I'm impressed that they managed to keep it secret for so long. The entire base would know about it in like 3 seconds flat. There's not much faster than the Military Rumor Mill. But apparently they kept this quiet, or blackmailed/threatened/bribed everyone on base involved with the B-2s into keeping quiet. Great work of fiction however. I have to give my "Dumber Than Advertised" vote for this month to the author.

You've obviously never dealt with a military base then. The families knew before the crew chiefs knew sometimes, and the families knew about EVERY accident, shootdown, or close call within a few hours. The pilots of any "shot down" B-2s had families, and when they were notified the family support network would have gone into action, so that's more people that would know, etc. It would have been all over the base within 24 hours tops.

The russians can track stealth - and have been able to do it for years ; they just use long wave radar and look for the moving `hole` in the return.


the flipside is , you can`t exactly guide a missile on meter length radar waves


The pictures do show triple A holes in the crashed airframe.

AMM

if one was to believe the claims of the missile makers , then every aircraft in the world , ever shot at by a missile would have been shot down......

Originally posted by Harlequin
if one was to believe the claims of the missile makers , then every aircraft in the world , ever shot at by a missile would have been shot down......

Twice over

Originally posted by Manincloak

Originally posted by Seekerof
You factually know this or basically making an unbacked and unsubstantiated assertion?

Uhhhh.....yeh?

That's one of the major enchancements in the S-400 system.

Get your hands on it's owner's manual.....or failing that any online article about it.

Dude, I can print you a "owner's manual" that claims a multitude of unsubstantiated things, better known and termed as BS. A claim is simply a claim, and till it is combat or battlefield proven, those notorious Russian assertions, no matter how good their anti-air systems may be or have been, amount to nothing markedly believable, credible, or verifiable, despite your belief in the contray, Manincloak.

A relative question here, Manincloak:
Has the S-400 shot down a stealth aircraft whether in testing or in actual combat? If so, provide the link to substantiate such. Till then, believing is another word for faith. If you believe in what the S-400 "owner's manual" says, then so be it. As such, till next we meet, I will be re-reading the owner's manual on my Mustang Cobra and how it indicates that that car can perform an actual cobra maneuver....






seekerof

[edit on 4-12-2005 by Seekerof]

Since to my knowledge, the S-400 has never engaged a stealth aircraft, it's pretty much impossible to know whether or not it could take one out. I think assuming stealth makes an aircraft magically invulnerable is a bad idea though, fortunately I suspect the people in the USAF responsible for mission planning are smart enough not to take a lot of dumb risks.

Originally posted by xmotex
I think assuming stealth makes an aircraft magically invulnerable is a bad idea though

My knowledge of stealth is extensive enough to carry on a fairly legit discussion of such, xmotex.
Furthermore, never have I indicated or insinuated, in any of my posts discussing such matters, that stealth is "magically invulnerable" or anything remotely of the such.

...fortunately I suspect the people in the USAF responsible for mission planning are smart enough not to take a lot of dumb risks.

I served in Kosovo for nearly a year as a PJ, and I can be fairly certain that most USAF mission planners are competent enough to not make dumb mistakes. Unfortunately, there is always a minority who tend to under-estimate, etc. Hence the downing of an F-117. Continued flying of the same flightpath and mission type, over a number of days, allows for those "dumb risks". A definate 'no-no' in mission planning.





seekerof

[edit on 4-12-2005 by Seekerof]

Maybe the S-400 was tested on a russian cruise missile with reduced RCS. Cruise missiles already have small RCS and it would be possible to make the RCS smaller

Thanks Chinawhite, but for me, maybe is not cutting it, though a link to a source indicating such would.

IMHO, we need to move away from speculation and conjecture to something relative to fact.





seekerof

Originally posted by Manincloak
...

The F-117 was used by Russia to make the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, which is fully capable of shooting down all stealth aircraft.

That's an interesting thought...

We know the Russians have had nearly unlimited access to the F-117 that was shot down - but to claim it was used in the making of the S-400 system is misleading.

No doubt the radar absorbent material was studied in depth, certainly the fiber composite structure was scrutinized, but the faceted shape of the F-117 was ruined when it crashed in a dead flat spin, inverted, and pancaking on impact.

Of course the Russians could feed in the structural dimensions of the F-117 into a cad program and run their reflectivity tests through software sims or they could build a scale model of the 117 and test it on the test range - but even so, that in no way gives them the data they would need to claim with any validity that the S-400 can compromise ALL stealth aircraft.

The B-2 is made with different tech than the F-117 and the F-22 is made with 1-2 generations of stealth tech advancement between it and the B-2. Furthermore, how many times must it be said that stealth technology does not make an aircraft invisible, it simply reduces the range at which it can be detected. That reduced range when combined with tactically safe corridors and electronic counter-measures does not make a plane invincible - it just reduces the risk to plane and pilot.

Ok, now for the S-400...

The S-400 is simply an evolution of the S-300, it's supposed to already be deployed around Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Ural industrial complexes, and some of the southern borders.


Regarding Zaphod58's statement that the US has a copy of the S-400 system; there is no publicly known data confirming that and thus far no S-400's are known to have been exported out of Russia. Could you have meant the S-300? The US does have several S-300's of varying revision dates.


Another thing: The S-400's most notable point is unquestionably it's Stealth defeating technology, however there is nothing in the 96L6 radar's specs that describes anything useful to defeating Stealth; it is very effective against low flying targets and against targets in the medium and high altitudes even in the presence of heavy jamming, and has a very low false-alarm rate, but the S-400's 96L6 C-band (4-6GHz) unit is nothing special when facing a low observable aircraft.

Also, the S-400's 40N6 long range missile is still behind schedule and not deployed leaving the S-400 the 40 km range missile or the S-300's SA-20 Gargoyle.



[edit on 12-5-2005 by intelgurl]

Furthermore, never have I indicated or insinuated, in any of my posts discussing such matters, that stealth is "magically invulnerable" or anything remotely of the such.

I know, that comment wasn't aimed at you.

There are others here whose view of stealth is somewhat less than realistic.

lol, is funny how the people try to protect that ridiculus super stealth myth

first, the 96l6 is band radar, enough to detect any stealth plane in a big range, stealth tech works -and not in the level of some claims- only in the 9-12ghz frequency

actually even the sam2 can down a f117 without tracking system, tss do you know something called "manual mode"

and the people is surprised by the 117 downed in serbia, and put stupid arguments, like the use of the same rute, or an evil french spy...lol

all this crap of the "stealth heroes" started in the gulf war, but the problem is that the people is ignorant about the facts and believe easely in war propaganda


[edit on 5-12-2005 by grunt2]

Infact Indtelgurl, you yourself said that the US possesses a S-300 system.
I think I heard it first from you.
And with regard to the topic; It gets more and more interesting each time a new thread on the topic is created.
And I thought I'd seen it all w.r.t. this topic!!
Evil French spy??

Originally posted by grunt2
lol, is funny how the people try to protect that ridiculus super stealth myth

first, the 96l6 is band radar, enough to detect any stealth plane in a big range, stealth tech works -and not in the level of some claims- only in the 9-12ghz frequency

actually even the sam2 can down a f117 without tracking system, tss do you know something called "manual mode"

and the people is surprised by the 117 downed in serbia, and put stupid arguments, like the use of the same rute, or an evil french spy...lol

all this crap of the "stealth heroes" started in the gulf war, but the problem is that the people is ignorant about the facts and believe easely in war propaganda


[edit on 5-12-2005 by grunt2]

You do realize that intelgurl works in this very industry and what credentials do you have to dispute her? She layed down paragraphs of very useful information about both systems and you responded with giberish? Give me something that backs up your side.

Your claiming war propaganda, yet what are you doing here? Propaganda, I think. Come on dude. Your basically claiming that the geniuses at Lockheed and Boeing and Northrup and Rockwell, and Hughes and Grumman, and Etc etc etc, who are the very best in the world and who invented all this stuff and who have basically endless money to do research have been downed by some lackluster, long wave radar. Do you honestly, I i'm serious here dude, Do you honestly believe that these engineers havent tested their pride and joy against every single possible threat. Why do you think it took 20 years for the raptor to finally make it to its first flight. It was all research, development and testing.

So whats harder to believe, our "super stealth myth" or your 20 dollar long wave improvised tracker device shot down a 2.5 billion dollar plane. Ill take the US version any day to that garbage.

Train

Ya know, I really try to deliver useful open source information - without showing an over-abundance of national pride. Sometimes I fail in that respect - but I do try.

The current generation of stealth RAM is designed to have extremely effective radar absorbency at frequencies from 1 to 100 GHz. This is the standard not only from the US manufacturers but also those of France and the UK (BAE Systems Materials Group in the UK and Structil in France, supplying Dassault).

Earlier generations of RAM (F-117 as an example) contained multiple layers of lossy dielectric material. (Ferrite based substances being employed as the lossy material).
The electromagnetic absorption characteristics of this type of RAM has a narrow band of frequencies that it affects - somewhat similar to what you have described.

However...

Chiral composites are the key to current and even future generations of RAM. These polymers do not require ferrites (but can include non-linear metal oxides) that impede electromagnetic waves far more effectively and over a exponetially broader band of freqs than the ferrite-based lossy dielectrics found in earlier generations of RAM.

This is not secret information.
The 3 main US aerospace giants, as well as BAE and Dassault are all on the same page as far as this level of stealth technology.

So can the 96L6 radar (S-400's radar) defeat stealth? As stated earlier, stealth technology does not make an aircraft invisible, it simply reduces the range at which it can be detected, and I see nothing special with that radar system that would serve to defeat todays stealth technology moreso than other similar systems.

neither ram, neither geometrics works good below 9ghz, again that is basic physics, about the expansive propieties of the em wave and the material ticknesss for a better probability of absorbsion due the wave length, so isnt so easy

at which it can be detected, and I see nothing special with that radar system that would serve to defeat todays stealth technology moreso than other similar systems.

of course my lady,thats the reason why one f117 was downed by a pathetic sam3 in servia, stealth techs works good in some radars, but not in all, some tracking systems use J-X 9-12ghz band in which stealth have some use,but other systems use C-G band

btw almost all the radars use surveinllance / warning radars in the A-B band

about the propaganda, in the GW1 all the people said that the f117 was the super-duper stealth plane, but actually, the US didnt use a stealth tactic as most people believe, actually the "stealth tactic" was to blow some key radars to blind the iraqi defences for a huge "stealth" bombardement of tornados, f18, f111, etc, and they blowed these radars with apaches...lol


[edit on 6-12-2005 by grunt2]

Then I guess it was hype that all the F-117s went right over the heart of Baghdad without a scratch, or a shot being fired at them until the first bombs were going off. The radars that were hit by the Apaches were at the border and blew open a corridor for the follow on strike packages to go through.