What is killing VLO is three things:
1. Electroopticals: A kinetheodolite (range tracking camera) on a 5-10 ton truck-
Could make CAVU day/night tracking of stealth simple.
Take this down to ADADS level-
And now you have denied the lolo sneakem environment as well. All for 1/10th the price of a high end AESA or even PESA array surveillance radar.
And the only difference between them, in depth, in purchased overlap, is that if the threat -chooses- to standoff a coast and launch ALCM, the defenses won't see the archer but the arrow.
We don't do that, preferring the dumb strategy of KMUs to ballistic ordnance trick.
2. Netcentrics/Fusion.
An LO object can be seen if you open up the noise threshold/range gates wide enough and _stare_ (sniff) through a given look angle for the minor specular shifts and phase scintillance that even a coated jet emits due to natural airframe aspect change through the scan. But you have to look for it. And the sky is big. Which means that a longwave radar which resonates the entire airframe as a dipole effect can cue a much shorter range (C/X Band, TAR/Engagement) radar which can then fire missiles with their own seekers. The longwave sees the bearing and perhaps height to within 300-3,000ft. The C-Band sees the ghost image and the X-Band (ARH Seeker) shouts real loud, from real close, getting the direct skin paint.
Here the essential thing to remember is that the engagement radar _does not have to be on_ as the LO platform approaches. So there is no warning in which to stear-clear.
3. Exotics.
It's such an obvious clue in, it astounds me how massively STUPID the world's militaries and particularly terrorist groups really are. You put the seeker on a micro-turbine powered RC++ scaled airframe and you fly the miniweapon to a given location point or route entry whereupon it uses GPS/INS run a search grid or skirmish line sweep with ten other drones. Total cost? Maybe half a million per 8 shot division launch.
Jets are anything but cold and against a cool sky backdrop of 20-30,000ft, during ingress, they will all but glow. So again, you bring the (cheap, marine FLIR) seeker to the point where it 'sees the dot', you call up your friends and you dogpile. If you miss the first time (and there are instances, in 1991, of 10ft, ADM-141 TALDs not being seen despite multiple passes by Iraqi Flogger and F-1 drivers, _in broad daylight on white painted weapons_), you throttle up, reaccelerate and come around again.
If you find nothing or kill all visible threats with fellow Taranites remaining, you fly to a prelaunch recovery zone and pop a parachute.
Particularly against loitering ISR platforms, such weapons, even in the hands of Quds or Hezbollah could essentially destroy our ability to sustain persistent overhead. They would be equally deadly against A-10 style CAS and Rotary Wing of all flavors.
Of course SSLs are the monster under the bed. Let's start with Zero Time Of Flight and a smaller installational footprint _BY ONE THIRD than the ZPU-2 14.5mm AAA gun. Now, let's add the reality that it's all scaleable which means with little bits of code to tune the wavefront overlaps, you can 'add glass' to move from 100 KW to 500KW pretty easily. As soon as you do 1MW, you can punch through the dirty, low altitude air and use an aerostat to send your beam 15-20km downrange.
SSL's also have a major role to play in CPGM defense but their role may well be secondary to what are not termed APS or Active Protection Systems, used on tanks to defeat ATR and ATGW.
Think about it. If you can hit a 2ft long weapon fired from deep in the heart of MMW/FLIR clutter and _hit it_, within a 2-3 inch body length sufficient to destroy the fuse electronics /alone/ (the round literally bounces, as a dud, off the side of the vehicle), how hard will it be to see a TWELVE TO FOURTEEN FOOT glidebomb coming down, festooned with straps and cable fairings and hingepoints and extendible wing sections, and do the exact same thing?
APS is _cheap_ compared to any S2A missile defense you can think of. We are talking a difference of 750,000 dollars vs. ten million ++ (as much as 60 million for an S-300 battery).
Drop those costs through mass production and suddenly fixed wing attack with ballistic PGMs on buildings-don't-move targets is no longer practical anyway, because not only are you risking the jet to bring a freefall bomb with a guidance kit to range. But the damn munition _will not hit_, even if the jet survives ingress.
CONCLUSION:
Of course, where this crosses the line from just Here's-Your-Sign stupid people do this to criminal fraud is simply this- None of the above will be even marginally effected by RFCM as a support jamming or SEAD strategy, whatsoever.
Indeed, if you can see a VLO jet, even transiently, sufficiently long enough to kill it with these 'welcome to /my/ bryar patch', in-depth defenses; you can sure as hell kill a conventional signature equivalent.
War Is A Racket.
It is played by organized criminals. And it's escalatory development through fielding and proliferation of specific systems advancements as status point unlocks (Whoring Stealth as a prime casepoint of inmates running the asylum in a real world condition) is entirely about _sustaining the system as what it is_: a self regenerative loop, rather than making any real attempt to gain a dominant advantage in winning or defending military objectives.
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