"Air Vice-Marshal James Beck, the RAF's director of capabilities and programs, said that when he was flying the Tornado multirole combat aircraft in the early 2000s, it was still an "underlying assumption that ultra low flying would allow a formation the ability to penetrate deep into enemy territory without being detected by their integrated air missile defense systems." The assumption was that the hostile radars could not see through the ground, and this "underpinned our tactical thinking for many decades," he said, addressing the UK's Royal United Services Institute on Monday."
"Terrain-masking was long a credible tactic, with fighters flying low and fast beneath the radar horizon and using the earth's curvature and ground clutter to evade line-of-sight radars. The approach made sense against legacy radars and surface-to-air missile systems. Advancements, however, are making low-level penetration insufficient on its own. New radar and missile developments have made the classic approach "obsolete," Beck said, characterizing the shift in technology as tantamount to a "flattening of the earth.""
New radar and missile technology has reduced the protective effect of terrain-masking, placing extremely low-flying aircraft at much higher detection risk. Ultralow flight no longer reliably enables formations to penetrate deep into enemy territory without detection by integrated air missile defense systems. Legacy radars and surface-to-air missiles relied on ground clutter and the radar horizon to hide low-flying aircraft, but modern systems such as Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars and Over-the-Horizon (OTH) radars can detect and track low-level targets and multiple contacts. The shift effectively 'flattens' the battlefield, making deep-strike operations more difficult and increasing the importance of countermeasures and alternative approaches.
Read at Business Insider
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