The design of the MiG Skat indicates that the objective is all-aspect LO. That pretty much follows from the design of any UCAV, in that UCAVs can’t shoot back or otherwise respond to a threat. Wideband? Probably, since the ability to do wideband depends on having a configuration that can be protected on all edges by serious RAS.
Can they do it? There is a known and documented Russian stealth program that has yielded operational RCS-reduction kits and has certainly got as far as large-scale RCS models. Look at the Tu-160…
Once you understand the basic principles, what takes time and money is all the details – maintainability, doors, apertures. What France and UK have realized, though, that you can only do so much on the pole and that the graduation exercise is to build a demonstrator like an old Lindberg model – it’s not the real thing but all the doors and other moving bits work. Watch Japan doing the same thing.
There’s nothing impossibly wrong about Skat, although the inlet looks odd. I suspect that it’s a graduation exercise and a bait for foreign partners.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat… unless it’s the one that disappears bit by bit until all you can see is the grin.
Sign In
