Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!princeton!njin!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: djm@castle.ed.ac.uk (D Murphy) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: B-2 Question Message-ID: <8798@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 4 Aug 89 13:06:21 GMT References: <8751@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: Edinburgh University Chemistry Lines: 72 Approved: military@att.att.com From: D Murphy In article <8751@cbnews.ATT.COM> berman-andrew@YALE.ARPA (Andrew P. Berman) writes: > > >From: "Andrew P. Berman" > > >I have a few questions about the B-2. First, does it use radar? >If it does, then couldn't a combination visual sighting + radar seeking >missile knock it down? Depends. At high altitude the B-2 wouldn't need to use radar anyway until it was setting up its targetting - and even then it'd probably be possible to pulse the radar to make things difficult for HARM-type (Highspeed Anti Radar Missile) missiles. Once the targetting is complete the missile has lost its guidance. Also, at high altitude visual targetting would be difficult - systems that use semi-visual targetting such as the BAe Rapier are low-level devices. > Second, I recall an exposition on flat surfaces >deflecting radar waves away from the sender. In that case, could two >enemy aircraft working together as sender & receiver, find and track >the Stealth? Where from ? This would probably need 2 AWACS-like aircraft which would presumably be susceptible to either defensive missiles carried by the B-2 (does it have this capability ?) or to escorting fighters. In any case - in a BBC news report during the height of the Iranian missile attacks on Gulf shipping mention was made of radar-absorbing paint being used on commercial shipping. If they can make the stuff available for supertankers I dare say they've got something far more effective (and expensive :-)) for the B-2. > Third, how did they knock down enemy aircraft before the >invention of radar, and could those tactics be used against the B-2? > If you think about it this wasn't really a problem. The only time that countermeasures anything like those which would have to be taken against B-2s (or any strategic strike aircraft) were against Zeppelins and Gothas in WWI. The problem with the Zeppelins was that until the introduction of the SE5 the RFC (Royal Flying Corps - Army Air Wing which was the progenitor of the RAF) had nothing that could reach them and ground based anti aircraft guns were not very good. The Gotha's usually raided at night, and there was little that the RFC pilots could do except fly around and try to find them (they didn't even have radio and often couldn't find their way back). The first time air defence became really important was during WWII - and by then we had radar. 50 years to solve the problem is a helluva long time. I suppose you could keep lots of spotters flying about - but the logistics of doing this are awful and the system would be very prone to errors. > >Andrew P. Berman (apberman@yale.cs.edu) > > >P.S. : I'd appreciate it if people were careful to define their acronyms in >their postings. Some of us readers are coming to this group with little to >no military knowledge. Thanks in advance I only mentioned high altitude above - presumably low altitude approaches would use unfrared lasers for terrain following. Here's a question - there are devices called masers (microwave.....) which were actually developed a few years before lasers were. These produce narrow coherent microwave emissions - are these devices used instead of conventional magnetrons and such - as the coherent radiation would provide a more intense signal which would make ranging and resolution better ? Murff..... This one is: djm@uk.ac.ed.castle "War occurs to develop the weapons with djm%ed.castle@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk to fight the next one."