up like a Christmas tree.

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