{"id":31823215,"date":"2026-11-08T16:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T15:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/radar-cross-section-figures-f-22-marble-f-35-golf-ball\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T16:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T15:12:50","slug":"radar-cross-section-figures-f-22-marble-f-35-golf-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/radar-cross-section-figures-f-22-marble-f-35-golf-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"F-22 Marble, F-35 Golf Ball: Where RCS Figures Come From"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n\r\n<!-- mfsh:top -->PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_VERBATIM_FROM_POST_19385236<!-- \/mfsh:top -->\r\n\r\n<p>In the autumn of 1975 a wooden model about ten feet long sat on a pole in the New Mexico desert while a radar looked at it. The number that came back from that pole is, by a long and badly documented chain of repetition, the reason you have read that an <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/f-22-raptor\/\">F-22 Raptor<\/a> shows up on radar as a marble and an <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/f-35-lightning-ii\/\">F-35 Lightning II<\/a> as a golf ball.<\/p><p>Those two comparisons are the most widely circulated technical claims in modern military aviation. They appear in newspaper graphics, in defence-industry marketing, in parliamentary debate and in the first paragraph of a thousand forum arguments. They are repeated as though somebody, somewhere, put a fighter in a chamber and wrote the answer down.<\/p><p>Nobody did, or if they did, the result is classified and you have not seen it. What you have seen is a chain of citation that can be followed to its end in an afternoon. This article follows it. The destination is not a measurement. It is a magazine page, a memoir, and a forum thread.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f4f6f8;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Most-quoted F-22 figure:<\/strong> 0.0001 m&sup2; (&minus;40 dBsm), attributed by Wikipedia to a 2009 Lockheed Martin release<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Most-quoted F-35 wording:<\/strong> &ldquo;lower than a metal golf ball at certain frequencies and angles&rdquo;<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Where the marble and golf ball come from:<\/strong> Aviation Week &amp; Space Technology, 14 November 2005, p. 27, as cited inline by GlobalSecurity<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Absolute RCS figures in Ben Rich&rsquo;s memoir:<\/strong> None. No square metres, no dBsm &mdash; only ratios and animals<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>What the memoir&rsquo;s golf ball and marble describe:<\/strong> A wooden scale model on a test pole, not an aircraft<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Published B-2 figures on one GlobalSecurity page:<\/strong> 0.0001 m&sup2; to 0.75 m&sup2; &mdash; a spread of four orders of magnitude<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><strong>Rows in that page&rsquo;s table citing the standard textbook:<\/strong> Zero. Knott, Schaeffer &amp; Tuley is listed in the bibliography and cited by nothing<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Golf Ball Was a Lump of Wood on a Pole<\/h2>\r\n<p>Ben Rich ran Lockheed&rsquo;s Skunk Works and wrote the memoir that most popular accounts of stealth are built on. In it, the radar specialist Denys Overholser describes measuring the faceted model that became <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/f-117-nighthawk\/\">Have Blue<\/a> and then the F-117 Nighthawk.<\/p>\r\n<p>Overholser&rsquo;s account says the model was measuring approximately the equivalent of a golf ball. That is the golf ball. It is not an aircraft. It is a wooden test article, roughly ten feet long, mounted on a pylon on a range, measured at one frequency from one set of angles.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/f-117-nighthawk-front-nellis-stealth-rcs.jpg\" alt=\"A USAF F-117A Nighthawk seen head-on in flight, showing its faceted surfaces\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An F-117A Nighthawk head-on over Nellis AFB, Nevada. The faceted shape that came out of those wooden-model measurements, and the aircraft most of the famous stealth numbers are really about. Photo: US Air Force via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p>What happens next in the same account is the part nobody repeats. The figure got better, and it got better for the wrong reason.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The model was now shrunk down from a golf ball to a marble because of bad data.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Denys Overholser<\/strong> &mdash; Lockheed Skunk Works radar specialist, quoted in Ben Rich and Leo Janos, Skunk Works, chapter 2<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>Read that twice. The celebrated improvement from golf ball to marble, in the one first-hand account anybody cites, is attributed to bad data. The range itself was the problem. The supporting pole registered a return of its own. Bird droppings on the mount, by Overholser&rsquo;s reckoning, increased the measured radar cross section by one and a half decibels &mdash; and three decibels is a doubling. An inversion layer in the desert air made one day&rsquo;s results four decibels better than they deserved to be.<\/p>\r\n<p>This is not a scandal. It is ordinary, careful range work, and the team knew exactly what it was fighting. It is only a scandal when a number produced under those conditions, about a lump of wood, is reprinted forty years later as the radar cross section of a combat aircraft.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">An Eagle&rsquo;s Eyeball Was an Answer to a Hypothetical<\/h2>\r\n<p>The second famous comparison is the eagle&rsquo;s eyeball. In the memoir it appears in a conversation, before anything had been built, in which Rich asks how small the proposed shape would look &mdash; as big as a condor, an eagle, an owl, a what? Overholser&rsquo;s reply is to try as big as an eagle&rsquo;s eyeball. The line immediately before it is that they are talking about something infinitesimal.<\/p>\r\n<p>It is an estimate offered in conversation about a design that did not yet exist. It has since been printed as a specification.<\/p>\r\n<p>The hummingbird has the same character. The memoir&rsquo;s opening scene has Rich watching a missile test and expecting the fighter&rsquo;s radar profile to show up as smaller than a hummingbird&rsquo;s. He then adds, in his own words, that this is what he is betting. It is a prediction with a wager attached, written as a scene-setter in the first pages of a book for general readers. It is not a test result.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vJ3iuU4Y4Bs\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;font-style:italic\">Lockheed Martin&rsquo;s own account of the F-117 and the origins of stealth shaping.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Ball Bearings Were a Sales Prop, and They Came in a Range<\/h2>\r\n<p>The most cinematic image in the whole story is Rich carrying ball bearings into the Pentagon and rolling them across the desks of four-star generals to show how small the aircraft would look.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;Rolling small ball bearings across the desks of four-star generals had paid off handsomely.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Ben Rich<\/strong> &mdash; Head of Lockheed&rsquo;s Skunk Works, Skunk Works, chapter 3<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>It worked. It was also, explicitly, a demonstration rather than a datum. One account inside the memoir, from Lindsay Anderson, says the ball bearings ranged in size from a golf ball to an eighth of an inch in diameter, and that nothing should measure less than an eighth-of-an-inch ball bearing. That last sentence describes a design floor &mdash; a target the programme set itself &mdash; not an achieved measurement.<\/p>\r\n<p>There is a further wrinkle worth recording, because it shows how quickly even a first-hand account drifts. Overholser&rsquo;s version of the Pentagon scene has Rich declaring &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s your airplane!&rdquo; Rich&rsquo;s own narration of the same moment has him saying something more careful: here is the observability of your airplane on radar. Two tellings of one event, in one book, and the looser one is the one that reads better.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Memoir Contains No Square Metres at All<\/h2>\r\n<p>This is the finding that ought to end most arguments. Across the whole stealth-origin section of the memoir there is not one absolute radar cross section. No square metres. No dBsm. Every quantitative claim is a ratio with no stated baseline.<\/p>\r\n<p>The faceted shape is a thousand times stealthier than a twelve-year-old drone. It is between ten thousand and one hundred thousand times lower in radar cross section than any American military aircraft or any new Soviet MiG. The <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/sr-71-blackbird\/\">SR-71 Blackbird<\/a> is about one hundred times stealthier than the F-14 Tomcat. All of those are comparisons. None of them can be converted into a number, because the thing they are compared against is never quantified either.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/lockheed-martin-f-22-raptor-radar-cross-section.jpg\" alt=\"An F-22 Raptor banking, seen from above and ahead\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An F-22 Raptor seen from above and ahead. The quoted marble figure describes a frontal aspect; this is not that aspect, which is exactly the problem with a single number. Photo: US Air Force via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<p>Rich&rsquo;s analogies for conventional aircraft make the genre obvious. The <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/b-52-stratofortress\/\">B-52 Stratofortress<\/a> is the equivalent of a flying dairy barn from the side. The F-15 is as big as a two-storey Cape Cod house with a carport. The Blackbird has the radar cross section of a single-engine Piper Cub &mdash; and Rich immediately qualifies it: that is what a radar operator would <em>think<\/em> he was tracking.<\/p>\r\n<p>That qualifier is the whole point. These were always descriptions of what an operator perceives, written to make an unfamiliar physical quantity legible to a general reading in 1994. They were never offered as engineering values, and the man who wrote them said so in the same sentence.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Marble and the Golf Ball Have One Source, and It Is a Magazine Page<\/h2>\r\n<p>So where do the modern figures come from &mdash; the ones attached to the F-22 and the F-35 rather than to a 1970s wooden model?<\/p>\r\n<p>GlobalSecurity&rsquo;s stealth-aircraft page is the usual upstream source for RCS tables on the internet. It gives the F-22 a frontal signature of &minus;40 dBsm with the size of a marble, and the F-35 &minus;30 dBsm with the size of a golf ball. And, to its credit, it says where it got them: an inline citation to <em>Aviation Week &amp; Space Technology<\/em>, 14 November 2005, page 27.<\/p>\r\n<p>One page of one trade magazine, published in 2005, is the origin of both comparisons. Everything downstream of it &mdash; the infographics, the comparison videos, the confident forum posts &mdash; is repetition of that page. Whether the magazine itself was reporting a measurement, a briefing, or a manufacturer&rsquo;s characterisation is a question the citation does not answer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1zjcnnx7igc\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;font-style:italic\">Real Engineering on the faceting, the physics and the computing limits that produced the shape.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Table Everyone Copies Cites a Forum Thread<\/h2>\r\n<p>The numeric table on that same GlobalSecurity page is the ancestor of most RCS tables in circulation. Its F-22 row gives 0.0001 to 0.0005 m&sup2; and its F-35 row 0.0015 to 0.005 m&sup2;. Both rows carry three reference markers. Those three references are an unnamed personal web page on a consumer ISP domain, a thread on the f-16.net discussion forum, and a university course PDF.<\/p>\r\n<p>That is the sourcing. A forum thread is load-bearing for a figure that has been quoted in defence journalism for twenty years.<\/p>\r\n<p>Meanwhile the page&rsquo;s own bibliography lists Knott, Schaeffer and Tuley&rsquo;s <em>Radar Cross Section<\/em> &mdash; the standard reference text on the subject &mdash; as item [4]. Not a single row in the table cites it. The authoritative source is present as decoration.<\/p>\r\n<p>The page also disagrees with itself. Its first table gives the F-117 as 0.003 m&sup2;; its second gives the same aircraft as 0.025 m&sup2; or less. And the F-35 entry pairs 0.005 m&sup2; with &minus;30 dBsm, which are not the same quantity: &minus;30 dBsm is 0.001 m&sup2;, and 0.005 m&sup2; is roughly &minus;23 dBsm. The table is internally inconsistent in its own arithmetic.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The B-2 Spans Four Orders of Magnitude on a Single Page<\/h2>\r\n<p>For the <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/aircraft\/b-2-spirit\/\">B-2 Spirit<\/a>, the same page offers, in prose, a value widely reported to be about &minus;40 dBsm; a figure of approximately 0.75 m&sup2; by some accounts; and a head-on value of 0.01 m&sup2; from some reports. Its tables add 0.1 m&sup2; and 0.0001 m&sup2;.<\/p>\r\n<p>Those span from one ten-thousandth of a square metre to three quarters of a square metre &mdash; a factor of 7,500. The attributions are &ldquo;widely reported&rdquo;, &ldquo;by some accounts&rdquo; and &ldquo;some reports&rdquo;. No named source is given for any of them.<\/p>\r\n<p>Any one of those numbers, lifted alone and put in a graphic, looks authoritative. Presented together, as the page itself presents them, they are an admission that nobody writing the page knew.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/11\/lockheed-martin-f-35a-lightning-ii-rcs.jpg\" alt=\"An F-35A Lightning II in flight seen from above\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">An F-35A Lightning II. Wikipedia describes its signature as lower than a metal golf ball at certain frequencies and angles; the qualifier is the part that matters. Photo: US Air Force via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why a Single Number Could Not Be Right Anyway<\/h2>\r\n<p>Suppose a genuine measurement were published tomorrow. It still would not be the aircraft&rsquo;s radar cross section, because there is no such single quantity.<\/p>\r\n<p>Radar cross section is a function of viewing angle. It is also a function of frequency. A shape optimised to scatter X-band energy away from a nose-on threat behaves quite differently when illuminated from the beam, from above, or at VHF. The number is a property of a geometry, a frequency and an aspect, taken together &mdash; not of an airframe.<\/p>\r\n<p>The scale of that variation is not a rounding error. In our own earlier work on small drones, measured figures for a single quadcopter ranged from 0.004 m&sup2; to 0.27 m&sup2; purely as a function of viewing angle &mdash; a factor of about seventy, or 18 dB, for one unchanging object. There is no reason to expect a faceted or blended fighter to be better behaved.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Wikipedia&rsquo;s F-22 article, in a sentence that carries no citation at all, gets this right: the RCS value is a restrictive measurement of the aircraft&rsquo;s frontal or side area from the perspective of a static radar. Its F-35 article is similarly careful, describing the aircraft as lower than a metal golf ball <em>at certain frequencies and angles<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n<p>That qualifier &mdash; at certain frequencies and angles &mdash; is the most important clause in the entire subject, and it is the first thing dropped every time the claim is repeated.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What We Got Wrong<\/h2>\r\n<p>This magazine is not a bystander here. Our own April 2026 explainer on stealth carries a Quick Facts line giving the F-22 an estimated 0.0001 to 0.001 m&sup2;, glossed as marble to golf ball, and the B-2 an estimated 0.01 m&sup2;. Neither figure is sourced in that article, because neither figure has a source we could have given.<\/p>\r\n<p>Having followed the chain, we would not write those lines again. They are not wrong in the sense of contradicting a known value; they are wrong in the more basic sense of presenting a number where no number exists. The honest version of that Quick Facts line is that the figure is unpublished, that the circulating values trace to a 2005 magazine page and a forum thread, and that a single value could not describe the aircraft even if it were real.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/z8kN3KEEAVs\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;font-style:italic\">The declassified Have Blue story, including the range testing that produced the figures this article traces.<\/p>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">How to Read an RCS Table<\/h2>\r\n<p>Three questions settle almost every one of them.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Does it cite a measurement or a repetition?<\/strong> If the citation is another article, a forum, or nothing, the number has no provenance. Chase it one step; most tables do not survive the first step.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Does it state an aspect and a frequency?<\/strong> A figure without both is not a radar cross section. It is a number with units attached.<\/p>\r\n<p><strong>Is the precision plausible?<\/strong> A value quoted to two decimal places for a classified airframe is reporting confidence it cannot have. 0.0001 m&sup2; and 0.0005 m&sup2; differ by a factor of five, and sit in the same cell of the most-copied table on the internet.<\/p>\r\n<p>The marble and the golf ball are not lies. They are what they were always meant to be: two good analogies, invented to make an invisible idea graspable, which escaped the room they were coined in and hardened into specifications on their way out. The wooden model on the pole in New Mexico did its job. It was never supposed to be cited for the next fifty years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Ben Rich and Leo Janos, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed; GlobalSecurity.org stealth aircraft RCS page; Wikipedia articles on radar cross-section, the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II and Lockheed Have Blue; Knott, Schaeffer and Tuley, Radar Cross Section.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->PLACEHOLDER_REPLACE_WITH_VERBATIM_FROM_POST_19385236<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What is the radar cross section of the F-22 Raptor?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No official figure has been published. The widely quoted value of 0.0001 square metres, or minus 40 dBsm, is attributed by Wikipedia to a 2009 Lockheed Martin release, and the marble comparison traces to a single Aviation Week and Space Technology page from 14 November 2005. The true value is classified and aspect-dependent.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Where did the F-35 golf ball comparison come from?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">GlobalSecurity cites it inline to Aviation Week and Space Technology, 14 November 2005, page 27, in the same breath as the F-22 marble. Wikipedia's wording is more careful: lower than a metal golf ball at certain frequencies and angles. That qualifier is almost always dropped when the claim is repeated.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did Ben Rich give any radar cross section numbers in Skunk Works?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">No absolute values. The stealth chapters of the memoir contain no square metres and no decibels relative to a square metre. Every quantitative claim is a ratio against an unquantified baseline, such as a thousand times stealthier than an earlier drone, which cannot be converted into a figure.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What do the golf ball and marble in the Skunk Works memoir actually describe?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">A wooden test model roughly ten feet long, mounted on a pole on a radar range, not a flying aircraft. In Denys Overholser's account the model measured about the equivalent of a golf ball, and the later shrink from golf ball to marble is attributed in the same passage to bad data.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why is a single radar cross section figure for an aircraft misleading?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Because radar cross section depends on viewing angle and on radar frequency. A shape optimised against a nose-on X-band threat behaves differently from the beam or at VHF. Measured figures for one small quadcopter varied by a factor of about seventy across aspect angles alone.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Are military aircraft radar cross section figures classified?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The exact values are not published by the operators, and Wikipedia states that the F-22's exact RCS is classified, although that particular clause carries no citation. What circulates publicly are estimates, analogies and manufacturer characterisations rather than released measurement data.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What is dBsm in radar cross section?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Decibels relative to one square metre. Zero dBsm is one square metre, minus 20 dBsm is 0.01 square metres and minus 40 dBsm is 0.0001 square metres. Converting between the two units is a common source of error: one widely copied table pairs 0.005 square metres with minus 30 dBsm, which is roughly minus 23 dBsm.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is the radar cross section of the F-22 Raptor?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"No official figure has been published. The widely quoted value of 0.0001 square metres, or minus 40 dBsm, is attributed by Wikipedia to a 2009 Lockheed Martin release, and the marble comparison traces to a single Aviation Week and Space Technology page from 14 November 2005. The true value is classified and aspect-dependent.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Where did the F-35 golf ball comparison come from?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"GlobalSecurity cites it inline to Aviation Week and Space Technology, 14 November 2005, page 27, in the same breath as the F-22 marble. Wikipedia's wording is more careful: lower than a metal golf ball at certain frequencies and angles. That qualifier is almost always dropped when the claim is repeated.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did Ben Rich give any radar cross section numbers in Skunk Works?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"No absolute values. The stealth chapters of the memoir contain no square metres and no decibels relative to a square metre. Every quantitative claim is a ratio against an unquantified baseline, such as a thousand times stealthier than an earlier drone, which cannot be converted into a figure.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What do the golf ball and marble in the Skunk Works memoir actually describe?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"A wooden test model roughly ten feet long, mounted on a pole on a radar range, not a flying aircraft. In Denys Overholser's account the model measured about the equivalent of a golf ball, and the later shrink from golf ball to marble is attributed in the same passage to bad data.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why is a single radar cross section figure for an aircraft misleading?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Because radar cross section depends on viewing angle and on radar frequency. A shape optimised against a nose-on X-band threat behaves differently from the beam or at VHF. Measured figures for one small quadcopter varied by a factor of about seventy across aspect angles alone.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Are military aircraft radar cross section figures classified?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The exact values are not published by the operators, and Wikipedia states that the F-22's exact RCS is classified, although that particular clause carries no citation. What circulates publicly are estimates, analogies and manufacturer characterisations rather than released measurement data.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is dBsm in radar cross section?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Decibels relative to one square metre. Zero dBsm is one square metre, minus 20 dBsm is 0.01 square metres and minus 40 dBsm is 0.0001 square metres. Converting between the two units is a common source of error: one widely copied table pairs 0.005 square metres with minus 30 dBsm, which is roughly minus 23 dBsm.\"}}]}<\/script><div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/how-stealth-really-works-and-why-invisible-is-a-lie\/\">How Stealth Really Works, and Why Invisible Is a Lie<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/why-radar-cannot-detect-small-drones-rcs-micro-doppler-birds\/\">DJI Phantom vs Pigeon: Why Radar Still Cannot Find Small Drones<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/forward-scatter-radar-babinet-principle-stealth-fence\/\">Forward Scatter Radar: The Fence Stealth Cannot Defeat<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/china-anti-stealth-radar-network-detection-firing-solution-vhf\/\">China's Anti-Stealth Radar Network: The Claims and the Reality Gap<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/aesa-radar-explained-how-fighter-radar-steers-without-moving\/\">AESA Radar Explained: How a Fighter Radar Steers Without Moving<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The F-22 marble and the F-35 golf ball are quoted everywhere. Followed to their source they end at a 2005 magazine page, a wooden model on a pole, and a forum thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":31823047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31823215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Radar Cross Section Figures: Marble and Golf Ball | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The F-22 marble and F-35 golf ball are quoted everywhere. 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