I helped make the instrumentation radars that measured the stealthiness of these aircraft, so they do show up on a sufficiently wide-band radar system.
Combat mode would not be so easy to see, and would drop off the screens.
Essentially, drop tanks may be doing that now.
Tracking an F-22 is one thing. Locking a weapon onto it is something else altogether. Last I checked, fire control radar range is a fraction of the range of tracking radar.
The F22 in basically reduces the range of the radar trying to track it. This leaves gaps that the F22 can exploit. If they had external tanks the F22 becomes like any other plane.
If it were me, I would always leave the F22 visible to radar unless I didn’t want to be seen. Leaving it visible makes it that much harder build a database of images.
In effect make it as expensive as possible to track.
I wonder if conformal fuel tanks were developed that would increase the range without limiting the stealth capabilities.
Stealth was a one trick pony, and is hopelessly doomed. Radar sees it all, even if all it sees is a hole in the sky where a perfect stealth plane is. “Seeing” is simply a matter of applying enough processing power to what the radar is seeing.
So we are trying to fight exponentially growing computing power that explodes continuously, with a piece of airframe hardware we will can update every 35 years.
Keep those exterior fuel tanks until hostilities commence, so they think they are good to go on the tracking. Then lose them. Or let them decoy while the F-117s do the dirty work.
“That being said, even combat-configured F-22s are not invisible to enemy radar, contrary to popular belief. “
RCS of a bumble-bee is darned near invisible.
Stealth tracking was possible in the 1980’s. As others have pointed out, guiding a missile to it is the more difficult thing to do.
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