I don't think you can simply "clean" off rust unless they reapply the coating every now and then onboard which could be done but considering rust apparently don't really damage stealth characteristics that would kinda of just be a waste of money at the expense of terrible PR.
What I think is interesting is that if you look at zoomed out pictures you can see how much better the F/A-18 / E/A-18 are holding up. Seems like stealth coatings are still not up to par with traditional aircraft paint / finish.
Cute orca said China's stealth coating has undergone many generations of improvements. He appears to be implying that the corrosion issue has been addressed.
I think the lowest cost for the coating is to make the color light brown, then no one can see if it is corrosion or not. When the planes are in sky, they are still stealthy regardless which color is.
It does degrade the stealthness because the Fe based paint need Fe to be in the specific chemical formular to absord radio wave. Rust destroyes that chamical structure therefor reduces EM absorbing effeciency.
That is new to me, do you have a source for it? The paper above provided various solutions but the conclusion is that "rust = degradation and vis versa". One thing worth to note is that iron has to be in the designed chemical structure to work, rust distructs that structure and does not work as desired even if Fe is still attached to the skin, it will further degrade when peeled off.
Depends on how one defines normal. One thing is certain that these F-35s have been staying out much longer than their RAM allows, beyond maintanance interval. Many RAM today especially F-35's (developed decades ago) are iron based and are vulnerable to corosion (sea moisture has H+ and CL-). They need regular maintanance (repaint).
Hi, I can't seem to find it right now, but I remember a general from the Pentagon making a statement about it.
That general was full of it. The americans were bragging before how even a few rivets or misaligned panels drastically increased the RCS of their uberstealth planes, but now the F-35 with the supposedly carefully formulated magical RCS reducing coating now literally looking like a rustbucket is not affecting RCS in the slightest? Absolute bull.
haha, then I am sure I was right.