>Well, what I understood, you are comparing a generic stealth aircraft vs 4th gen.
My comment was in context of HAL Warrior. It's obvious a 4th gen with weapons hanging outside will get more draggy than a 5th gen which is "clean". But, say a 4th gen carries it weapons,payload, other protrusions (ex : Air Data Systems, etc) inside but dosen't use the aligned sharp edges, faceted surfaces, etc, as much then said 4th gen (probably, not 4th gen anymore) will face lower drag than a 5th gen which uses those. I am no aerodynamics expert, but what I understand, 5th gen with smaller diamond wings also have lift and pressure recovery problems as well.
As you said, they tried to mitigate it with more powerful & efficient engines, but using these engines in these new designs that leverage "materials" more than "shape" will get even better performance.
> I replied conceptually which is foundation for all future gen, manned or unmanned. CATS Warrior is projected as Wingman UCAV, looks as big as LCA. Hence RF+IR stealth will be paramount for it also otherwise these UAVs will be Aerial Targets.
> 5gen jets - F-22, F-35, Su-57, J-20, even the B-2 bomber, also do have curved edges & surfaces, they are not like F-117.
Where they have sharp edges have specific reason. For example this:
I reuest you to take any of these jets diagram or pic & point which area you are referring to exactly would be a problem causing more drag compared to 4gen.
1 of the ways to make UCAV is optionally manned jet, OR unmanned clone, perhaps a reduced size which could save R&D cost for a totally new shape. Now someone would ask why then USA not making such UCAV. Then someone would say they wanna reduce cost with CCAs. Then someone would say that current advertised CCAs are handicapped intentionally omitting some systems....
> I said with more powerful engines &
"clever shaping". In my AMCA posts i've explained the
"Transonic Area Rule" with screenshot from Wikipedia, edited pic of F-22's bottom view, cross-section at wing-tip & approximate calculation of Fd (drag force).
Similarly there is
"Supersonic Area rule" also, related to sonic waves.
And these rules applies to all flying bodies irrespective of regular shape or stealth geometry, who intend to fly beyond Mach 0.7
And till Mach 0.7, i never heard that stealth geometry would create drag unless someone can explain with linked article, pic, diagram, video, etc.
>Now, as you said everything is a trade, I just think, the trend in stealth fighters going forward will be the following:
Don't use stealth shapes as much in the jet, Instead leverage materials to get the stealth
So, you get a stealthier jet which is more aerodynamically better (a super manuverable stealth jet)
Then, we need to rely on TVCs less (which have their own issues, even the future fluidic TVCs)
>I would also urge you to not take those RCS values of globalsecurity.org very seriously, 99% absorption is very difficult for radars to detect today (& for quite sometime in the future) at useful ranges. They would still be some shaping needed but quite less than what used to be the case. So, applying these materials in the aircraft will get you much better RCS reduction -> through just the normal shape of a aircraft & multilayering probably close to the values you are quoting. And, will get even better with "some" stealth shaping.
> Is there any official statement by DRDO or Russian, American, European R&D units stating materials will take care of stealth & geometry won't be required? It doesn't seem at all that NGAD, FCAS, GCAP are discarding geometry.
> I do have brief idea of what you are mentioning about these sheet/mat like RAM being worked upon by our DoD labs :
But
we are 30-40 years behind West, USA in particular in certain things, Stealth in particular.
They might have tested these kinds of things & yet they're giving importance to geometry bcoz the way radiation works. For example look at how B-2 coating takes place by robotic machines applying tape like sheets. I can't find images on google, i wish i had taken screenshot from documentary.
> Hence
Materials & shape w.r.t. stealth have to work together, not compete with each other. RAS (Radar Absorbant Structure) + RAM + geometry. It is already proven that geometry alone reduces RCS a lot & also mentioned by jet designers in various documentaries. Then i wonder why would someone ignore geometry in era of increasing stealth.
It is like saying LCA, MWF with composite & thesse meta-materials would be more stealthy than AMCA. This can impact or perhaps cancel AMCA.
Don't you think that's going against physics, chemistry, maths itself? 
> Here is fan made CAD of CATS Warrior, now please point out which area you are referring to as unnecessary shaping:
>Now, coming to the RCS reduction thing. -XdB (X is any value) is the standard reporting convention. It's not 99% reduction of a given RCS value. It's 99% absoprtion of incoming radiation. So, think of it as a flat plate which absorbs 99% radar waves. When applied on jets, it would be much better as an aircraft is not a flat plate. Plus, all these are thin single layer RAM, they improve dramatically with multilayering.
I'm using 'reduction' as umbrella term.
After 99% absorbtion, deflection, refraction, attenuation, etc, 1% return could be enough to spoil the day with more sensitive passive EW antennas.
1% of big airliner/cargo jet's RF return would be far more than 1% RF return of any fighter. Hence DBsm & SqM both are considered units of RCS & i gave you the scale & relation b/w them after googling a lot, not just 1 random source. Hence by reduction i mean absorbtion only no matter which unit you refer.
>Besides F22 or even F35 don't have broadband absorbers like these, they are usually optimized for
X-band and a few other bands with different abosrbers for different bands. The metamaterial tech was invented in 2008-2009 and took off recently. (Usually, F35 fanboys post about a Lockheed patent about CNTs absorbers, but it dosen't say what they think it does. I sort of prempted any F35 fanboys)
There are so many bands. Below is IEEE convention (not to be confused with NATO convention)
Why to optimize a fighter for a band which it won't face? I checked Google & Wikipedia for following radar platforms & bands they use :-
Fighter radar & antennas - X, L bands (may be S, C bands too)
BVR-AAM, SAM - X, Ku, Ka, W bands
AWACS/AEW&C - UHF, L, S, C bands
Ground based early warning, scanning, tracking, fire control radars - HF, UHF, L, S, C, X, Ku, K, Ka
So, fighter jets are already tried to be optimised as much as possible covering S to Ka bands.
Beyond this range IDK if it is even possible to optimize jet fighter for longer wavelengths of L, UHF, VHF, HF bands bcoz the transmitter/reciever size change accordingly.
> So it is not about being fan about any product made by any country but the technology. Being the best requires squeezing out every aspect of technology, keep pushing & not relaxing.
The real values could be above top secret that's why we try to negotiate ToT (Transfer of Technology). But the current public data seems to be coming from Pratt & Whitney itself.
