DD(x) wowee!!

[Werner]

TheRegister notes that the USAF is preparing a new generation of active EW gear designed not only to confuse the enemy's sensors, but possibly strong enough to fry receivers and damage control/fusing circuits for weapons.

Is it possible that the world's foremost "stealth service" has concluded that stealth does not represent enough of an edge, and that it will likely be defeated on the battlefield, leaving aircraft designed around stealthy shapes with a decided disadvantage an enemy can employ to his advantage?

Certainly any emission completely defeats the purpose of stealth. The enemy can get an instant bearing on you, and an almost immediate indication of your speed, altitude and possibly your range. Two cooperating receivers can determine range instantly.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/28 ... n_spotted/

[Werner]

Thinking about the HPM weapon from the post directly above, I wonder what would happen if the implosion parts of a nuclear weapon were sited around a sphere of piezoelectric crystals like quartz or certain man-made compounds. It might be possible to generate a substantial EMP from the explosion, and to tune the frequency by doping the crystals. It would make an interesting alternative warhead for cruise missiles.

[Dave Wooley]

There seems to be a strong body of technical opinion that seems to indicate that stealth warships will be as easily seen as any conventional warship is seen by radar using EM disturbance detection. This is an extract from the pre-amble to a forth coming seminar on that subject .

The purpose of this work is to examine the feasibility to detect an ocean going vessel by its wake in the presence of wind waves. The wake of a ship and the ambient sea waves generate velocity field of electrically conductive seawater. Consequently a disturbance in the Earth geomagnetic field is induced. A closed-form solution for the magnetic field induced by the wake of a ship moving in a sea of finite depth is obtained, and the corresponding numerical simulations are performed. The results of the simulations are compared with the corresponding magnetic field disturbed by wind waves. Spectral analysis of the magnetic field, induced by the wake of a ship and sampled by an air-borne magnetometer moving steadily along a rectilinear path is performed. Numerical computations indicate that the spectra of the magnetic fields induced by the ambient random waves and by the wake of a moving body have quite different characteristic. Typically, the peaks of the body-induced magnetic field spectra are located in the range of frequencies where the corresponding values of the wind wave's spectra are less significant. It is shown that the feasibility of electromagnetic detection of ships wake depends on their speed and water depth.
Food for thought
Dave Wooley

[Werner]

Thanks for that, Dave!

It seems obvious that an attempt at stealth is futile; instead the kind of careful shaping of "bright" components on deck as has been done with the Burke, with the goal of decreasing the range of "lock" in Radar-guided missiles, is about all that profitably be done.