Stealth Tech by PirateCat

The SR-71 isn't a stealth aircraft. The designers tried to make it so, and they did succeed in reducing it's radar signature, but it was extremely visible on even civilian radar equipment. It wasn't until recently that computers were powerful enough to calculate the correct curvature for Stealth Aircraft (which is why the first Stealth Aircraft was angular).

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Monday, May 18, 2009 1:34 AM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
The SR-71 isn't a stealth aircraft. The designers tried to make it so, and they did succeed in reducing it's radar signature, but it was extremely visible on even civilian radar equipment. It wasn't until recently that computers were powerful enough to calculate the correct curvature for Stealth Aircraft (which is why the first Stealth Aircraft was angular).

Yup, the Blackbird is more properly thought of as the birth of stealth, or an early attempt at stealth technology. And it's quite good for its time, in terms of stealth capabilities. But it never relied on those for self-defense - it just flew higher and faster than anything anyone else around!

And on top of all that, it managed to be both quite beautiful AND quite sinister-looking...

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Monday, May 18, 2009 2:45 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

If memory serves, the SR-71 was so successful it was still in use in Firefly's day, as I seem to recall a flyby during "Trash".

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, May 18, 2009 10:11 AM

PIRATECAT

Citizen, that's what I was wondering about is how stealthy is she. But hey gotta given credit for being that far ahead. I guess the Dark Star jet is the newest thing. A ham operator in Oklahoma picked up code chatter called Aurora when 3 sonic booms where going off. Cool stuff.

"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".

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Monday, May 18, 2009 11:18 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PirateCat:
Citizen, that's what I was wondering about is how stealthy is she. But hey gotta given credit for being that far ahead. I guess the Dark Star jet is the newest thing. A ham operator in Oklahoma picked up code chatter called Aurora when 3 sonic booms where going off. Cool stuff.

"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".

Doing a little lite reading, it doesn't look like the Blackbird was terribly stealthy, but at over 90,000' operational altitude (actual service ceiling was still classified last time I checked, as was absolute top speed) and over 3,000mph, there wasn't much danger they'd be shot down by... well, by anything or anyone!

Seems it was a bit of a beast to land, though - of the 32 known to have been built, 11 crashed while landing. Not a single one was ever shot down, though, which says something about its capabilities right there...

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 11:37 AM

"...Finished aircraft were painted a dark blue (almost black) to increase the emission of internal heat (since fuel was used as a heat sink for avionics cooling) and to act as camouflage against the sky.[citation needed] The aircraft was designed to minimize its radar cross-section, an early attempt at stealth design.[11]

Stealth

There were a number of features in the SR-71 that were designed to reduce its radar signature. The first studies in radar stealth technology seemed to indicate that a shape with flattened, tapering sides would avoid reflecting most radar energy toward the radar beams' place of origin. To this end, the radar engineers suggested adding chines (see below) to the design and canting the vertical control surfaces inward. The plane also used special radar-absorbing materials which were incorporated into sawtooth shaped sections of the skin of the aircraft, as well as cesium-based fuel additives to reduce the exhaust plumes' visibility on radar.

The overall effectiveness of these designs is still debated; Ben Rich's team could show that the radar return was, in fact, reduced, but Kelly Johnson later conceded that Russian radar technology was advancing faster than the "anti-radar" technology Lockheed was using to counter it.[17] The SR-71 made its debut years before Pyotr Ya. Ufimtsev's ground-breaking research made possible today's stealth technologies, and, despite Lockheed's best efforts, the SR-71 was still easy to track by radar and had a huge infrared signature when cruising at Mach 3.2 or more. It was visible on air traffic control radar for hundreds of miles, even when not using its transponder.[18] SR-71s were evidently detected by radar, as missiles were often fired at them.

In the end, the SR-71's greatest protection was its flight characteristics, which made it almost invulnerable to the attack technologies of the time; over the course of its service life, not one was shot down, despite over 4,000 attempts to do so.[19]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 11:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PirateCat:
Citizen, that's what I was wondering about is how stealthy is she. But hey gotta given credit for being that far ahead.

There you have it...It was designed with stealthy characteristics from inception , which is quite reasonable considering it was designed with reconnaissance as its primary mission...

Even the deep blue/black paint was created with stealth and camouflauge in mind...

Nicknamed 'iron ball' , it contained carbon black and ferrites to eat radar signals , and reduce the radar cross section of the aircraft...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ball_paint

http://www.habus.org/revealed/dets.htm

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by out2theblack:
It was visible on air traffic control radar for hundreds of miles, even when not using its transponder.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 12:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Quote:
Originally posted by out2theblack:
It was visible on air traffic control radar for hundreds of miles, even when not using its transponder.

Didn't really matter much...

Not like a transponder would ever be turned on , on a run-in to a recce target.

Like the prior U2 , the aircraft did have stealth characteristics inherent to its design.

Those characteristics were optimized by the flight profiles on the run-in to the target , and the recon cameras were so good , that hundreds of miles away from the designated target was usually sufficient.

The SR-71 , while relatively dimunitive in cross-section , was still a fairly large airplane .

Like all other well-designed aircraft , it was a collection of compromises suited to its primary mission .

Even though it seems to us to have been developed at the dawn of aerospace technology's stealth age , it was still a significant advancement over earlier efforts ,
circa WW2...

Nothing could ever touch it , over the course of decades of use , which stands as a testament to the integrity of the design...

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 1:05 PM

Quote:

Nothing could ever touch it , over the course of decades of use , which stands as a testament to the integrity of the design...

And what better testament to its success do you need? Not a single one was ever shot down. That's a hell of a service record.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 6:59 PM

FREMDFIRMA

I still think the airframe has potential - you know it came make low earth orbit on it's own power, right ?

Pull the instrument bay and replace it with a pair of cockpit controlled handling arms, and add an OMS maneuvering package and you have a satellite maintainence replacement for the abysmal shuttle.

Also, they DID have a couple anti-satellite missles which could be hooked up as I recall, the plan was to go to max altitude they could still get thrust, roll inverted and fire em off - don't recall offhand the missle designation however.

Neat aircraft, sure.

-F

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 9:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by out2theblack:
Didn't really matter much...

Not like a transponder would ever be turned on , on a run-in to a recce target.

Read the passage again. Even with the transponder turned off civilian radar could pick it up from hundreds of miles away.

Yes they tried to make it stealth, but it didn't succeed. On the run up to the target, it was lit up like a Christmas tree, because it was flying so high and so fast. But nothing could intercept it either, because it was flying so high and so fast.

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009 9:59 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Nothing is entirely stealth, it's not an exact yes or no equation. it's degrees of stealth.
It was designed to not be detected EARLY ENOUGH TO BE SUCCESSFULLY TARGETED AND SHOT DOWN, and it succeeded at that.
If you cannot detect it early enough to successfully launch countermeasures, the approach signature had successfully evaded critical detection. it was always known that it could be detected after the fact, after passing, or after it was too late to effect countermeasures - because guess what? Nobody cares if the dead (or in the case of recon, read) know you already got them, it is too late.
The RADAR technologies of the time were not as advanced as today, and the HABUU beat them.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I still think the airframe has potential - you know it came make low earth orbit on it's own power, right ?

Pull the instrument bay and replace it with a pair of cockpit controlled handling arms, and add an OMS maneuvering package and you have a satellite maintainence replacement for the abysmal shuttle.

Also, they DID have a couple anti-satellite missles which could be hooked up as I recall, the plan was to go to max altitude they could still get thrust, roll inverted and fire em off - don't recall offhand the missle designation however.

Neat aircraft, sure.

-F

I remember the ASAT designation, but that's more a generic catch-all (Anti-SATellite missile) moniker. The versions I remember being developed were tested and worked, and were fired from the belly of an F-15 Eagle. It was supposed to climb as high and fast as it could (over 80,000 feet), at which time the pilot pulls the stick back to pull the plane over beyond vertical, and launches the ASAT then.

I seem to remember the program being cancelled due to a treaty with the USSR in a deal which would see them cancel their own ASAT program, which was allegedly considerably further along than ours. And we have so many more satellites to lose, don'tcha know... :)

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009 2:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Nothing is entirely stealth, it's not an exact yes or no equation. it's degrees of stealth.
It was designed to not be detected EARLY ENOUGH TO BE SUCCESSFULLY TARGETED AND SHOT DOWN, and it succeeded at that.
If you cannot detect it early enough to successfully launch countermeasures, the approach signature had successfully evaded critical detection. it was always known that it could be detected after the fact, after passing, or after it was too late to effect countermeasures - because guess what? Nobody cares if the dead (or in the case of recon, read) know you already got them, it is too late.
The RADAR technologies of the time were not as advanced as today, and the HABUU beat them.

True enough. And while it sounds horribly UNstealthy to think of a plane being picked up from "hundreds of miles away", you also have to consider that hundreds of miles, in this case, translates to a few minutes. Apparently - by every piece of evidence we have at our disposal - not nearly long enough to either get a good track, launch, and lock with a SAM of any sort, nor anywhere close to long enough to scramble fighters in the air, if you had any that could match the Blackbird's speed and altitude in the first place.

And it wasn't designed to be invisible to radar; it was designed to MINIMIZE its radar signature, which it did, as much as could be expected in its day.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009 5:35 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
The RADAR technologies of the time were not as advanced as today, and the HABUU beat them.

No, it didn't beat them, that's the point. It was a worthy effort, and a great success for the technology of the time, but it wasn't, by an measure, truly stealth. What prevented it from being intercepted was it's altitude and speed, you could see it, you just couldn't do anything about it.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 10:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Nothing is entirely stealth, it's not an exact yes or no equation. it's degrees of stealth.
It was designed to not be detected EARLY ENOUGH TO BE SUCCESSFULLY TARGETED AND SHOT DOWN, and it succeeded at that.
If you cannot detect it early enough to successfully launch countermeasures, the approach signature had successfully evaded critical detection. it was always known that it could be detected after the fact, after passing, or after it was too late to effect countermeasures - because guess what? Nobody cares if the dead (or in the case of recon, read) know you already got them, it is too late.
The RADAR technologies of the time were not as advanced as today, and the HABUU beat them.

You make some great points , here , JSF...As does Kwicko...

Quite the contrast to 'citizen' , who has the habit of shooting from the lip , making categorically false statements that are subsequently difficult to retract or deny , and then reverting to his default mode , which consists of attempts to nitpick other folks' facts
ad nauseum...

For them as need it told , here's a quickie dictionary review of the concept of stealth :

'1. The act of moving, proceeding, or acting in a covert way.
2. The quality or characteristic of being furtive or covert.'

ADVANTAGE : BLACKBIRD

SR-71 was even developed covertly...

Stealthy from conception , to inception , through 'til replaced operationally...

Blackbird often didn't even have to be IN a targeted country's airspace to steal its secrets...That's definitely stealth technology...

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Friday, May 22, 2009 10:22 AM