No need to degrade stealth when you can just ground the aircraft remotely, eh? 😉

Due to the partners pressure, a lot of compromises have been done lately by the US, however countries like Turkey have made clear they wouldn’t buy the aircraft if they’re not given access to basic software capabilities including weapons and remotely piloting the aircraft.

GPS have been found hiding on F-16’s pods, so I doubt the US is going to sell the F-35 without making sure they’ve got a way to track and ground the aircraft if they need to.
Also the simple fact that most upgrades or maintenance can only be done on a few specific areas is a pretty clear way to control countries buying into the JSF.

The US as always used its weapons sale to excert political control and pressure, they’ve admitted as much many time, and it would be naive to think they’re giving away the F-35 in a spirit of fairness, equality and brotherhood lol.

All correct and something I don’t think he has the knowledge to comprehend. All his ranting showed was that he knew the names of a few high level jamming effects but not how they’re actually acheived.

I don’t think many people here know much about DRFM other than in theory (and not sure even that is true), unless you’ve being flying over the Gulf, or Kosovo, or Lybia…

If the Radar the rafale is jamming is running on a higher number of frequencies than the rafale’s aesa jammers is capable of matching with any useful signal density, then the rafale loses (eg. AEGIS, AN/TPY-2, any russian ground based AESA)

Isreal managed to attack Syria despite its modern Russian’s radars. So systems in themselves aren’t that deadly, it’s how you use them.
Do you really think any airforces will send a aircraft with GBUs over a territory where that aircraft as no chance of survival be it 4th gen or 5th?
What do you think AASM, SCALP are there for?

If the radar has a higher agility than the rafale’s jamming transmitters then the rafale loses. Jamming doesn’t do anything once the range gate has closed or the reflected pulse has returned.

Of course not, but neither do L.O.

The system may work on 50 year old libyan systems, but point a pair of late generation AESA’s at it and its a dead turkey. Nice big, rounded intakes, bad at all polarizations, plenty of little probes, balls and panels facing directly forward …. a christmas tree. Huge, radar mirror of a tail.

Lol 50 year old radars that needed 180+ cruise missiles, B-2s, SCALP etc. to destroy? Hum if even terrorist in Mali can put their hand on modern equipments including MANPAD, I’m sure Lybia could tap into the wide black market that exist in Africa and reserve one or two surprises.

i dont think this ability too special , F-35 can also do a 180* kill with it’s JHMCS and DAS even if there is only 1 F-35 , this ability of rafale is not quite useful , i mean if there is a second rafale he can simply attack the enemy with his missiles right :confused:

Unless that second Rafale is using its radar/sensors beyond the reach of its own weapons. However you’re right, that capabitily has been demonstrated on the SH and a number of other aircraft. Doing something first or not is only meaningful if it gives you an edge for a few years because your competitors are unable or unwilling to do the same.

frequency is manipulated in real time , doesnot mean there is no delay , no matter how fast is the computer it always take time to measure sth ( understand what i mean ? )
an AESA radar have 1000-1200 T/R modules , try to detect and jam them will not be easy ( like try to jam 1000 different radars) especially if there is background noise or jamming from other asset like MALD-J or EA-18G ..etc

Unless the pilot is using a special mode where the AESA broadcast in multi frequencies all at once, which I doubt is very useful, the Radar is more likely to use an unique frequency in each burst.

that only show that F-35 can detect and jam AESA radar , has nothing to do with system on rafale , and even this have not show at what distance F-35 can detect the AESA signal and jam it , how long does the computer take to measure and create jamming signal , not to mention in this situation there only F-22 and F-35 and no jamming asset so it will be easier to detect AESA signal (remember because the F-35 have much lower RCS compared to rafale so it always need stronger radar wave to detect it at the same distance => harder for the AESA to hide in background noise => easier for the F-35 to detect enemy’s AESA radar before it get detected 😀 )

Your assemption are false. The F-22/F-35 won’t use an higher output unless they’ve already detected something, and a ESM system will likely detect a radar at least twice the useful range of the radar itself due to wave propagation.

i havenot heard of any DRFM that can lower aircraft RCS , it will be useful if you can provide link for that , most DRFM sending false signals to make enemy radar believe there is many others targets either ahead or behind , slower or faster , have higher or lower RCS than the aircraft it self but it dont make the aircraft disappear , noise jamming by contrast overload the radar with it’s very strong signal so the aircraft disappear in the white screen

DRFM techniques main purpose is to break the kill chain, not to launch surprise attacks (although it can still be useful there). DRFM techniques will seek to reduce the useful range of the enemy radars. They can in theory negate the advantages of the aircraft with bigger radar/lower RCS.

the line in red= :p i think you are wrong with this one , DRFM (or deceptive jamming ) actually try to look like enemy signal to fool their radar 😉 because if it dont it will be rejected
Example : the radar wave from F-35 go to rafale , it will bounces on the aircraft and come back , at the same time Spectra will analyze the signal and create false signal , send back to the F-35’s radar but no matter how fast is the computer on rafale it still need time to measure and create the signal , even if it only take 0.01 second ,the signal sent by Spectra still arrive to the F-35 radar slower than the real Apg-81 waves that bounces from the rafale airfame ( because they not start at the same time ), so the APG-81 will only reject the Spectra signal

DRFM uses many techniques to reduce the effectiveness of the enemy’s radar depending on its nature. Trying to fool an radar into thinking that no objects were detected might be pretty hard and require extensive intelligence on the radar’s specs.
In any case due to the use of RAM on any modern aircraft and the laws of science that say the radar waves bouncing on an object will travel back much slower and with less strenght. If you add the RAM into effect, the waves will travel back even slower and with even less strenght meaning the ESM system will have plenty of time to calculate and emit a signal with the once bouncing back. Of course it’ll not be that easy if it’s a radar you know nothing about. But few airforces will engage an enemy they know nothing about. That’s why modern airforces spend so much money on AEW&C/AWACS and other ELINT systems.

=> this
is impossible 😎 , no matter what you do the signal create by APG-81 still comming back , you can try to over load the radar by noise jamming or create additional targets by deceptive (DRFM ) jamming but there is no way to stop the origin radar wave from coming back by electronic jamming ( by shaping or RAM then yes 😀 )

Even shaping and RAM don’t prevent the radar’s waves from coming back, they simply reduce their strenght by redirecting and absorbing most of it. DRFM won’t prevent the radar waves from going back either, but they’ll try to broadcast on the same frequencies used by the radar to make it much harder to process its own waves.

P/s :stealth using active wave canceled may be possible ( in future ) based on destructive interference however to be able to do it you have to make the rafale become a huge antenna that transmission come from all over the place at all frequency , however in that situation the Rafale will then have trouble with enemy’s RWR , ELINT ..etc

No systems are full proof, and each countries will seek to chose the one that is affordable and efficient to its uses and tactics.
There is a testimony out there of a Rafale pilot saying the Lybian’s radars were trying to lock on them without success. You study your enemy in order to deploy assets that can defeat its capabilities.
The Rafale or any other aircraft don’t have to become a huge antennna (even if having plenty of them to assure 360 coverage is essential), it mostly need to have had time to study its enemy and have developped specific techniques and tactics to avoid its strenght, fool its sensors and create a corridor where stand off weapons will do the rest.

you can simply do this with barrage noise jamming 😎

in conclusion : iam not saying that LPI can’t be detect or jamming by RWR , ELINT system however the range at which they can be detect , jam will not likely be quite useful ( just like all radar can detect stealth fighter but not quite at useful range )

Unless the emitting radar is using very low burst, and in which case limiting its own ability to see far, LPI or not any AESA based ESM system will get you eventually, especially if your adversary has been able to listen to you using satellites, ELINT aircraft (and I’m sure drones play and will play an increasing role here).

Source?

All LM & DoD public docs still refer to it as VLO and every PR about RCS testing has stated that it has met or exceeded the spec.

The same PR that says the F-35 equal of far exceed the Typhoon in all aspect? And the same DoD that published a report stating a top secret issue that could affect performance, which most analysts have pointed toward stealth?

@Loke: IIRC the US has already reduced its order from 3k to about 2700 or 2500.