April 11, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Anyone wanna try and guess? If we say that B2 is the apex of stealthy right now, and assign it 100% value, what would be radar stealth level of a global hawk?
Looking at it, i just can’t see it being very stealthy. Its wings and tail seem too slender for any sort of efficient ram layer application. Engine gondola seems too small and short to effectively hide the engine blades, wings are at pretty much straight angle with the fuselage, etc. And for its mission it is important to be stealthy from all the angles, not just from the front end.
similarly, it doesn’t seem much heat signature work like on b2 or f22 has been done. In the end, i don’t see how can an unprotected, lone global hawk survive over working radar network of a country which has ability to reach the 70 thousand feet altitute required to bring it down.