Rand Report

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According to these Europeans, stealth is nowhere as great as the US defense industry has sold it as.

FriedRiceNSpice said:

China might not have the ability to intercept the bombers themselves, but it can deal with its current arsenal of munitions with relative ease. Lone B-2s going on precision-strike missions will fail to have any effect on Chinese assets.

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B-2's can carry up to 80 Mk 82 bombs, or 36 CBU cluster bombs or 16 Mk-84 / JDAM's. That can do a ton of damage to a Chinese airfield, especially if the B-2 used cluster munitions around Chinese runways and hangars. 202 bomblets in every CBU-87 bomb (for a total of 7272 bomblets) will be a total nightmare to clear.

B-2 flying into heavy chinese air defence without is sucide, and also America wont send all of their B-2 to China anyway. They still got to keep a few around their mainland in case of nuclear strike, and other B-2 in other warefare zones.

Even though China can defend against a B-2 attack on ground targets (and it gets easier the more inland), China would have a really hard time against a B-2 dropping munitions close to the coastline.

It's much easier to detect a stealth object if you can put a radar beam on it from multiple directions, covering 360 degrees. If the B-2 simply ventures near the coast without going inland, China would have trouble detecting it.

But this weakness is only temporary. I think the PLAN will probably start to build in UAV's on the newest build of destroyers. A network of sea-launched UAV's would extent China's air defenses beyond the coastline and into the littoral waters.

Constantly launching UAVs for early warning detection does not sound a practical idea for me. You will wear out your UAVs quickly, not to mention, you need a lot of them.

China would need high loiter AEW aircraft with more advanced radars, as well as AA destroyers like the 052C and 051C patrolling the coast. Or maybe 054B frigates with radar suites more advanced than the 054A now. You would have to network the ships, so that the beam from a 052C for example, when reflected on a stealthy target, will be received by other destroyers and frigates in multiple locations, creating a bistatic network.

I was thinking a destroyer sized vessel could launch UAV's the size of say the one in the video we saw recently. That's big enough to have a reasonable radar in its frontal "bulb." A UAV that size should have significant loiter ability, even more if it was propeller driven like a predator. When it's done, it returns to the ship and parachutes into the water to be picked up and reused.

A destroyer sized vessel can carry about a dozen of those. This would be much less expensive than a carrier and more effective than a helicopter.

Roger604 said:

I was thinking a destroyer sized vessel could launch UAV's the size of say the one in the video we saw recently. That's big enough to have a reasonable radar in its frontal "bulb." A UAV that size should have significant loiter ability, even more if it was propeller driven like a predator. When it's done, it returns to the ship and parachutes into the water to be picked up and reused.

A destroyer sized vessel can carry about a dozen of those. This would be much less expensive than a carrier and more effective than a helicopter.

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1. A radar that can fit into a UAV is extremely limited; you are compromising capability for size. You will probably need a UAV that is about the size of the Global Hawk to fit a radar capable enough to be worth the effort; it's about the size of the de Havilland Twin Otter. Not exactly small.

2. Parachute landings are never a good idea into water; failure of the parachute will cause instant damage to the UAV, salt water ingestion will damage the engines, and there is no guarantee that the UAV will float. The Canadian Forces lack of success in recovering their SAGEM Sperwer UAV's is a good example of why parachute landings are not ideal. The CF has managed to crash all of their Sperwer's at least once during landing, primarily due to failure to deploy the parachute, or a failure in deploying the airbags underneath. The CF plans to dispose of their Sperwer UAV's in favour of leased IAI Malat Eagle-1 UAV's (after which a proper replacement will be sought).

I think it's feasible. There are UAV concepts that put the radar dish on top of the UAV, like an AWACS. That would be a great way to go.

As for the parachute landing, if there is some way to envelope the UAV with multiple balloons as well as use a parachute, then the UAV should be well protected.

A successful UAV carrying destroyer would do most things a carrier can, at a fraction of the cost. This sort of thing should be on the next PLAN destroyer -- China has invested enough into UAV's to make it possible.

A UAV would be so much easier to fit on a ship. You can probably manually remove the wings for easy storage. A light machine (or a few people) can hoist the fuselage into a cabinet.

Why bother with a UAV?

Simply use a Blimp or Barrage Balloon. This would be able to stay up far longer, could be powered by the contol cable and could go up to far greater heights etc.

You could have specialised units for both land and sea to operate them.

Simply use a Blimp or Barrage Balloon. This would be able to stay up far longer, could be powered by the contol cable and could go up to far greater heights etc.

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That seems like a brilliant idea! I wonder why no one has actuallytried it out before...
In essence it would be a sort of elevatable radar that could extend the detection horizon of the fleet.

Also because of the lack of need for aerodynamic soundness, such a contraption can be designed with low RCS in mind to protect it from missile attack, which is one of the weaknesses of using helicopters to do the same task.