Where are these satellites? In service? Powerful enough? Got further reading on this? Please, I take everything you say with a grain of salt because of how inaccurate the things you were advocating in previous posts and your lack of references and your inability to stand by your opinion on the JASSM/JASSM-ER.

I would argue that high powered optical satellites would have a hard time detecting stealth "if" they are available, especially a B-2 in the presence of night time when the B-2 is most deadly. Even though the B-2 is getting outdated, but still more advanced that any other bomber in the world, the 2018 bomber will have ELO not LO. And Optical Satellites don't have the capability to provide radar lockon, a squadron of F-22's would most likely escort the bomber to wipe out any enemy adversaries in the air.

The best bet of detecting stealth is quantum entanglement radar IMO what Lockheed Martin just patented a couple years back, but that is quite far away from becoming a reality.

And when you make write this "article" up, please make a thorough reference sheet so I can go through in detail what you are saying is correct.

But since you brought other systems into the equation, so will I. The United States would DEMOLISH these satellites while or before a ground strike package is sent in, "if" there are even any jeopardizing the American lives, which I highly doubt.

Its common sense.

Good Day

Networked radar is likely to defeat deflective stealth. But in that game of rock-paper-scissors, all one needs to do is fly something with a decent electronic warfare pod on it and jam it. In that case stealth then resumes being undetectable (obscured by the blob of noise from the jamming aircraft), but by then the enemy obviously knows something is up. (More often than not, diplomatic channels have failed and they already know it's hitting the fan. So stealth is somewhat redundant in that regard.)

I think optical guidance and detection systems will be making a comeback. They won't have the range of radar, but you could paint an aircraft with a laser and have the missile home in on that. Some countries like Sweden already have shoulder launched missiles that use this instead of infra-red or radar guidance.

Alternately video guidance and things like object recognition software becoming a lot cheaper will have an impact too. (Computer hobbyists have access to this stuff now, some even being open-source and developed outside the U.S. or falling through the ITAR cracks. No reason why those developing weapons systems wouldn't be able to use them.) If an average person can get hobby software that lets them lock a tracking box on a specific person's face with 99% accuracy on a home computer and have a webcam follow it, no reason why that couldn't be changed to recognize an aircraft profile and let a missile follow it. Chaff and flares won't easily distract from that specific image either. The cat is out of the bag there.

this is my first post but heres my idea in your hypothetic situation. we could detonate a nuclear bomb a few hundred miles above the country we are attacking. The emp would fry all their electronics including s.a.m. sites. from there we have bombers standing buy at a safe distance, then when its over they will have the ability to bomb anything we want

would a rail gun work?

With regards to the F-117 that was shot down over Kosovo, I seem to remember that it was raining on that particular night. For those of you who don't know how detecting a stealthy aircraft can be achieved, you don't look for any aircraft. You look for something that is not there.

For example if you remember the armoured attacks that took place at night during DS I and II, the Allies seemed to know where almost every Iraqi AFV was, even though they were 'shielded' from radar and thermal detection. The reason? There were 'dark, empty' shadows against a black background which was giving off a certain amount of heat. The tank gunners simply lined up their sights on these targets and destroyed tank after tank!

The same can be done with radar against so called 'stealthy' aircraft. These can be detected because even rain has a radar cross section and believe it or not, if an aircraft stealthy or otherwise is flying through it, there could be a 'nil' return on the detector, thus indicating that 'something' is 'out there!'

A good operator will re-tune his search and target tracking radar to paint any 'blank' spaces in the sky and, depending on the type of radar, send a pencil thin bean which frequency hops within a certain spectrum to detect the suspected aircraft.

It can be done. It has happened before and it will happen again. The trick is to keep doing it when somebody is shooting missiles at you but then of course, as a SAM battery commander, you'll have a 'knock-off' Patriot SAM system of your own and we all know that these are the dog's dangly bits when it comes to area defence against incoming missiles and smart bombs!

A good SAM commander will also utilise dummy SAM sites with smoke missiles which will force said F-22, F15/16s, A10s and Apache pilots to fly higher risking further detection.

Of course all this speculation is null and void if the SAM commander is also armed with a few Metal Storm systems or something fiendishly similar.

Originally posted by korathin But in the end the target nation would not longer be able to wage war, let alone rule it's own people(so a despotic government would fall into complete anarchy).

Does not work in real life - just ask any Libyan civvie!