TABLE OF CONTENTS E.F.Knott
There are five basic reasons for conducting RCS measurements, and each has a different influence on the way the measurements are carried out. The five reasons are
Acquire understanding of basic scattering phenomena;
Acquire diagnostic data;
Verify system performance;
Build a database;
Satisfy a contractual requirement.
Some of these may seem to overlap, but the overlapping depends on the particular objective of the measurement program. This will become more clear in a moment.
The most basic of the five reasons is the pursuit of an understanding of fundamental scattering phenomena. Despite the completeness of electromagnetic theory, some phenomena remain incompletely described, such as the scattering from the base of a cone. In the early 1960s, for example, Keller applied his new geometric theory of diffraction to the scattering from a cone [1, 2]. Remarkable for its cookbook simplicity, this theory accurately predicted the radar return from a cone, except over certain angular sectors.
Bechtel noted errors in Keller s 1961 paper and gave the corrected results in 1965 [3]. Nevertheless, comparisons between measurements and predictions made with the correction formula still showed disagreement, a problem reiterated by Bechtel in 1969 [4]. Blore conducted an experimental study of blunted cones [5] and noted the failure of the theory, but offered no explanation of the failure nor of a correction that might be applied.
Using an equivalent current approach, Burnside and Peters sought to improve the predictions by accounting for multiple...
