First, someone asked whether anyone claimed that stealth aircraft were invisible. Step forward, Tom Burbage:
“Simply put, advanced stealth and sensor fusion allow the F-35 pilot to see, target and destroy the adversary and strategic targets in a very high surface-to-air threat scenario, and deal with air threats intent on denying access — all before the F-35 is ever detected, then return safely to do it again, said Burbage.” (Emphasis added.)
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2008/september/SettingRecordStraightonF-.html
And we all know that Mr Burbage never forgets who he is working for (which, according to the SEC and fiduciary law, would be his shareholders).
Moving on: Passive Coherent Location systems such as EADS Cassidian is advertising, and like Selex’s Aulos, are not being directly marketed as tactical counterstealth systems for the reasons discussed in earlier posts – they leech off civilian transmitters that may not be present in quantity in the AOR in the first place and are not designed to survive enemy action.
On the other hand, they do cause problems if your concept of RCS is monostatic, because scattering that is directed away from the transmitter has to go somewhere. And as they get into lower frequencies, they are less easy to affect with RAM.
And what if your ingress route lies over allied or neutral territory, where the locals may not appreciate losing access to MTV for the duration of hostilities? A PCL receiver on the border can leech off friendly TV stations. And if I can see it on PCL but not on my regular radar, Bingo! Positive ID.
And if I wanted to militarize the system, the receivers are already passive and highly mobile. A tactical transmitter would not have to be large or expensive, and would probably fit on a Humvee or compatible trailer. If it costs less than an ARM the attacker has a problem. (By the way, Mercurius – Vera-E is, indeed, not a PCL, but would be a useful supplement to it.)
In this context, talking about Silent Sentry is muddying the issue, because it is pretty ancient. Most counterstealth technologies (VHF. OTH, PCL, track-before-detect, IRST and so on) don’t involve inventing new physics, but by taking a smarter look at the output and (in many cases) netting the sensors to cover the weak points and maximize the strengths.
By the way, AASR is the most interesting ground-based counterstealth system I have read about.
Is stealth over? Probably not, although all-aspect, broadband LO systems are much better suited to this kind of environment than bowtie/X-band-focused vehicles.
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