Locating Stealth Fighters with Cheap Cameras Without Using AI or Radar [video]

> Presumably scattered radar receivers can detect faint reflections using similar correlation.

Yes, multistatic radars are already in service. An advance on the concept is that the active transmitter can be placed outside anticipated weapons range and those within range are merely passive receivers.

There have been proposals to build such systems that use 'oblivious' transmitter sources such as commercial radio broadcasts.

Indeed. And to add to your argument, AI may be effective in controlling aircraft for certain tasks some day. But there are still many that will either require a pilot there, or greatly benefit from a pilot there.

The "drones will replace everything" argument does not understand fully the missions required of combat aircraft. I won't be as foolish to say it could never happen. But to those who argue that, say, the F-35 should be canceled in favor of a drone, need to show how their drone can do what a manned strike aircraft like the F-35 can do.

And indeed, stealth was always a "make air defense more expensive" prospect. And while techniques have come out to counter some of the benefits of stealth, they all come with tradeoffs and added costs....which was precisely the point.

> And cameras can't be permanently installed on the open ocean.

If the camera can self-calibrate against known objects then camera motion can be adjusted for. Could use visible reference points (sun, moon, stars) with clear skies. Stars may be visible by a sensitive camera in daytime with good collimation (bottom of well story https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/star-search/ ). There are also radio sources (GPS satellites) or more SciFi solution of noisy stellar objects??

> And while AI might eventually be effective at controlling combat aircraft, as of today that remains science fiction

That's ridiculous, sorry. There are literally AI bots being banned every day on War Thunder! There are armed long-range drones under cross-continent satellite control already! Of all the things AI/automation might have trouble with, operating rigorously-documented aircraft systems and making shoot/don't-shoot decisions of a handful of targets is surely one of the easiest[1]. If you as a military planner don't do this because you think it's impossible, you're going to lose.

[1] I mean seriously: would you have an easier time making AI to fire a missile or sew a prom dress? Not even close, the dress is harder. And AI garment manufacture is reaching the market already!

Yes, because if there's one thing computer vision solutions have historically had trouble with, it's being fooled by paint. The ludditism in this thread is shockingly strong.

Ultimately this is an economic argument. With about $10k you can buy a few dozen machine vision cameras [I would say "webcams" if I knew less about webcam compression], a PC with mobile modem, and a self-contained solar power supply. For $10M you can buy a thousand of these. A thousand of these evenly distributed within a few hundred kilometers of your country's borders are going to add dramatic capability to your air defense network compared to going from 5x $10M radar systems to 6x $10M radar systems. The key bit is that $10k costs far, far less than a single strike missile to take out one of these optical detection sites.

A full Patriot battery is $1100M, with the durable radar and command components being more like $400M.

Could the advantage be that a military monitoring installation of cameras is less detectable than a high-frequency radar monitoring installation? My understanding is that active radars are easily detectable, but perhaps cameras could be less so and that advantage could allow them to be deployed closer and might require less protection themselves.

And only the higher frequency radars are really useful for interception or weapons targeting. The lower frequency radars are good at long-range detection but they're far less precise.

Early stealth aircraft designs like the F-117 and B-2 were optimized for signature reduction in the frequency bands most typically used by air defense and fighter radar sets. Newer designs like the B-21 and F-47 supposedly have "broadband stealth" which reduces radar cross section across a broader range of radar bands but details are classified.

Depending on the war, you might not have cell phone (basestation) signals everywhere during actual fighting, relying on that seems a bit limiting.

Sure because at end of day, radar is all about detecting bouncing radio waves.

However, it's accuracy of detection that changes the battlefield and my guess is detecting disturbed cellular signals gives very low detection chance/range.

Also, if enemy thought it was problematic, hit cellular tower with missile is extremely easy.

Cells are highly directional, and should ideally not be installed facing the sky. Add stealth coatings to the mix, and your return signal may not be enough to detect. Radars use high power emitters.

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