The advent of Stealth aircraft
- phylo_roadking
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The Lichtenstein airborne sets are usually regarded as a "wonderweapon"...but most people forget they had TWO really bad inherent faults - the first was its range - it was ONLY effective within two and a half miles of a target!!! Second, it was tied to just one wavelength, and the advent of "window" effectively blocked this immediately Lichtenstein only had a very small window of usefulness.
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It had another fault-because it was still based on a fairly long wavelength by today's standards, it needed a fairly large and cumbersome antenna apparatus. This array was so heavy and caused so much drag, that it significantly reduced the aircraft's performance.phylo_roadking wrote:The Lichtenstein airborne sets are usually regarded as a "wonderweapon"...but most people forget they had TWO really bad inherent faults - the first was its range - it was ONLY effective within two and a half miles of a target!!! Second, it was tied to just one wavelength, and the advent of "window" effectively blocked this immediately Lichtenstein only had a very small window of usefulness.
- phylo_roadking
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Both the US and German flying wing designs were designed as such to promote long range (perhaps intercontinental) bombing. They simply had less drag, hence better fuel efficiency.Visionist wrote:Indeed, and the Germans had developed both precision weapons and low light tv to a proficient degree by war's end.maltesefalcon wrote:Stealth aircraft were only useful once precision gudied weapon systems were available; complete with night vision targeting.
This would enable fairly small raids to accomplish what took thousands of sorties previously.
Imagine a Horten stealth bomber dropping a guided nuke on Fort Knox?!
Stretching things, certainly, but imagine it?...
The reduced radar profile was just a happy accident.