WHILE DECLINING to discuss the Object 1.42 directly, saying that he does not "-represent the design bureau", Mikhail Waldenberg, general designer with the recently established VPK MAPO, sheds an interesting light on the Russian attitude towards stealth.
"I don't believe in magic wands. I don't believe in spoiling an aircraft's flight capability, and I don't believe that poor manoeuvrability can be compensated for with a reduced radar cross-section [RCS]," Waldenberg maintains.
The Object 1.42 is a large, close-coupled delta-canard design, with a triangular fuselage cross-section. A full-scale mock-up built in the late 1980s was notable for the exceptional size of the foreplanes, according to those who saw it. Its primary medium-range air-to-air missile (AAM), the Vympel R-77 (AA-12 Adder), would probably be carried internally in flat bays to reduce RCS, while long-range AAMs would probably be semi-recessed.
A certain amount of surface shaping to reduce the RCS is probable, but the Russian emphasis is placed more on the use of easily applied coatings to reduce radar signature.
In concert with concerns that optimising a reduced RCS compromises manoeuvrability, Waldenberg also believes that stealth can be countered by using bi-static radar and other such approaches.
It is relatively "easy" to reduce an aircraft's RCS, when it is facing only a single hostile radar: the emitter and receiver are co-located.
It is far more difficult to account for all potential radar "scatterers" on an airframe, when the emitter and possible receivers are physically separate. So-called bi-static radars are becoming increasingly popular in Russia as a way to counter both stealth and heavy electronic-countermeasures.
Source: Flight International