View Single Post
  #115  
Old September 18th 03, 12:38 AM
Paul J. Adam
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In message , Scott Ferrin
writes
"Just looking" is often a deceptive activity. For RCS, the devil is in
the details.


That's true BUT RAM ingredients aside all that shaping and stuff is
pretty much open and using those criteria the Eurofighter comes up
short in MANY ways.


Depends what it's claiming, doesn't it?

This is one of the problems - if you say that 'reduced RCS' means
'invisibility' then the US wasted a _lot_ of money on signature
reduction for the DDG-51s. But if you mean "confuses anyone trying to
analyse the returns and form a track from them and identify what they're
looking at" then they got their money's worth.

In Ben Rich's book "Shunk Works" he mentioned
that during the developement of Have Blue there was an incident where
ONE screw was protruding an eight of an inch and it made the
difference between not being detected to having the RCS blown to ****
and being easily detectable. One screw an eight of an inch.


After ten years of hard squadron service, you're promising the F-22 will
still be immune to such errors? Meanwhile, the Typhoon has less to lose.

Again, "reduced RCS" is useful because it makes your ECM much more
effective and is easier to keep. Invisibility is glorious while it
lasts... but harder to achieve and maintain.

Just
speaking from looking at the two aircraft visually and comparing
surfaces, discontinuaties and edges, there is no comparison.


Compared to each other? Or compared to the threat?

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk