OK, so maybe bombers can navigate, but what about fighters and GPS-guided weapons?
Don't tell me you've never heard of it
Air defense systems use radars operating on short or very short waves, because only they are accurate and suitable for guiding anti-aircraft missiles.
For this reason, stealth is optimized for such radio wave lengths. However, if long waves were used, stealth would lose its advantages. It is easy to detect an "invisible" aircraft, when the transmitter and receiver of such a radar are several hundred meters apart (and this is possible for radars operating on long waves. This is how British radar worked during World War II).
In addition, the Czechs have developed passive radars that can also detect stealth:
"
Rule number one for defense contractors: Don't tick off the U.S. government. A small Czech tech firm called Era developed and last year started selling a $10 million radar that can detect stealth jets, those heretofore invisible aircraft. It lined up as possible buyers such countries as China, Pakistan and Vietnam.
This didn't please the U.S., which this fiscal year plans to spend $4.7 billion on 24 F-22 stealth striker jets and millions more to upgrade its two other stealth aircraft, the B-2 bomber and the F-117 Nighthawk.
So the U.S. bought one of the Czech radars, called Vera-E, to test its "effectiveness and technical aspects," according to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Vera apparently works, or at least well enough that the U.S. State Department suggested the Czech government reconsider foreign sales of it. China had ordered six of the machines. A U.S. ally and NATOmember since 1999, the Czech Republic scuttled the sale. "We discussed the issue with them, but the decision was theirs," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher."
source:
Forbes
