Carl, radars will evolve and adapt to face stealth, also electro-optics advancement will be even greater as can be seen from the pirate sensor on the ef to the spectra on the rafale the ever present ol series on the russian fighters....Carl_T wrote:Now in a world of stealth planes, if radars cannot pick out enemy planes, how will BVR missiles operate?
Also let us not forget for all the most vaunted advantages of stealth that the big gorilla likes to brag about in front of nanhas, stealth aircraft have never until now faced an adversary that has any proper level of C4I/C3I infrastructure combined with formidable fighters, radars and missiles to boot. Hell even then the darn cockroach was shot down over Serbia using obsolete Sa3 goa sams. Agreed that has been one of the only losses of the F117 or any stealth ac until now but then again they havent faced that many conflicts too at least that would be the deduction from open sources.
The core issue with stealth is that while stealth is a great thing to have on your side the counter measures for stealth are a lot cheaper to come up with. Stealth in itself requires massive investment and the aircraft becomes a maintainer's nightmare onlee well atleast to a certain extent.
Think of this, the Big gorilla says yup the F22 has the signature of a golf ball on a radar screen and radar will simply ignore it as it wont be big enough...wokay in due time I suspect radars will evolve with better antennas, massive processing ability ityadi which means that the radar looking at the airspace in which raptor will go hmmm why is this golf ball flying at 600 knots or more? what happens then hain?
Also in future conflicts I would imagine even before the famed raptor goes in to clear the airspace the first ones to enter will be CMs, ucavs, ityadi which will try and deliver a strike to the bases, sams, and radars ityadi and then will be followed by raptors...
Also stealth does not mean the aircraft is completely invisible it means that the distance at which the opposing fighter will detect it decreases by a margin...this again however would depend on how sophisticated the radar array of the other fighter is combined with what other passive means of surveillance is the other guys using.
Aerial warfare and surveillance is constant evolution, advancements and its counter advancements are always at each other's necks.