Also, the APQ-181 is a LPI radar, which means it’s specifically designed to avoid correlation of signals such that you can track by the signals emitted. There are presumably some downsides to working in LPI, but the upside is that the signal is designed to be indistinguishable from an increased noise floor.
Which they don't.
Then the B-2s fly in in unopposed.
The key to the B-2s is dropping the F-35s. Which seems to be hard.
The stealth bombers were just the most convenient vehicle for carrying the massive bomb.
As always, the side who can best maximize the capabilities of their platforms while hiding/compensating for their limitations is the one who will win.
The radar absorbing compounds of stealth aircraft are highly optimized for specific wavelengths (usually X-band) and fall off heavily outside that frequency band. Similarly, the radar cross section of stealthy aircraft is highly optimized for specific purposes (usually evading GBAD in the forward direction) and rapidly falls off in other scenarios. Most "stealth" aircraft are actually fairly visible from other directions.
That said, multistatic radar with transmitters-of-opportunity like cell towers and civil radio stations has always been in strong competition with fusion power as "the tech that is forever 10 years in the future". The transmitters are often not very powerful compared to dedicated radar systems and worse, they transmit energy in the horizontal plane rather than upwards where the planes are. The frequencies involved are much lower, which inherently leads to less radial accuracy unless you use VERY large antennas. Unlike a dedicated radar system the signals they send out are typically not shaped optimally for radar purposes, so signal processing like pulse compression becomes much harder. Because the signals are inherently not as predictable as normal radar signals you need MUCH more computing power. Finally, atmospheric conditions become fiendishly tricky for long range, because signal delays between each transmitter-target-receiver triple will be different. This means resolution goes way down if there's too many clouds or ionospheric interference, often to the point of uselessness.
Many of those problems are mostly terrible when trying to detect aircraft at long range though, and largely go away for short range surface use like in port. I'm still not entirely sure why for a port, which is stationary and requires tons of infrastructure investment anyway, this system would be preferable to a normal civilian type radar system. You can get a conventional one for at most a few tens of thousands, while this system apparently requires a trailer full of RF signal processing equipment. That is likely to cost at least in the order of magnitude more, while probably being less accurate.
Is that different than ships, which in recent years/decades have tended to look a certain way (a 'finite' number of fixed angles):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knud_Rasmussen-class_patrol_ve...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absalon-class_frigate
Do ships have to have a low return (?) at more angles?
See also the "Reduction" section on Wikipedia in the article about Radar Cross Section: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross_section#Purpose_sh...).
I imagine there are similar issues with ship design. Since these things are wavelength specific, you probably have a bigger computational problem for a bigger vessel. You can't just solve for the design on a miniature and scale it up to build it.
The U.S. Navy built some stealthy ships.[1][2] But they were very expensive. It seems to have been a dead end not worth the trouble. There are so many sensors, shipborne, airborne, spaceborne, and onshore, that trying to hide a slow moving warship isn't likely to work against a peer opponent.
I was reading about that and was really interested in trying it - got quite close to buying some kit (KrakenSDR) - then it seemed that particular capability got removed suddenly a couple of years ago due to ITAR regulations, or at least legal types getting worried about ITAR...
https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/yu9rei/krakenrf_pul...
(1) Seems like these very challenges also make the space more interesting because not everyone can make a good passive radar system and the passive aspect obviously provides stealth (not to the plane, but to the party doing the surveillance). Is this fair to say? (2) What if there are multiple receivers in clock sync? Does that make it easier? (3) I'm a bit confused about your comment about very large antennas -- I thought antenna size should be proportional to the wavelength. So if the system is using digital TV broadcast, then the antenna size would be roughly the size of DTV antennas, and bigger would not necessarily help? Or is this not the case? (4) Re the ionopheric issues -- do the clouds or ionophere reflect the TV/fm waves? I thought each tx-target-rx triplet having a different delay would be a good thing because it would dismbiguate multiple targets.
(either directly, or by bouncing a radar signal off the ionosphere and receiving it again)
You should still show up as a shadow?
there is precedent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar but it seems like a limiting factor is suitable frequencies and resolution
[1] https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/11/18/737423/guardians-of...
[2] https://www.yiminzhang.com/pdf/radar13_passive.pdf