Any plans for PLANAF to develope stealth-bombers

lilzz

Banned Idiot
If what you suggest can detect a stealth aircraft, then stealth has done its job. It takes away significant military resources to shoot down a single plane. Point is the Yugoslavia war. The Serbs were so preoccupied in shooting down the F-117 that for the entire 72 day air campaign, they only shot down 1 other aircraft, an F-16. For comparison, Iraq shot down about 2 dozen aircraft.

Secondly, the missile that shot down the F-117 was remote detonated on the probable location. It never got a target lock (radar or IR). NATO planners used the same route at the same time.

War is like economics. You only have limited resources, you can't allocate them all to a single threat and ignore the others.


I agree, stealth planes are difficult to detect, but the way I see is if other countries able to develope stealth missiles (which is alot easier to develope yet even harder to detect than stealth planes). there aren't much counter-measure for that, even for US. It could become deterrent weapon.
 

crobato

Colonel
VIP Professional
Secondly, the missile that shot down the F-117 was remote detonated on the probable location. It never got a target lock (radar or IR). NATO planners used the same route at the same time.

Not feasible. Thats like saying I can shoot down a B-2 with a rifle straight up if I knew the exact moment and time to fire.

If you knew the exact moment and time, you would also need the air speed, and it has to be correct right to the fraction of a second.

And to get data that precise, you must already be tracking it in the first place.
 

Finn McCool

Captain
Registered Member
Chinese espionage operations in the US have certainly be interested in stealth technology. I cannot say that they have any sort of "countermeasure". However the PLAAF has the ability to defend against deep-strike missions by American stealth aircraft. They have enough radars and AWACS aircraft. Like I'Dont said its a matter of resources that you can devote. The PLAAF has the resources to make it to risky for the Americans to undertake missions that sseriously risk their billion dollar babies. With sufficent radar coverage (ground based and AWACS) the SAMs and interceptor capability the PLAAF has and good data-linking the PLAAF can contain the threat of stealth aircraft.
 

IDonT

Senior Member
VIP Professional
Not feasible. Thats like saying I can shoot down a B-2 with a rifle straight up if I knew the exact moment and time to fire.

If you knew the exact moment and time, you would also need the air speed, and it has to be correct right to the fraction of a second.

And to get data that precise, you must already be tracking it in the first place.

I really don't want to digress from the topic of the thread but here is a brief over voew of my understanding of what happened.

Nato planners became complacent and used the same flight path for the F-117. An enterprising Colonel in the Serbian Military noticed this action and stationed a SAM system. As a stealth aircraft gets closer to a radar system, the more likely it will be detected. This is exactly what happened. The Serbs used spies that over look the F-117 airfield and relay the exact time and date they take off. Then knowing their exact route, the Serbian stationed a SAM battery and turned the radar on at the calculated time the F-117 was over head. They fired 2 missiles head on at 5 Miles away (very close) and remote detonate it because it could not get a lock.

The Serbians knew where to aim. Nevertheless, the assets used to take this plane down was proportionally greater than the F-117's threat.
 

crobato

Colonel
VIP Professional
I really don't want to digress from the topic of the thread but here is a brief over voew of my understanding of what happened.

Nato planners became complacent and used the same flight path for the F-117. An enterprising Colonel in the Serbian Military noticed this action and stationed a SAM system. As a stealth aircraft gets closer to a radar system, the more likely it will be detected. This is exactly what happened. The Serbs used spies that over look the F-117 airfield and relay the exact time and date they take off. Then knowing their exact route, the Serbian stationed a SAM battery and turned the radar on at the calculated time the F-117 was over head. They fired 2 missiles head on at 5 Miles away (very close) and remote detonate it because it could not get a lock.

The Serbians knew where to aim. Nevertheless, the assets used to take this plane down was proportionally greater than the F-117's threat.


Does not make sense at all. Raises a lot more funny questions.

* How the hell do they know the exact route right down to the last single digit meters to make this work?
* How the hell do they know the exact time and I mean the single digit seconds?
---Not even when you want to travel the exact route and the exact time DELIBERATELY, can you come to the right EXACT SECOND and the exact few meters to make this work.
* There is no such thing on a promixity blast about 5 miles unless you are using a tac nuke. An SA-3 is not a very big missile by far. And even if you guesstimate this shot, a SAM rocket does not fly accurately enough.

Assets used are disproportional to the F-117's threat? That sounds to me that the assets used---an old SAM battery---is actually too little, considering the crisis of confidence it caused on the very expensive F-117 program. Not only that, but this single action has greatly eclipsed the fact of the very poor record of the Serbian SAMs at this point, which didn't do much but to survive. The historical value is immense because people will talk about this for generations to come into near mythic status.
 
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IDonT

Senior Member
VIP Professional
Assets used are disproportional to the F-117's threat? That sounds to me that the assets used---an old SAM battery---is actually too little, considering the crisis of confidence it caused on the very expensive F-117 program. Not only that, but this single action has greatly eclipsed the fact of the very poor record of the Serbian SAMs at this point, which didn't do much but to survive. The historical value is immense because people will talk about this for generations to come into near mythic status.

I don't want to digress from the thread so lets leave the actual events out of it. You can search the internet for an actual report of the incident.

Here is one of many
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As for your second point...

The Serbs used spies outside NATO Italian bases, a system of human observers, who would report on sightings of bombers entering Serbia, and track their progress, and positioning their only functioning SAM battery with their best Air Defence commander along a probable route of the F-117.

That would be nice if the object of the war was to shoot down the F-117. But what about the thousand other sorties that attack Serbia that night?
 

Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
Well, excuse me for joining this off topic discussion but several things need to be said. No one but serbs knows for sure how thhat f117 was downed. Various articles report various things. Two things that have appeared in numerous analysis as most likely are: 1) it was a lucky shot using a regular sa-3 missile. or 2) serbs used one of (few) domestically modified sa-3 systems, where they used a IR seeker for self guidance.

Article that was given here mentions missile was guided from the ground. Well, that doesn't mean anything, as ALL sa-3 missiles are guided from the ground, they rely on radio command guidance. It can be that serbs really just got lucky and got a long enough of a lock onto the target to do it in properly. Or it can be that they, perhaps, used some other radars, not necesarrily 'low blow' radar that comes with the sa-3 system, which then they integrated into the missile command loop.

I remember an article written by USAF officer who said main reason for downed f117 was that prowler jammers were some 90nm or too far away from the task force. That could certainly explain how a usually easely jammable system like radio commanded sa-3 missile would still be able to reach a target.

Finally, serbs did modifiy some of their old sam systems with IR seekers and laser rangefinders. It is possible such modified system was used. But i guess we will never know for sure. I agree with crobato that it's virtually impossible for a blind shot to down a plane, there had to be SOME guidance.
 

crobato

Colonel
VIP Professional
Unless your spies come with some high tech precision tracking devices, you cannot track precisely enough based on human sight and guesstimation alone. An attempt to blind hit a fast low altitude jet with an unguided missile is extremely difficult EVEN if both sides agreed to COOPERATE in such an experiment. Are we going to assume that each spy. which are basically civilians in guerilla setting, have a superhuman computer like accuracy when it comes to estimation?

As the planes fly at night, you can only report lift off, but you can't report heading. Are you assuming that the planes will immeditely head to their target's bearing the moment they lift off? That normally does not happen, because mission sorties do not occur in a straight line to the target. Even if you have a special path towards the target, the plane at takeoff will not be heading to the target directly, but take a detour here, then a detour there. This special route would have to be completely mapped. Are you going to assume that there will be spies conveniently located at every juncture of the mission path to report the plane's progress? Furthemore, this is at night, this is extremely hard to spot with a naked eye if the plane has no lighted beacons and lack an afterburner.

Then there is the issue of the proximity fuze, which won't be live if the seeker isn't live. And if the seeker has to be live, the missile will be seeking and it certainly won't be traveling in a straight path. Either that or you have to set the fuse on live while in the ground, which is assuming that you will be bypassing the guidance. The commander of the SAM battery on his interview noted how he took much pains to preserve his precious SAMs, and given that, he certainly won't be launching the missiles blind because you have a very high chance of a miss if you do.

Blind hitting a plane is extremely difficult to do with one or two missiles, much less you launch an MLRS right at the plane's path, which is at least a better option. Even then that's a much better job for AA artillery since AA can saturate a plane's path, but which no SAM can. In fact, you might as well shoot rifles in the air, that has a much better chance of hitting something along a path blind than a rocket.
 

alwaysfresh

New Member
What does a stealth bomber look like under infra-red light through a camera's eye view? With object identification and high optical-zooming technology I think a computer could try to guess what it is looking at?

If we can look at stars far-far away I think we can also look at a plane. Could they have created video identification technology and then just fired many missiles. I think with the aid of satilites and ground cameras you can guess the size of the object. In day time it is possible I think. What does a stealth bomber or a stealth plane look like in infra-red light?
 

crobato

Colonel
VIP Professional
Missiles are very inaccurate and far too expensive to expend for visually predictive 'blind' fire. You are much better off using an AA flak battery. That's what flak is designed for, saturate the path of the interdictor with shrapnel.
 
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