Atleast one European fighter has a production AESA then compared to 0-Russian.

India buys Russians systems because they give accesss to programs like Fifth gen fighters that the west may not do. Although its now clear that PAK FA/FGFA is basically a deal like the Su 30 MKI.

Apart from that and follow on Su 30 MKI orders all new major purchases are going to the West.

People think MRCA is the last fighter pruchase from the west, for better or worse I don’t think it will be. But the T 50 will be the last fighter Purchase from Russia for sure.

Zaslon weight has as much to do with 1970s-1980s electronics and its capacity as Soviet technology of the time. First PESA in the world, and you are ranting about technological backwardness? lol

Yes and how many years did it take after that for Russia to field the first production AESA radar,….wait…..they still haven’t !

Not at all. The difference the size would make in WVR is negligible.

It was when you had to point your nose at the enemy fighter or get on his 6’o clock, but its a big disadvantage when a pilot can essentially fire a missile at a target he looks at.

I am certainly not deifying anything, but you are certainly defying the odds and common sense. The Su-35 brochure actually advertises the airframe as a “low observable” bird thanks to the use of adequate materials. Now how far they have reduced the sig is anybody’s guess. But based on ITAE literature and articles posted by flateric and sweetman in various places, the difference is in orders of magnitude. The last I checked they mentioned around 1-3msq. I am not making this up. Again,

Intl Def Review

– Globalsecurity

Happy? As you can see – no deification, it is all open source! Btw, there was an article by Andrei Chang, who mentioned that the Su-30MKK had an RCS of about 4msq! Can’t find it though.

Ah the good ol’ plasma stealth story, at a time they were saying they are going to use it on their fifth gen as well. Wonder why they went for a more conventional design.

As far as Sweetman is concerned offlate especially he has been scaremongering propping up the Russian birds and trashing the F-35, may be like Kopp he wants more F-22s. Once up on a time he used to be an ardent supporter of the F 35.

What magic paint? You mean russians can’d devise/design/invent something that is a bit different from their western counterparts? From Sweetman:
We all know that the MiG-21 showed some rather amazing results in terms of RCS reduction, despite being a full metal bird (reduction claimed was well above 10X). And exercises done using latest fishbed variants tend to support this claim.

IOWs, using such techniques in conjunction with a jammer (and there is no question who carries a bigger jammer), the Su-35 has some major potential

Of course they can like they have done with the intakes of the T-50, but you don’t see any such measures in the Su 35. You are saying they achieved all that RCS reduction by applying RAM coating. Had that been possible you would not have seen more expensive RCS reduction measures like you seen in the Eurocanards. The Soviets may be gone, but their propaganda is still doing wonders.

I think given the chance and if the U.S equipment was not stringy, the IAF would choose it to Russian stuff everytime.

I ignored nothing, you simply did not comprehend what I was saying. If both sides have AWACS, marginal differences in RCS are further nullified.

Fair point

Like I said, the Rafale/Tiffy stand a better chance hence i’d prefer their selection, but don’t put the Gripen in the same league, it is not. It is great bird for its size and good competition for a similarly upgraded Mirage a 2000 or even F-16/J10. But if you want to have self escorting counterstrikes emanating from the interiors of India or destined for deep strike in China, you’d be better off with an a/c with greater capabilities/capacities!

And who is going to pay for operating an Airforce comprising 80% of twin engined Medium-Heavy fighters. Look at the proposed future fighters, AMCA twin engined Medium, T-50 Twin Engined Heavy. That leaves with an LCA MK2 which may or may not succeed as the only cheap single engined fighter, and even by the best estimates it will only constitue 20% of IAFs inventory. Its fine for a small airforce but not for one that intend to have 43 operational squadrons.

You will only have to wait less than a year to see the IAFs choice. My bet is on the Gripen or the F 16 😉

You would be better off with something that is not a white elephant. You have the Su 30s to do the dirty work of clearing the skies and may be T 50s after that. The Gripen NG can be an affordable mutltirole fighter with high availability rates, may be allowing the IAF to base further sukhoi squadrons to the east and the MRCA on the west. It may lack the ability of the Rafale and Superhornet to carry the fight to China but it can defend friendly skies against flankers.

Chinese may use ballistic or cruise missiles to destroy runways and military infrastructure before an airstrike, in that case the Gripens ability to operate from highways and quick turn around rates could come handy.

A whole generation higher is it? Prove it! Also, show me how the radar can have equal power when the engine is much smaller. I’d bet that the Apg80 has better range than the Raven. Unless they are a) using GaN chips or b) able to fit in far more TRMs – neither of which I have heard of yet.

The swash plate setup will over a wider field of view for the radar. Also the APG 80 is a bit long in its tooth being one of the very first generation fighter AESAs, by the time the Raven enters series production i suppose it will have comparable range. Also the Meteor is much superior to the AMRAAM.

Nowhere did I say that size is all that matters – no point putting words in my mouth to suit your argument. I simply pointed out that in case of top notch fighters, a larger bird has certain distinct advantages – endurance, power, size of sensors for example. As far as the Tiffy vs. F-15s go, I haven’t heard of anything in terms of a face off when it comes to latest F-15s (Singaporean for example), let alone the silent eagle.

Endurance yes that is a given, Power ? Really, like swerve said it has to haul around a larger mass and more drag, its not the power of the engines that matter but the thrust to weight ratio. As for size of sensors Russians/Chinese rely on sheer size while the west rely on advanced technology developed because of a much larger defense R&D budget, like I said the smaller DRFM jammer on an F 16 or a Gripen matches or exceeds larger ones on an Su 35.

And when it comes to wvr in this day and age of HMCS and HOBS missiles the smaller planes (all 3 eurocanards) can spot the Su 35 much earlier and that could be decisive.

Quad, there is lots of information out there re. Russian RCS reduction techniques. IIRC, they are now advertising a clean Su-35 @ 1msq fwiw! The marginal rcs reduction done on 4 gen frames like the e’canards may make a difference against avg. 90s flankers, which might not have had any RCS reductions.

Take for ex. your uber Gripen NG – after loading EFT and weapons what will its RCS be? To be optimistic let us say, it’ll be around 1msq. Take otoh, 1995 vintage SU-35 without any real RCS reduction @ 15msq. The Gripen NG with an Apg80 class radar will detect that Su-35 at a good 225 km. The Gripen itself might be detected at around 150-175km by the flanker.

So there might be a marginal advantage here. But then bring into the picture AWACS – what little advantage the Gripen might have is shot thanks to the AWACS. Now it is a matter of tactics, endurance, and power, areas where the flankers will enjoy advantages.

Of course, the above scenario is based on vintage 95 tech for the flanker, and being v.optimistic towards the NG (it does not have the kind of power that the F-16blk60 comes with). TOday, the Chinese are being offered the Su-35. There is the possibility that an AESA equipped J10 is already running around. Chinese airframes are increasingly using composites, and other advanced tech. There is little reason to believe that the chinese cannot start deploying J11/J10 variants with AESA and reduced rcs by 2015. To be conservative, these should have at least performance of gen 1 AESA with RCS reductions of 5 X. IOWs, you’d be looking at flankers that can detect 3 msq targets @ 300km and givng a radar return ~ 6 msq.

NOw the scenario has changed dramatically, the Gripen NG is suddenly available to the J11 @ 250kms, while it can be seen by the Gripen @ 175km. THis is of course a rather simplistic scenario. However, the larger point remains, and the worst part is, it only gets better with time for the flankers, since there is intrinsically greater potential to improve for a larger airframe via a vis a smaller one. For instance, the flanker thanks to its huge engines/size can carry much bigger/powerful jammers as well.

Nope, I’d rather see a Tiffy/Rafale type, these would stand better chances against such flankers.

USS.

I think your deitification of the flanker platform is a bit too far. Now you say that the RCS of the Flanker was reduced from 15msq to 1msq in SU 35 without any radical redisgn (no intake redsign no canted tails), can you even site offical sukhoi sources saying this no, its basically just fanboy speculation.

If there are RCS measures done on an airframe its quite visible, like in the case of the Rafale or Super Hornet, there is no Magic Paint to just reduce the RCS of a Flanker 5 fold without redesigning parts of the airframe.

You talk about AWACS while ignoring that may be available on this side of the equation as well, as well as the fact the the Gripen possess a superior datalink to anything Chinese can field anytime soon.

And the Size and Power is not everything. Flanker uses the Brute Force approach when dealing with things. The Eurocanards like the Rafale and Gripen NG (if all the advertised systems go into it) relies on more advanced technology to counter it, a smaller DRFM jammer carried by the Eurocanards will probably do a better job than larger systems carried by any Chinese fighter. Also the Ibris-E being a PESA is more succeptable to jamming than the Raven.

The Gripen NGs radar is a generation higher than the APG 80 class and it has a missile with longer range than any AMRAAM/AMRAAMski.

If the size of the plane was all the mattered an Uber F 15 would be acing the Eurocanards in A2A even now but thats not the case.

Once you hang those ordanance and drop tank RCS cannot be controlled and each external hanging payload and their pylons will have their own set of RCS spikes will behave differently to various RF bands ranging from millimetric to centimetric to Metric bands and also the flight angle viz a viz RF emmision will have its own RF returns.

Most 4 and 4 plus gen fighter do not use shapes where most rcs reduction is achieved but rather use RAM to achieve band specific RCS reduction mostly X-band. This is discounting the fact that 5th gen fighter uses internal payload ,plus shapes, plus ram to have great degree of control over its RCS , though barring B-2 most 5th gen fighter would still have their spikes for Metric radar.

Though the RCS reduction achieved by most 4plus gen fighter is good but is not significant in a battle space where they would counter all kind of RF bands looking at it from all possible angle and to top up they would be carrying external payload.

Hence I think most of the RCS reduction by Flanker,Typoon,Superhornet and many others are good brochure and marketing claims.

Heck some one even managed to shoot a F-117 with true Stealth Features by a 3rd gen SA-3 only by the virtue of smart use of RF , tactics in an air space which was so dominated by NATO with Jammers,HARM and what not

Sorry I have to disagree my arguments here are based on simple logic and not technicalities as you will see.

1. No fighter is built primarily for export, it first and foremost should satisfy the requirements of the home nation.

2. Almost all new age fourth gen fighters from the Super Hornet to the Rafale, have significant RCS reduction methods. And many of which I believe are painstakingly developed.

3. If like you claim that RCS goes out of the window once external stores are there, it does not make sense all these people spending millions on it does it ? Because like you said all these fighters were designed to carry external stores to begin with.

4. The external stores add to the RCS of your fighter in clean configuration hence if it has a lower RCS in a clean configuration the RCS after adding stores will also be lower compared to a fighter which has a huge RCS to begin with.

5. The new age European Missiles/Weapons are also designed with low RCS in mind, from the MICA to Meteor to the SCALP this is true, while the Russian ones are clearly not.

I also find the notion that China can bring the U.S to its knees very laughable. It may consider China doing that as waging an economic war and may bully the middle east nations even use force if necessary and stop oil supplies to China.

You can only push the worlds only super power so far even this age. America have and will on any day use its military to protect its interests. That is how empires are built and maintained.

The SH/Block 60 may have an advantage over current PLAAF flankers but may find it difficult against future variants with AESA radars.

And anyway, if something is available that may be a little, “overkill” and offeres a ruddy good deal, (i.e. Typhoon) then go for it. Better than going for a jumped up F-16 that’ll come with strings attached and not to mention, something your neighbor also operates and happens to, well, not get along with you. Go for the better option, might cost a lot but hey, you get what you pay for and more.

It is a ruddy good deal if ToT matters more than operational readiness. At the moment it has a very capable mechanical radar and is a mighty fine interceptor, when it comes to A2G it may take many years to mature to reach a level acceptable to the IAF.

I find it absurd that many people believe that IAF can afford to have twin engined fighters for 75% of its combat fleet. Its not economically viable.

unfortunately, gripen doesn’t have quite the say on the tech it uses if the OEMs don’t agree. that is a major problem from the viewpoint of TOT.

SAAB has clearly mentioned it has assurances from all the OEMs with regards to ToT.