Here it goes the flame war about RCS numbers that nobody really knows in public...
I am very skeptical about taking the golf ball RCS speculations seriously (you know that the interviews of many star generals are always approved before the release, don't you?). It might serve more as a PSYOPS measure to convince your enemy in not usefulness of radar based defense and waste the money on "alternatives" rather than reflect the reality accurately.
I guess I could use the same kind of skepticism that you display to say for example: how the hell will the S-400 be able to detect a small target (1 square meter) at 338km which is almost at the edge of the Earth's curvature??
Why would the golf ball RCS of the F-35 be false which by the way is an information officially given by the United States Air Force (USAF) while at the same "blindly" believing in Russian official information?!
Actually it's well known that the Russians trend to exaggerate much about the actual capabilities of their equipment specially when compared to western countries, namely the USA.
So if you want to doubt about the RCS of the F-35 being in the magnitude of a golf ball you must also doubt about the ability for the S-400 to detect a 1 square meter at 338km away.
Anyway, both data "F-35 with an RCS of a golf ball" and the "S-400 ability to detect a 1 square meter at 338km away" are official data and as such must be taken with at least a good degree of credibility!
For my part I'm willing to believe in both data about the F-35 and the S-400. Or at least this is the information what we have to make a "close as possible" analysis.
And remember that afterall it is you (and
only you) that's "
speculating" since again afterall these values being discussed are again,
official data.
The fact that Israel just increased their F-35 (they are now ordering 50 F-35As with perhaps more in the future) and it's well known that one of the reason that Israel is buying the F-35 is clearly to be able to defeat and to have an edge over potential the S-400 Air Defence Systems that could be field by its enemies in the near future seems to back up my point of view.
What makes me think that Hpasp's value of 0.006m2 is much more reasonable is a comparison to the RCS of birds, which are said to be around 0.01m2 range. Also, this specific RCS value most likely holds only for a particular frequency bands, like X band. I've read somewhere that L-band radars have better capabilities in this regard.
Also, none of the scenarios considered included the possibility to couple a long-wave radar for search and then active guidance on the last few seconds of a missile flight. That would be the most interesting scenario for me.
What does a comparison with birds have anything to do with being reasonable regarding RCS comparisons?? Last time I checked birds or at least bird sized and shaped metal objects don't have RAM material coatings and neither their shape was "designed" to avoid/defeat radio waves!
Or are you also disputing the official USAF information that the F-22 Raptor RCS is around the size of a metal marble or resuming around 0.0001 square meters??
Independently of what radar wave you use, a stealth or very low observable (VLO) aircraft will always have the advantage. That talk of yours about X or L band reminds me the most about one of the "web arguments" from the F-35 critics, that VHF/UHF radars will "magically" detect stealth aircraft. Well we all know (actually it is modeled here in SAM Simulator) that the P-18 radar which is a VHF radar could only detect an F-117 at a distance less than 30km which isn't much better then what the SNR radar from an SA-3 system was capable of detecting the same F-117.
Anyway, any current analysis that you can read about the F-35 RCS points it being at around 0.001 square meters and not 0.006.
So the problem that I have with the 0.006 square meter RCS value for the F-35 is that such value is equivalent to a ball which is the double in terms of diameter compared to a golf ball (again
OFFICIAL USAF data). Resuming:
0.006 square meters equals a ball with a diameter of around 87 millimetres (twice or double of a golf ball)
0.00143 square meters equals a ball with a diameter of around 42 millimetres (around the size of a golf ball)
See the problem with the 0.006 square meter RCS for the F-35?
