TABLE OF CONTENTS J.F.Shaeffer, M.T.Tuley, and E.F.Knott
It has been apparent for some time that the development of increasingly sophisticated detection systems threatens to reduce the mission effectiveness of many types of weapons platforms. Strong attention is now being given to methods of increasing survivability by reducing detectability. Because the specific configuration of any platform is determined by many factors involved in its mission, the final design represents a compromise between conflicting requirements. The purpose of this chapter is to survey some of the radar cross section reduction (RCSR) options available. Although we focus on the radar signature, remember that other signatures must also be considered (e.g., infrared, acoustic, magnetic, optical), and design for signature control must carefully balance all signatures and threats.
This chapter is intentionally tutorial, with emphasis on concepts rather than application to specific systems. There are several reasons for this approach. For one, access to many research and development efforts is limited in the interest of national security. Also, there are other media for the exchange of technical information on specific application efforts.
Complex targets like ships and aircraft can be represented as collections of basic geometric elements, such as flat plates, cone frusta, spheroids, edges, vertices, or blended surfaces. As such, we typically isolate the dominant sources of target echo and fix our attention on a limited number of individual elements instead of the composite target. The widespread use of high-range resolution (HRR) and inverse synthetic aperture radar images as diagnostic tools has firmly...
