Uncloaking Stealth
Kirt's Cogitations™ #94

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Uncloaking Stealth

Even during development of the Stealth aircraft fleet, it became known that certain vulnerabilities existed which could be exploited with relative ease, and was later evidenced by the GSM cellphone systems in Europe being manipulated to "uncloak" B2 bombers during operations over Bosnia. Susceptibility to other forms of electronic warfare (EW) shocked Pentagon planners into reality, again. To address those issues, a new generation of electronic warfare equipment is in the works that combines the best attributes of both the present governor of Kal-ee-forn-ya and Mr. Albert Einstein. BAE Systems is working on an integrated directed energy weapon (DEW)/high I.Q. false target generator that will allow both manned and unmanned aircraft to confuse the enemy into believing it is actually multiple targets over a wide area of sky until it can get close enough to fry his electronics with MW bursts of energy. These fully automated systems detect the threat, decide which strategy to employ, then direct the attack all the way through execution (literally). Volume and extreme power demands currently limit the weapon pods to use on a B-52 bomber, but hopes are technology advances will permit deployment on small fighters and UAVs by 2012.