How will stealth air combat work?

January 8, 2009 10:02 PM

What happens when two stealth fighters attempt combat?

Obviously the only true generation 5 all-aspect stealth fighter that we know of is the F-22. However, one day in the future this should change, and it's highly conceivable that two stealth fighters will want to shoot each other down.

If the stealth aspects are working as claimed, air-to-air missiles aren't going to be any use. So will they have to attempt exchange of cannon fire at high speed? Within visual range, having been guided there by ground-based low-frequency radars?

A bit WW1 isn't it? I'm sure it's not keeping too many aeroplane designers awake at night, it's still decades away, but...

posted by wilful to technology (18 comments total)

You're looking at the last generation of manned fighters. Future fighters will be unmanned and thus not subject to the restrictions of manned aircraft (Gs, space for cockpit/life support equipment, etc. etc.) That's the next big problem, not dogfighting or other close-in engagements.
posted by squorch at 10:14 PM on January 8

Let's minimize the amount of speculation otherwise open-ended threads like these become way to chatfiltery. So let's say a Russian spy has stolen an F-22 and the USAF sends another F-22 after it.

Acquisition is the only part of "stealth" that is really stealthy. "low observability" (with "limited" often prefixed) is the official and more accurate term. Aircraft like the F-22 and the B2 are low-observable only under certain operating conditions, e.g.

- flying subsonic, straight and level at low altitude
- approaching a radar receiver head on
- using dry thrust (no afterburner)
- no external ordanance, no bay doors open

Once you've been acquired and get into an air combat situation, most of these constraints are violated. Ignite afterburners? Sidewinder up your tail and you're dead. Do some crazy manoevres, exposing your belly? Radar will pick you up, you're dead. Fly high up, where contrails and backscatter light make you visible? You're dead. Open your bay doors to fire a missile? You're dead.

There was a novel written (and subsequent Clint Eastwood movie made) about the converse scenario with lots of educated conjecture, if you're really interested in this. Great B-movie stuff ("you must THINK IN RUSSIAN")
posted by randomstriker at 10:21 PM on January 8 [4 favorites has favorites]

The most likely result of your scenario is that neither will detect the other, and no combat will take place.

If one detects and the other doesn't, then you get a hunter-prey situation. If they both detect, then it's just as if they weren't stealthy.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:21 PM on January 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

AIM-120 missiles have the capability of being guided by infrared. Even the most radar-eating aircraft still puts out a ton of heat.
posted by mark242 at 10:22 PM on January 8

You can bet that IR sensors and radar will get better over time too. These planes aren't invincible, just a lot harder to shoot down. Some planes can get shot down now.

As for unmanned fighters not dogfighting, how are they going to shoot each other down? The primary job of a fighter is air superiority.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:23 PM on January 8

Stealthy aircraft like the F-117 Nighthawk and the B-2 Stealth Bomber, are ground attack aircraft. They deliver payload, they don't intercept targets.

The F-22 fighter is banned from export, and the high r&d and production cost makes building a similar fighter cost prohibitive for any other country. They cost $340 million each (and that's an old number.) China, our closest military competitor, raised their 2008 military budget by 18% to $59 billion. The entire cost of r&d and production for the F-22 was (is) $62 billion.

Indeed, fighter aircraft are increasingly harder to justify in the current IR climate. Even the F-22, which we think of a modern machine, began life based on combat theories from the 1970s and earlier. A lot has changed sense then. It's possible that advanced fighters such as the F-22 are the last of their kind.

Not saying that things might change hundreds of years in the future, but right now your scenario, while fanciful, is impossible.
posted by wfrgms at 10:25 PM on January 8

My guess is one would get shot down or both would crash. I'm thinking if one can see the other visually, that they would be able to let their computer know that that radar signal that looks like a bird or a bug or whatever is actually a hostile jet. I would think if you can visually confirm that something on your radar screen is more than an anomaly, bug, bird, or blip, then it would be very easy to shoot down (unless it can outrun a missile like an SR-71).

I am, however, speaking from very limited understanding of the technologies involved. I'm sure someone else could give you a much better, well informed answer.
posted by robtf3 at 10:26 PM on January 8

I asked a similar question once of a military radar operator. He told me that as a general rule, if they see something on their screens that looks like a bird (not a MIG or a plane but a birdie) moving at 500+ miles an hour, and that radar profile of a bird does not have clearance to be flying there, they will attempt to shoot it down. No one yet is invisible, just difficult to detect.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:59 AM on January 9 [1 favorite has favorites]

You're looking at the last generation of manned fighters. Future fighters will be unmanned and thus not subject to the restrictions of manned aircraft (Gs, space for cockpit/life support equipment, etc. etc.) That's the next big problem, not dogfighting or other close-in engagements.

Can you elaborate a bit on this? I can see ground strikes being operated via remote or even computer, but dogfighting? That sounds crazy to me- am I just ignorant about how far that tech has advanced?
posted by mkultra at 7:11 AM on January 9

but dogfighting?

dogfighting requires 2 aircraft to tango. There's been a handful of dogfights since 1945.

Air-to-air combat does not require fighter pilots, or "fighters" for that matter, just two platforms looking for kills. Namco's Ace Combat 3 ("Electrosphere") PS1 game had rather chilling images of UAV-ified fighter aircraft.

Top Gun aside, smart missiles made manned fighters obsolete ~20 years ago. Remote-controlled autonomous hunter-killers are the future.
posted by troy at 9:04 AM on January 9

To answer the question, one must think in terms of signatures any aircraft leaves of its presence in the sky. These are:

1) EM Reflection
2) EM Occlusion
3) EM Emission (including heat)
4) Air disturbance
5) Noise
6) Particulates from combustion

Sensors are designed to pick up a given signature trace, and any aircraft in the sky leaves an immense signature trail in the sky that sensitive sensors can pick up easily.

As mentioned above, you can be as stealthy as you want but if you're not outputting the same background UV radiation you're blocking you'll be clear as day to ground-based sensors scanning the UV backscatter image they see.

These days, if a human eye can see it, sensors can see it better. In the scenario of two stealth platforms going at each other, I would expect either advanced self-guiding smart missiles or laser-guided missiles flying towards targets designated by the command ship.
posted by troy at 9:17 AM on January 9

any aircraft in the sky leaves an immense signature trail

(smallish stealthy gliders excepted, LOL)
posted by troy at 9:20 AM on January 9

Mark242:

"AIM-120 missiles have the capability of being guided by infrared. Even the most radar-eating aircraft still puts out a ton of heat."

No, the AIM-120 AMRAAM (aka Slammer) is an active radar missile. It does not carry an IR seeker.

The answers above seem correct. Stealth is about avoiding detection. If two stealth aircraft detect each other and engage simultaneously they're going to be using standard ACM tactics with the added possibilty of being able to disengage if they can break their opponents visual and sensor contact.

This might translate into a race to release weapons first, and then evade and 'vanish' before the opponent can shoot, instead forcing them to go defensive--which isn't that different from a standard beyond visual range fight between two non-stealth modern fighter aircraft (such as the typical cold war F15 vs MiG 29 matchup) substituting stealth for range in disengaging after the shot.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:23 AM on January 9

Troy: Top Gun aside, smart missiles made manned fighters obsolete ~20 years ago. Remote-controlled autonomous hunter-killers are the future.

Smart missiles haven't made fighters obsolete, they've just reshaped them into competing primarily as sensor-and-weapon platforms rather than dogfighting aircraft. The fact that air combat has become extremely lethal and extremely expensive doesn't mean that it can't or won't occur. The future may be unmanned air to air combat, but that future hasn't quite arrived yet.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:29 AM on January 9

^ my point was that without "dogfighting" the AF (provisionally) doesn't need a chair installed in the aircraft, the aircraft controller can be sitting in a bunker 100 miles or on the other side of the planet, at least until this communication path is disrupted by the enemy, said arena being the new strategic high ground of this century & millennium.
posted by troy at 9:35 AM on January 9

Since the question seems to be very well answered with professional sounding points in regard to an 'ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL...how would two stealth fighters fight each other' question, I will add that if we are going to pretend that an enemy has stealth fighter technology in the future that we also pretend that we have blowing-up stealth fighter missles in that future. Or better stealth than they do. There. We win.
posted by Kensational at 11:38 AM on January 9

Air to air engagements may be divided into two categories by the Rules of Engagement that apply: those where visual identification is required before a weapon release is authorized, and those where release is authorized upon electronic identification alone.

In those instances where the political leadership or practical circumstances dictate a visual ID (which is frequently the case) opposing aircraft may merge before an engagement starts; the resulting close-range engagement will usually dictate a heat missle or a gun shot. In these cases, the stealthier jet has the advantage that ground radar has probably not alerted the his opponent to his presence, and the airborne radars in the enemy jets will not pick him up until the last seconds of the merge.

When electronic ID is sufficient, the stealthier jet has a more distinct advantage. It's radar missles may be in the air and homing by the time the less-stealthy jet is able to acquire.

Stealth is never an absolute; it's always relative. The only thing that hasn't changed in almost a hundred years of aerial combat is that he who gets seen first usually dies.
posted by dinger at 1:52 PM on January 9

If the stealth aspects are working as claimed, air-to-air missiles aren't going to be any use.

Hmm. Remember, Serbia shot down a Nighthawk using a half-assed radar hack.

I think this "stealth aspects working as claimed" bit needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It works, but only to a point, and you'll never be able to make the plane anywhere near invisible in the sense that "air-to-air missiles aren't going to be any use".

Maybe those missiles will come with software that pulls off a phasing radar trick like the Serbs used. Maybe they'll use multiple visual and ranged detection technologies all fed through a computer with a neural network built in. Technology evolves on both sides of the equation.
posted by dhartung at 9:40 AM on January 10