Stealth performance evaluation of helicopter against airborne early warning radar considering trimming control

Airborne pulse Doppler radar is a key threat to the military helicopter, and assessing the stealth performance of helicopter against airborne early warning radar is helpful to the helicopter’s stealth design and operational planning. In this paper, the Shooting and Bouncing Ray (SBR) and Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD) based high-frequency algorithms are used to calculate the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of helicopter, and the radar range equations are used to evaluate the stealth performance. In order to account for the effects of rotor flapping motions during actual flight, the aerodynamics model of whole helicopter is established and the attitudes and controls of helicopter at different flight states are trimmed and input into the RCS calculation module. The effects of helicopter flight speed, flying direction and operational environment on radar stealth performance are studied in focus. It is demonstrated by the results that the trimming control does have a great influence of more than 5 dB on the RCS of helicopter, and the introduction of the trim calculation brings the helicopter’s returns calculation closer to the reality. Variations in flight speed lead to the changes in the stealth performance of helicopter against Early Warning Aircraft (EWA), and the helicopter flight speed can be planned according to the operational requirements to minimize exposure distance or exposure time. Variations in flying direction mainly affect the detection properties of helicopter returns, and flying in the same direction with EWA usually gives the helicopter better low-observability than flying head-on. Variations in operational environment mainly affect the radar detection performance and the sensitivity of the detection performance to external factors; the same amount of change in some external factor causes a different amount of change in the helicopter’s detectability in different environments.