Did Russia's New Radar Just Make America's Lethal Stealth Fighters Obsolete?

David Axe

Security, Asia

Nope--and we explain why. 

Russia is the latest country to claim that it has developed a new radar system that can detect stealth warplanes. But the Sunflower low-frequency over-the-horizon radar likely suffers all the same drawbacks that have plagued previous generations of similar sensors.

Namely, Sunflower might be able to detect a low-observable airplane. But it probably can’t do so with great fidelity — nor generate a useful targeting track for a missile to follow. Despite Russia’s claim, stealth aircraft are no less difficult to find, target and destroy now than they were before the Sunflower’s introduction.

Russian media touted the Sunflower radar in a series of articles in early July 2016. “Russia’s powerful over-the-horizon … Sunflower radar is capable of detecting and tracking the stealth fifth-generation plane or any other fighter jet that was designed to avoid detection,” state-owned website Sputnik News reported on July 2, citing an earlier article in Svobodnaya Pressa, an independent Russian tabloid.

Sunflower and similar radars “see stealth fighter jets as clearly as World War II-era aircraft,” Svobodnaya Pressa claimed.

Technically speaking, that’s almost certainly true. Fighter-size stealth aircraft are optimized to avoid detection by radars in higher-frequency bands such as the C, X, Ku and part of the S band.

Low-frequency radars with larger wavelengths aren’t really affected by the stealth features that tend to defeat higher-frequency sensors. There’s a resonant effect with low-frequency radars that can generate a significant signal return despite an aircraft’s low-observable shaping and radar-absorbing coating.