Navy Matters has a discussion going on this morning with regards to what features are essential for a ship that will operate independently. One of the requirements that Navy Matters put forward was for the design to be stealthy.
That gave me pause. In my mind there is only one stealth ship in service today.
The Visby.
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| Visby |
You don't have to be a naval engineer or a "stealth scientist" (is that an actual job?) to know that this ship took stealth seriously. I'm not so sure that same care was taken with other so called stealth ships.
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| DDG-1000 |
Above you see the DDG-1000. Quite honestly it comes closest to being a stealth ship than the others (excluding the Visby) in service. The UK's Type 45? Seriously? The beast has a rotating billboard at the top of the ship! Even the DDG-1000 has a superstructure that is as tall as a small building, is as flat as a pancake and will spike every radar within range.
I'll dig into this further but I'm leaning in the direction that ultimate stealth for warships is achievable but not worth the costs.
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| Sea Shadow |
There is no point in attempting a "stealth" ship unless is semi-submersible, because even the DDG-1000 has an RCS of a small fishing boat and can be detected.
ReplyDeleteIf you think about it, P-3's radar can pick up a sub's snorkel/periscope, so how likely is it that you can avoid detection at a meaningful range.
no, not entirely. i think it depends on the style of operations that you want your ship to do. the Visby is designed to operate near coastlines and such. i guess you could call it a REAL littoral combat ship. radar cross section could be helpful in survivability if you can keep it small enough.
DeleteSlowman, its not about going undetected. Its about being miss-detected. The fact that the DDG-1000 resembles a small fishing boat on a radar, is actually a good thing. Because there are in fact a LOT of small fishing boats out there, even in wartime.
DeleteShip stealth is all about miss-detection and miss-direction. It simply isn't feasible to make a large warship undetectable and esp not an aircraft carrier. But you can make it so that the enemy cannot identify you as an enemy without a visual. Maybe a better way to think about it is sub combat. Pretty much every sub is actually detectable, and even the Prairie-Masker doesn't make a ship undetectable, it just makes it harder and significantly harder to classify. The sub doesn't need to be undetectable, it just needs to look/sound like other things that are normal.
A further example is a stealth CVN. There is no way to make it undetectable, but if you could make it look significantly smaller like say its escorts and support ships, then the enemy has a much harder targeting problem.
So ship stealth is more about looking like other normal things than it is being undetected. Think wolf in sheep's clothing!
Having an RCS smaller than the bloom of your countermeasures is good news.
ReplyDeleteAs silly as it sounds if there was a hole, a complete sensor blind spot, in your sensor picture it would be just a big a sign post saying something is there to be investigated or shot.
I think T45's RCS is smaller than T23's which is pretty small. And T45 is much bigger than T23. I remember the first time I saw one I thought wow that is big. Actually in odd way it looked bigger than a Burke because they are so smooth.
quick question Steve.
Deleteeveryone has seen fighters being placed on poles to test their RCS. have you ever seen that with a warship anywhere? have you ever heard of anyone testing a warships radar return or anyone having a facility to test it?
i haven't.
all i've seen are ships that are nicely and futuristicly shaped and being called stealth. but as far as the actual work to design true stealth only the Visby and the Sea Shadow meet the work with design criteria.
Both airplanes and warships are tested using models for things like RCS. Though these days, the computer models are accurate enough that not much new comes of it. Also it is generally easier to do RCS measurement tests on live warships because you don't need them to be on big poles to do the tests (the bottom is generally in the water).
Deleteare you really going to try and bullshit your way into a nonanswer and expect to get away with it?
Deleteyou don't know and won't admit that you don't.
Its not a nonanswer, they do test RCS of warships, no they obviously don't stick them up in the air on poles, but they do do bother scale model testing and in water testing. There are multiple companies out there that sell portable system for both RCS and IR measurements of ships. Generally with ships they want to do moving measurements are various angles. Just one of the numerous companies with RCS measurement equipment: https://www.idscorporation.com/naval/our-solutions-services/rcs-prediction-measurement
Deleteyeah and what is the RCS reduction found on the DDG-1000? is it pleasure craft sized, tuna boat sized, small corvette sized ???? what? what were they trying to get it down to? did they take into account electronic transmissions from the ship in stealth mode? did they take pains to reduce the wake on the warship? what about the guns and the missiles? do they have a signature and if so is it reduced?
Deleteyou're still spouting nonsense, wishful thinking and feeding me bullshit.
long story short. there is no standard of naval stealth. there is no measure of whether stealth at sea works or not.
its a scheme being used by companies to sell product but as far as usefulness is concerned you would be better to buy either electronic masking or detection devices of greater power.
Solomon, the answer to that can land you in prison. Are you expecting an answer?
DeleteAnd ats is right. Just because you don't like the answer does not mean you can deny reality. He gave it to you straight, you call it bullshit. Can't be helped then.
And there IS a standard of naval stealth, mostly in Europe and further east. You don't know of it because the US tried to shoot so high with the Sea Shadow that they fell really short and dumped their entire signature reduction program. The US is very, very far behind the curve on this. They are also behind the curve in anti-ship missiles too. It seems that the Navy got neglected over the Air Force really.
ya know what Daniel? FUCK YOU! the answer will land me in prison? seriously bitch? what kind of hide behind secrecy is that? the USAF is quick to tell you all about full stealth, partial stealth etc. there is no standards like that for naval vessels. even the Russians talk about their airplane being a "not full stealth" model and then tell you why they think they're on the right track.
Deleteso take your claims of it being top secret and shove it up your ass.
you're an arrogant popus little dick ain't ya?
Back at you Sol. You didn't like ats and steve's answers and was acting like a dick. And you worry about your government being a dictator? Look in a mirror.
DeleteI count at least 13 countries with stealth ship programs, of which 11 of these are independent projects as the French, British and Italian projects are co-op ventures. So at least 13 countries all decided to waste money on "no gain" projects and 11 projects that all said it was worthwhile are all government coverups? Global conspiracy much? Illuminati major shareholder of BAE and DCSN?
And which plane in the world is "invisible"? This isn't Star Trek, even your precious F-22 has a signature. There is no real "FULL STEALTH". They are all called LO planes. LOW OBSERVATION. Invisible planes are a USAF fantasy.
Everyone has a opinion Sol. Don't be an arsehole about it just because you were wrong. And yes ats was right, they use a portable RCS measurement device to check the ships every time they drydock for maintenance to check for biofouling. It's the last step in the process after the dock has been reflooded before release to sea.
this is my blog motherfucker. you have a choice dick for brains. don't like then don't come back .... until then eat shit and die.
DeleteWe know stealth works at sea because that's how the physics works, we know how to reduce the radar image by manipulating the way the waves react to the surface, the physics works the same on land, air and sea but it's only affected by scale.
DeleteThe US is admittedly quite far behind on naval stealth technology which is quite odd since they're usually up front of every new innovation. The DDG-1000 should rectify that and I gather AB Destroyers are being progressively modified.
There is no stealth standard so to speak, you just don't get full stealth with aircraft and ships because you cannot reduce the RCS of an object to zero from every angle at every range. Stealth is simply the name for actively reducing the Radar Cross Section to as little as possible.
Ships like the T45 can be classed as stealth since they have been designed with a significant amount of effort made to lower it's RCS, despite the large radar arrays. Thus it's going to appear smaller on radar than a ship not designed in such a way like a Ticonderoga Cruiser.
Stealth is an overused term, the media and the USAF's press department act as if stealth is an attribute, an on/off sort of thing. In reality it's just a scale of difficulty to detect on radar.
Skjold and Houbei FACs have also paid significant attention to their Radar Cross Sections, I suspect the Norwegians substantially more than the Chinese.
ReplyDeleteRCS reduction will tend to reduce your detection range and increase the effectiveness of your counter-measures in general, so good stuff but, as with air planes, each successive reduction in detection range is much, much more difficult than the one before and the question quickly becomes "where the diminishing returns from lower RCS are outweighed by cost".
Given the size and mission of the DDG-1000, I suspect that the Navy followed the USAF way too far past the point of diminishing returns on that project, and the classic pattern of sky rocketing costs and low numbers bear that out.
Friends of mine in Norway tell me they were able to track Skjold because its wake showed up quite well on radar.
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