long range air surveillance radars are still pretty huge. Youd need even bigger trucks than are used now to have them stabilized while driving. Furthermore, you’d have to have preplanned stretches of road made for them to drive on, which would seriously lower their mobility, as enemy could eliminate lots of directions where the radar could move to.

Yeah its possible its just that its not worth it. What could be worth it is not radars that work as the truck moves but radars that can be folded up in matter of seconds and start working, when the truck stops. No trailers, no anything. Just an array on top of a highly mobile (and rather large) vehicle. Goal would be to make it possible to stop, deploy and start surveillance within 30 seconds; also same time needed to move on – with everything being automatic, done with a push of a button. Still, something like that… i imagine it would limit the size (and range) of a radar, in order to be used like that. And again you would have to have prepositioned stretches of land to scan from, though far more than in the first solution…

Then, ideally, you’d use something like 3 times more such trucks than necesarry for constant covers. And trucks would leapfrog each other. First one keeps its radar turned on at, say, 10:00 hours, second one turns its radar on at 10:01, first one turns its off and moves to a new, random, location. Third one turns its radar on at 10:02, while second one turns its radar off and changes location. At 10:03, having previously stopped and deployed at a new location, first one starts emitting. And so on…

Naturally, that’d require vast spaces of free land to work on, lots of fuel, lots of manpower, it’d be very complicated and very laborous. And even though trucks themselves would be kilometers apart (if not more) It might still not be enough for a single truck to survive against various cluster munitions thrown in the general vicinity. A truck could move, having perfect flat land to drive on, up to a kilometer within that time. Realistically it would be few hundreds of meters less. I guess 4, not 3, trucks should then be used to leapfrog each other. And again, it wouldn’t prevent enemy from destroying them, it would just lower the chances, although consideratly, as youd need a lucky shot within the right time window which would be quite narrow.

So, again, do test for anti air missiles do real life tests against dozens of targets? Sure, they’re expensive, but so are real life casulties, which may or may not be products of faulty testing process. If certain articles are to be believed, soviets used to do live tests of their anti air systems against dozens of targets at a time – but that was back in the 50s. So, is something like that still practiced or have computer simulations replaced tests against many targets altogether?

Latest news suggest all F15s have been grounded, not just non-mission-critical ones. ‘we want more raptors’ camp will have a field day over this.

Lets not forget that RCS is wavelength dependant. What is marble sized RCS for a, lets say, an amraam’s seeker, is not marble sized for a fighter’s radar. It is further still bigger for a radar on an awacs and bigger still on a large ground based air surveillance radar. We don’t know which wavelength the marble sized RCS was tied with.

We do know that USAF required Lockeed Martin to produce a fighter whose RCS, on average, was one thousand times smaller than what F-15 had. There are various figures thrown around for F-15’s RCS but most widely used is one of 11 m2. So, at Raptor’s RCS (but, again, we don’t know for which wavelength!) is at least 0.01 m2. Marble as a reference is again not the most precise thing, as marbles come in various sizes. Still, unless we’re talking about an unusually tiny marble, at best that RCS is little under 0.0008 m2. (that is for a marble just 1cm in diameter)

You can probably add a spanish carrier to that ‘eu armada’, as well. Chances are it will operate f-35s, like the rest of them (save the french, of course) All in all, in some 10 years time europe may have most potent naval aviation it had since…well, a long time ago.

afaik, raptor pilots claimed they achieved M 2.4 with afterburner. Considering the difference in size with, say, f-15 and the difference in available thrust – that claim seems quite reasonable.

Maybe VLS Mica? Or Aster 15/30?

The issue is, at least in my experience, that range measurements aren’t even given. Pretty much ALL the data that is publicly available on the internet/in various books etc. is a ballpark figure conjured up by third parties, not any kind of official data from the missile makers or missile users. Official data for modern weapons is more often given in the ‘more than XX km’ form, with ‘more’ sometimes being 50% over the given figure. I’m sure some of those third parties are serious analyists that try their best to come up with a realistic figure, but they, just like us, are guesstimating. What they (and we) get are snippets here or there about some test fireing here or there, where very few variables are mentioned.