From:	Alex van der Kleut <sommers@*****.UMICH.EDU>
Subject:	Re: Eurowars
Date:	Fri, 1 May 1998 16:19:13 -0400

At 01:51 PM 5/1/98 -0500, SteveD wrote:
> Basically yes you can hide a carrier but the Nightwraiths WERE NOT CARRIER
>LAUNCHED. Carrier landings screw up the avionics is stealth aircraft
>that's why none of the present ones have tailhooks. Of course it's quite
>common for present day stealth aircraft to be launched from afar and
>refulled in mid flight.

Actually, stealth aircraft don't have problems with their avionics being
screwed up by carrier landings. One of the reasons that they don't have a
tailhook is that there's not much room inside them for the equipment, since
everything is internal.

But the big reason they don't do carriers is the paint. All of that cool
RAM and paint they use to bounce radar reacts BADLY to sea air. All of the
salt content and stuff corrodes after a few weeks. Same thing happened to
the Navy's newest F18 (E/F?). The paint all caused it to corrode. But I
think that they just fixed it with the newest batch 6 months ago (it was
about 2 years ago that I went to McDonnel Douglas and checked out their
plant). They will be using the new type on the F22, which isn't quite as
stealthy as the F177, but pretty close.

Sommers