This paper presents a flexible, body-conforming finite element modeling technique, using Whitney's edge and face basis functions, for efficient computation of radar cross section (RCS) of inhomogeneous scatterers, both in the frequency and time domains. The vector absorbing boundary conditions, originally developed for a spherical absorbing boundary, are generalized for planar and cylindrical boundaries. The computational resources required for the proposed frequency and time domain techniques for RCS computation are compared with those needed in the finite difference time domain (FDTD) and the nonorthogonal FDTD methods. Illustrative numerical results, that demonstrate the accuracy of the technique, are presented. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1993