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> The people pointing out that the F-35 had radar reflective disks added didn't seem to have understand the article (or technology). This is using entirely diff
by vonmoltke 7y ago
> The people pointing out that the F-35 had radar reflective disks added didn't seem to have understand the article (or technology). This is using entirely different methods to detect the aircraft, not radar waves, so that's irrelevant.
It is relevant, and this system is absolutely using radio signals for detection and tracking; it just doesn't transmit them. The system described is a bi-static radar system that uses transmitters of opportunity (technical term "non-cooperative transmitters") to generate the signal and listens for the return from those signals hitting the target.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dx034 7y agoFrom what I read (not an expert in this topic), the passive radar solution didn't rely on this and would've worked without deflectors. Maybe it worked a bit better, but I don't think they have much opportunity to test it with aircrafts flying stealth.
- vonmoltke 7y agoA radar cannot function without some source of electromagnetic radiation. Passive radar[1] requires non-cooperative sources of such radiation. If they are detecting the plane by some means other than EM, then it isn't a radar. Now, their system may be using EM blocking as part of its tracking. The principle here is that a low-observable aircraft creates a "hole" in the background because it absorbs or scatters EM radiation away from the receiver. This method works best when the background is very noisy (i.e., there are lots of transmitters operating in the area). In that case the reflectors (and anything else that increases the radar cross section of the aircraft) would actually hurt the performance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar