Naval Ships: Stealth vs Aesthetics

As it is well known that stealth is of little to no value in anything other than propaganda and it also imposes restrictions on design of vessels why should it be kept?

Surely visual apearence of your navy and freedom of restraints on the design of you ships superstructure is worth the negligable increase in radar report.

Its the same thing I said about the supposed sequel to the movie "Top Gun", the first film had something like an F-14 Tomcat to serve as the main protagonist of the story.

What are they going to use now F-35, F-22, what a joke, event stuff from their 4th (++) gen. that they are using right now looks like crap.

Looks mater, and stealth influenced design looks like shit!

For jokes: I once made a comment on Youtube regarding a video of an F-18 squadron on deployment:

"One day a Toyota Prius will be cool, on that day, so will be the F-18."

Looks are totally irrelevant to any military... case in point the A-10... I believe they say... "Ugly but well hung".

Equally the Bear bomber is the only propeller driven aircraft that actually needs a swept wing because it is the fastest propeller driven aircraft in the world...

And radar stealth is not useless... if it reduces the range at which your enemy can detect or track you then it is useful... it is only if it makes your aircraft a brick like the F-117 then it becomes a problem... for the money spent developing the short range slow F-117 able to carry two laser guided bombs as payload, they could have developed a long range cruise missile with similar speed, greater range, lower radar cross section and otherwise similar performance and saved a bit of money.

I would rather have ships with more CIWS systems than ships that are "stealth" and well guess what if your superstructure design is not infulenced by stealth then you can add more CIWS systems to it.

Isos wrote:

The-thing-next-door wrote:I would rather have ships with more CIWS systems than ships that are "stealth" and well guess what if your superstructure design is not infulenced by stealth then you can add more CIWS systems to it.

It is also less expensive. Stealth design are not easy to build and they don't only influence weapon loads.

Yay consensus for once.

Well if you enemy is stealth too it's not an advantage anymore neither a disadvantage.

Let me put it in a different context.

What you are basically saying is that snipers should not wear any camouflage because it is expensive and slows them down and limits what they can carry and enemies with thermal imagers can see them anyway.

My reply is that while camouflage is never perfect, if you use the right techniques and keep your camo up to date (ie thermal camo) it is still better than no stealth at all.

A non stealthy aircraft could be detected from hundreds if not thousands of kms by some types of radar... if they can detect you from such distances then your moves are not secret and your options are limited.

I would rather have ships with more CIWS systems than ships that are "stealth" and well guess what if your superstructure design is not infulenced by stealth then you can add more CIWS systems to it.

Generally speaking if one CIWS does not work then more than one wont do any better. The main advantage of having more than one CIWS is being able to deal with more than one threat at a time. Large Russian vessels already have 8-12 CIWS, and the combined gun missile systems like Kashtan and soon Pantsir can deal with more than one threat each at a time by launching missiles at 3 targets and dealing with one target with guns when it gets close enough.

That means with such mounts and 8-12 of them it can engage up to 32-48 targets at one time and the very high velocity of the missiles means the engagement period is less than 30 seconds or so... in other words 64-96 targets per minute...

For a ship it is rather different... stealth makes it look smaller... so a small ship could look tiny... a large ship look like a medium sized ship, or a medium sized ship look small...

With corner reflectors and jammers a tiny ship could look like a carrier... it is deception as well as camouflage.

It is also less expensive. Stealth design are not easy to build and they don't only influence weapon loads.

It would be less expensive to build MiG-3 fighters... you could build millions... they would be incredibly cheap built in those numbers...

Weapon loads have gotten smaller anyway... during WWII the US sent thousands of bombers with full payloads of bombs to hit one factory.... and usually had to go back the next night to finish the job... no disrespect here... it was the same for everyone.

Later navigation and bombing systems got better and better, so instead of showering the area with bombs in the hope you get the target anyway, they could hit the target with fewer and fewer weapons.

Guided weapons meant instead of thousands of bombers with tens of thousands of bombs you could hit a factory reliably with one laser guided bomb.

Most new large bombers have internal weapons anyway... it makes them more aerodynamic for longer ranged flights.

We have seen videos of Su-34s in Syria attacking targets with maybe 4 or 6 iron bombs each... for most real world targets you don't need thousands of bombs now.

Yay consensus for once.

Stealth costs money, but it does not have to be super expensive... you can choose the level of stealth to make it affordable and effective.

The Russians with the Su-57 have clearly chosen manouver capability as being as important as stealth... which means they will likely be getting more than 187 of these large stealth fighters... even not counting the naval versions.

GarryB wrote:Looks are totally irrelevant to any military... case in point the A-10... I believe they say... "Ugly but well hung".

Equally the Bear bomber is the only propeller driven aircraft that actually needs a swept wing because it is the fastest propeller driven aircraft in the world...

Yes well but they also say that " A beautiful ship is a good ship"
And the new corvette 20386 project is an ugly one, and perhaps not good. The Moskva helicopter carriers very ugly, and not succesful. Also the sea behaving very not good.
I dont know if it apply to planes, but generally something beautiful like SU27 or MiG29 were also very succesful.

We are talking about ships not snipers or fighters. Ships will use plenty of radars that could be detected passively.

Will they?

In that case why are carrier groups so hard to track down?

I guess fighter aircraft are also easy to find because they will be using their radars all the time too...

During peace time they will use their search radars just for safety to avoid collisions and the like, but operationally they will tend to operate in groups and one vessel in the group might use its radar occasionally, but the preference is to be part of a carrier group and get radar information from AWACS aircraft... the enemy will of course detect that radar but wont know where the carrier is or how many ships are there...

The stealth on them reduce their size but typical range you detect them with modern radars shouldn't be that much affected.

To detect them with your radar you need to give away your presence and your location...

For fighters it is really good because it works against x band radars of missiles. Against detection radar like nebo radar it is less usefull. You are even saying that on most of the f-22 threads.

For targeting anything a high frequency radar is generally used so if your anti ship missile with its X band radar can't get a lock then it becomes useless... even if it can get a lock the lock is less solid so it would be more likely to be decoyed by a drone or jammer or flares and chaff...

Stealth wont make a ship invisible, just harder to find and track and destroy... which makes it worth it... just like camouflage on a sniper wont make them invisible... a sniper in a gillie suit standing on a footpath in the middle of a city is easy to spot too... that is where tactics and training come into it... like not blasing away with radar 24/7 on every ship you have.

French la fayette class is the perfect exemple of how western military see stealth: so good that it doesn't need weapon. Well now they are upgrading them with weapons...

That has nothing to do with stealth... Russian vessels normally cannot be accused of being under armed...

Limited use like on grigorovitch is more than enough specialy to maximize the effect of the jaming. If you go for something like US zumwalt good luck with the design and the construction.

I know it will piss you off, but going back to soldiers... sometimes full stealth suits the role... in regard to the navy however that really means submarines in my opinion. For everything else a good set of camouflaged fatigues that does not ignore body armour and load carrying capacity should not be sacrificed... there is no need for everyone on the battlefield to look like a sniper.

Having said that when active camo becomes available that makes normal clothing hard to see then I am all for that... any edge in combat.

Yes well but they also say that " A beautiful ship is a good ship"
And the new corvette 20386 project is an ugly one, and perhaps not good. The Moskva helicopter carriers very ugly, and not succesful. Also the sea behaving very not good.
I dont know if it apply to planes, but generally something beautiful like SU27 or MiG29 were also very succesful.

The problem there is that there are plenty of design features that work with symmetry and lines that are not really relevant to a weapon.

I have seen a lot of design students draw an AK but they make the magazine curve the other way instead of forward... have a look at the gun of the guy outside the door in the Bruce Willis movie the "fifth element" and his gun is clearly designed by a design student rather than someone who knows anything about guns.

The magazine is curved forward because of the shape of the bullets so when they stack they dont stack vertically... they curve forward.

I have a semi auto .22lr rifle with 15 round magazines but because they are straight you can only get about 11 or 12 rounds in them because rimmed rounds don't stack straight.

Someone who knows about weapons has better appreciation of looks than a layman... case in point is the Mi-28A... your average person would see that thimble nose antenna and think it looked stupid. Someone who knows a bit about Russian weapons would know that is the command guidance antenna that allows the aircraft to carry 16 guided ATGMs on two weapon pylons that are super cheap and rather capable out to 6km against pretty much any point target... whether it has an IR or radar signature or not.

Not only are they cheap and carried in large numbers on the aircraft... they are supersonic and really don't impose very serious limitations on the flight performance of the aircraft after they are launched and until they impact the target.

Of course now the current missile they use has radar and laser beam riding guidance so it is no longer needed... but a layman would not know that.

Most stupid thing ever written on this forum ...

Hang on.... that is the subject of this whole thread actually.

Practical features vs looks... why do we need a useful feature like being hard to see or hard to target when we can make them look pretty instead?

GarryB wrote:

Most stupid thing ever written on this forum ...

Hang on.... that is the subject of this whole thread actually.

Practical features vs looks... why do we need a useful feature like being hard to see or hard to target when we can make them look pretty instead?

Haha yes but point is that a good designed ship or aircraft shows in the lines. Its sea behaving or how it behaves in the air.
If you take the F-35 its an ugly one, and it behaves bad in a dogfight. Not surprising when you compare it to the Su27 which has much better agility and looks way better. You can see it in the lines.

Then the F35 is better in other areas like stealth, but certainly not agility.

So in terms of manoveribilty and agility, sea ability the old saying "A beautiful ship is a good ship" is actually correct.


Then you have combinations, both the F22 and SU57 have good lines, and from what i hear behave really good as well.
And i really dont think anyone designs a weapon to be "pretty"... still if the lines are good the vessel will behave good in certain areas.

But my argument is that the "looks good is good" design method relies on some fundamental design knowledge, and not just what looks pretty.

A ship could look OK but be totally wrong for the mission it is intended for...

It could be totally wrong for an intended mission because it does not have enough onboard space for food and fresh water for very long patrols... you are hardly going to spot that just by the look of the vessel.

Another aspect is fashion... a ship that looks like an older established design might look good because it looks like that older successful design yet there are plenty of ways you can make a good design bad... the F-35 is case in point.

If the F-35 was never intended to be a VSTOL aircraft it would be a much better design with no internal fan considerations that made it the fat kid...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... many think the Su-25 is ugly because it is a straight wing aircraft in an age of supersonic stealth fighters, but considering its mission it is a beautiful bird and best for the job...

Of course, i think we can agree on that. Fashion is shortlived, but i hope the zumwalt is sunk in deep water and never spoken of again. Either its a gigantic leap or a total failure, i think the latter.

However, a really stealthy ship or plane can can look sleek and good. Just as the su25 can look great to us which know how good it is.

This threads purpose iam not sure of, but i must say that the new corvette 20386 is an ugly one, but if its really good in stealth and mission handling so be it.

Sometimes new is different and it takes a while to get used to the look.

I have to admit that all through the 70s I thought the tube planes as I called them... MiG-21, MiG-17, MiG-15, Su-7, Su-17 all looked a little boring and then the MiG-25 appeared, and then the MiG-23/27 and MiG-29 and Su-27 and I started to like seeing the old tubes and appreciated their looks a little more.

Seeing the F-16 everywhere I got bored pretty quick despite its sleek design... of course the late model conformal tanks totally ruined its sleek design and I like it even less now.

My favourite western aircraft is probably the Buccaneer... curvy, fast at low level, and able to operate from carriers.

I really hope that the Russian MOD drops this rediculus "stealth" ship fassion trend it is almost as bad as bloody modern arcitecture.

That is like saying I hope the new Russian Army uniforms are bright orange so everyone can see them properly and they wont get mistaken for being Americans...

Stealth is just a fact, whether you like it or not.

It is not like they are going for 100% stealth with everything retractable and flat....

Of course having said that the first stealth aircraft had flat surfaces like the F-117 but as computing power improved they were able to design curves... so they might have a lot of ugly flat shaped designs now but perhaps they will develop into curves at some stage...