Hey, /k/. Is there any advantage in RCS if one rounds-off certain

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Or in the hypothetical F-19 design?

>>32527015
>hypothetical

kek

>>32526938
rounded edges are detrimental to reducing RCS.

>>32527142
Yes, and no. It all depends on what aspects and bands you're designing for.

Supposedly some deep black projects have used curved edges quite well.

The Lockheed designs for a big loitering high-altitude flying wing that led to the Darkstar spring to mind.

>>32527122
I'm not following you.

>>32526938
>Hey, /k/. Is there any advantage in RCS if one rounds-off certain parts of the airframe, like pic related?

There is zero advantage to this.

Reducing RCS is a mathematical process, not an artistic process.

>>32528372
That model kit was very extensively researched, much more than you might guess at first.

The apocryphal story is that the Testors modelmaker designed their F-19 based on secondhand accounts about IR suppression and RCS reduction techniques mixed with an eyewitness account of the Have Blue by someone who had only seen it head-on in a hangar (hence, the angular cockpit and the inward-canted fins).

The seriousness of the response from the USAF when the model was first released (which was actually more significant than their response when Honda guessed the B-2's shape completely by accident for their CR-X TV spot) has led some to suspect that the Testors F-19 was instead based on secondhand descriptions of something else, another testbed that for whatever reason we haven't seen yet.

Darkstar is all I needed to believe that there's a lot more to stealth shaping than what we've actually seen.

>>32527236
So would a ball fitted with pointy, angular spikes radiating in a 360 format be extremely stealthy?

>anechoic fighter

>>32529998
The stealthiest shape is essentially a diamond; a spiky ball wouldn't be very stealthy. Look at it this way, ignoring RAM, a jet's total RCS when viewed from all angles combined, is going to remain essentially constant, regardless of whether it looks like a big F-16 or an F-22 with the same surface area. The goal is to make the angles reflect in as few directions as possible - a triangle would be best, as they found out with the A-12, crawling waves make a straight tail bad, because radar energy can turn into electricity, then radiate back as radar energy in all directions around the axis of that straight tail's edge, including back to the radar.

>>32529998
That's actually not that far off from the logic behind a curved stealth shape.

The edge alignment that you see on something like a B-2 or an F-22 works great for a strike aircraft that goes into and out of a warzone because it focuses the radar return into 4 discrete peaks that are angled roughly 45° off the direction of movement and from the side-on view.

Great for going in and out, not as great for something that loiters and circles as there's now a risk that the enemy's radar will pick up one or more of those peaks.

Meanwhile, a curved shape will dissipate that return in any/all directions while avoiding discrete peaks, and RAM etc can do tons to minimize that return even further. Perfect for something that loiters over a target, which is why the Darkstar had that hemispherical fuselage.

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>>32530153
You need a ton of RAM though; the RCS for a sphere at any angle is its cross-section. At least for an arrowhead diamond, etc you have a heap of angles where the RCS is much, much smaller.