A review of Area 51 and its tech, page 3

reply to post by crankyoldman

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I think there is much more than just weapon and aircraft development, these are the aspects of Area 51 that we can say we know of. What is more interesting to me is what else might be happening. Maybe some of you have heard about the lawsuits from previous Area 51 employees that are still going on. What I want to know is what they were testing/experimenting with that could cause reactions much like the ones these previous workers complain of.

Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by mbkennel

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Your argument is just semantics. The aircraft is observed by radar, hence you minimize the echo in the direction of the observer.

You can't put a light on a plane and match the background. Point sources have an inverse cube fall off. The light required would be a function of the distance to the observer. But if you knew the position of the observer, you would just take out that target. A panel light source would be inverse square law, but a similar problem.

I think you're thinking about the wrong problem, you're not trying to send a distinguishable signal (in which case inverse square (not cube) falloff of power matters).

Be a physicist, and imagine a spherical craft to hide in daytime. What do you need to do? You need to pretend in the far field that the light wouldn't be much different from incoherent background scattering. If you look at the daytime sky, for most of the angular range, it's a pretty consistent color and intensity.

Without active measures said sphere will scatter light coming up back down and block scattered light from the top going back down. Hypothetically if you had complete control over absorption and emission over the sphere you could measure what is coming in on one side, and recreate the light field on the other side knowing what you scatter back, plus/minus what you actively emit.

You can see that effecting this requires power output proportional to the surface area of the craft and independent of the observer's distance.

Back to your sphere. At low altitude, most of the air scattering is above you and so you block blue sky, thus you need to emit same amount of blue. At high altitude most of the air scattering is below you and so you need to absorb/scatter in non-down directions as much as you can, which is why U-2 and SR-71 are painted black, to be hard to see at highest altitude.

There were tests in WW2 just with simple lamps at lower altitude, and they did a pretty good job, but then radar obviated the value. Now that radar is controlled, there's value in optical LO again.

These days you can measure and compute much more.

And then this lighting has to stand up to the friction hence heat due to air resistance.

True.

Basically high standoff BVR simply makes visual stealth an academic exercise. This doesn't mean the aircraft should be painted lime green, but the point is agonizing over being spotted visual isn't required these days.

I wouldn't be so sure of this. Not all missions are short in and out bombing, and not all observers might be at the target location. Anyway, if you did have optical low observability 10x better than ordinary paint, what additional capabilities could you get?

The biggest threat is the accidental contrail.

Sure.

reply to post by mbkennel

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untold amounts of money, high tech security, secrecy beyond belief and you contend that cox style airplanes capable of dropping bombs is the best area 51 can do? The tech isn't new, only the application is new and unmanned bomb droppers is hardly a leap worthy of they 51 hype - buy have been doing versions of this a the local radio controlled airplane centers all over the country for years. I'm not specifying just 51, all the supposed places, pine gap, china lake and all the rest have produced: cox planes with remote bomb dropping capabilities. Wow, super, there has been more advancement in athletic shoes at far less cost.

reply to post by captaintyinknots

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One of the more interesting things in Gary Powers autobiography "Operation Overflight" is the Soviets asked him to show where his base (Area 51) was located on a map. So they handed him a map of Arizona and he pointed to a base. (Luke I guess). I think the book is out of print again, but easily available on the used market.

Basically don't overestimate the competition.

Originally posted by crankyoldman
reply to post by mbkennel

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untold amounts of money, high tech security, secrecy beyond belief and you contend that cox style airplanes capable of dropping bombs is the best area 51 can do? The tech isn't new, only the application is new and unmanned bomb droppers is hardly a leap worthy of they 51 hype - buy have been doing versions of this a the local radio controlled airplane centers all over the country for years. I'm not specifying just 51, all the supposed places, pine gap, china lake and all the rest have produced: cox planes with remote bomb dropping capabilities. Wow, super, there has been more advancement in athletic shoes at far less cost.

You're limited by the laws of physics, and yes dropping bombs that go where you want is as good as it gets. By the way a ICBM guidance & re-entry vehicle is extremely high-tech. (you know they go from stratosphere to ground level in about 3 seconds).

And athletic shoes are still pieces of leather and fabric around your feet, and they can't make me run like Usain Bolt.

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