Another "WTF" from the warfare section:

"Carriers of the Ford class will incorporate many new design features including
[...] stealthier features to help reduce radar profile"

Uh-huh... yes, that makes perfect sense of course... hiding an aircraft
carrier...

HUH???

How can you be stealthy about an *Aircraft Carrier*??

I mean, they're not particularly small, nor zipping around at Mach 1.2, are
they? And with a displacement of 100,000 tons their wake must be enormous, and
you're likely to hear them halfway across the globe under water. How in all
seven seas could one possibly *not* notice them?

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On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:13:43 -0400, clipka wrote:

> How can you be stealthy about an *Aircraft Carrier*??

Because most military organizations don't use their eyes to look for 
something like this.  So if you can get it to not reflect sonar properly 
or to generate sound, it becomes invisible...

Jim

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clipka wrote:
> How can you be stealthy about an *Aircraft Carrier*??

Compared to the size of the ocean? Yeah, actually, pretty small. You can 
even hide it behind a small island, for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> clipka wrote:
> > How can you be stealthy about an *Aircraft Carrier*??
>
> Compared to the size of the ocean? Yeah, actually, pretty small. You can
> even hide it behind a small island, for example.

I wouldn't be too surprised if even a decent modern research or weather
satellite had the capabilities to make out such a huge thing. Just look at the
resolution Google offers. Get something with only a tenth of the resolution but
with daily updates, and you can track that thing without any problems. Provided
it drifts with the current. If it actively moves, the wake will telltale it at
even lower resolutions.

Granted, in an asymmetrical war it might help to effectively hide the thing from
the enemy - but in an asymmetrical war, how on earth is anyone going to get
anywhere near a US airplane carrier anyway - let alone do any serious harm to
it?

And it's not like there wouldn't be any aircraft activity telltaling the
location of the carrier, by the way. Just manage to track *one* single plane on
its way home, and you know where that pilot keeps his toothbrush.

I guess this is more a case of some high-ranking guy being all in for this new
stealth technology (or somehow associated with a company that produces it ;))
and not thinking too much about it.

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clipka wrote:
> I wouldn't be too surprised if even a decent modern research or weather
> satellite had the capabilities to make out such a huge thing.

Probably, assuming it's not under cloud or something.

Remember you also aim missiles via radar too, which is what I think they're 
trying to avoid.

> Granted, in an asymmetrical war it might help to effectively hide the thing from
> the enemy - but in an asymmetrical war, how on earth is anyone going to get
> anywhere near a US airplane carrier anyway - let alone do any serious harm to
> it?

Uh, I guess you didn't see that report.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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clipka wrote:
> How can you be stealthy about an *Aircraft Carrier*??

Because the closest an enemy is likely to get is several dozen miles 
away (and most of the time, they'll be a few hundred), you actually have 
a pretty good chance.

-- 
Chambers

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Chambers wrote:
> clipka wrote:
>> How can you be stealthy about an *Aircraft Carrier*??
> 
> Because the closest an enemy is likely to get is several dozen miles 
> away (and most of the time, they'll be a few hundred), you actually have 
> a pretty good chance.
> 
I suspect that "stealthy" here is an advertising buzz word (i.e hype) 
having very little meaning,
though it probably entails a lot of extra expense and useless hardware 
-- and extra large
profits for the builder. But then, since underwater torpedoes reported 
have the range of hundreds
of miles, anything confusing their sonar might improve the targets 
survivability (another buzz
word).

David

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Darren New wrote:
> clipka wrote:
>> in an asymmetrical war it might help to effectively hide the 
>> thing from the enemy - but in an asymmetrical war, how on 
 >> earth is anyone going to get anywhere near a US airplane
 >> carrier anyway - let alone do any serious harm to it?
> 
> Uh, I guess you didn't see that report.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
> 

Let me get this straight! The US government spent $250M to get some of 
their best experts to teach them some hard lessons about how their big 
expensive weaponry could be defeated by smaller cheaper craft. Then they 
chose to ignore those lessons, but published the results for any enemies 
to read?

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Remember you also aim missiles via radar too, which is what I think they're
> trying to avoid.

Sure, they can reduce the radar cross-section of a 20m long jet fighter to that
of a small ball bearing.

I bet they don't stand a fair chance, however, to reduce the cross-section of an
airplane carrier to anything a missile could not lock on.

> Uh, I guess you didn't see that report.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

No, didn't. But I think it still does make my point:

"They also used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's ships
without being detected"

Heh. Sounds to me like they actually *saw* them.

"Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles, overwhelming the Blue forces'
electronic sensors, destroying sixteen warships."

IIRC cruise missiles are typically GPS-guided, so no radar needed here either.
For the end flight, IR sensors would do - I guess a hot flight deck against the
cold sea will make a perfect target. You might even hit some fighter plane
revving up their engines ready to take off with live ammunition. Or a passive
radar sensor, for that matter: They typically have some real huge radar
antennae on airplane carriers, and I heard that they actually use them...

"Soon after that offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was
"sunk" by an armada of small Red boats carrying out both conventional and
suicide attacks, able to engage Blue forces due to Blue's inability to detect
them as well as expected"

I guess these hard-to-detect boats had a small radar cross-section *and* a small
optical cross-section, IR signature etc.

(Nice thinking, team Red! :P)

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"Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote in message
news:4a6c5ef2@news.povray.org...
> Darren New wrote:

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

> Let me get this straight! The US government spent $250M to get some of
> their best experts to teach them some hard lessons about how their big
> expensive weaponry could be defeated by smaller cheaper craft. Then they
> chose to ignore those lessons, but published the results for any enemies
> to read?

It's much more plausible to me that the simulation/model itself that allowed
the big expensive weaponry to be defeated by motorcycles and fishing boats
was fundamentally flawed, and one smart cookie exploited the weaknesses/bugs
of the model before it got patched.

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