On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 23:38:14 +0100, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

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?



I think when it's said that the Eurofighter is stealthy most people
equate that to mean the manufacturers are implying it's stealthy like
an F-22 not stealthy like a Super Hornet (which would be a more
accurate comparison).