What is a Radar Cross Section (RCS) on a fighter jet?

Question

Everyone’s talking about how the F-35 Lightning II has a RCS the size of a Golfball but I don’t know what it means or how significant it is.

In: 5

Answer 1

ELI5?

Radar shows a little dot for everything it sees. Big stuff, like a passenger jet or a fighter or whatever usually makes a BIG dot. Little stuff like say a bird, a much smaller one.

Stealth fighters aren’t invisible, but they make a much smaller dot than things their size usually would. In this case, a dot roughly the same size as the one a golfball would produce.

RCS roughly means the size of the dot.