What?????

BAe designed the EWS for the F22. What was the best airborne EWS system in the companys portfolio when the contract was awarded? You guessed correctly, EWS39.

Ok, this is how it looks according to Elements of Power (a very thurough analysis).
http://elementsofpower.blogspot.se/2013/06/the-f-35-and-infamous-sustained-g-spec.html

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So the F35 will have 33% fuel in the case of F35 Case A, 42% in Case B and 41% in Case C. I think case B and C got mixed up in the chart.

And yet, with 33% internal fuel it will just barely match the F16 with full internal fuel (just take the high/low and you get 5,64G for F35 with 33% internal fuel and 5,69G for F16 with 100%).

So saying that the F35 isnt a poor performer in kinematics is stretching it a bit. The competition is so far ahead in this game that it isnt fair.

And now consider the range. It is basically on par with the Gripen E on internal fuel, way behind with external fuel, and not even remotely close to the Flanker Series.

The advantages of the F35 are pretty simple. It is supersonic stealth. All other advantages are either matched or superseded by the competition.

* The F35 will have its DAS operational in 2018, Gripen E will have PAWS-2 at the same time (EF2000 will likely have that, Pak FA will just a few years later also have a similar sensor suite and possibly Rafale as well).
* F35 will have fixed dish GaAs radar, the competition will have a moving dish GaN with 2/3rds larger scan sector.
* Apart from that maybe the 3D helmet could be useful, but in BVR the 3D helmet will be just as useful as a normal HMDS since you wont see the targets anyway.
* Beamed datalinks? At least Gripen will already have that.

So judging by the actual advantages of the design it is pretty clear that is isnt meant to be the fighter that the F in F35 stands for. It will be a bomber and possibly a BVR missile hauler.

thanks for the correction, that’s even worse 😀
so if they screwed up such a little thing, imagine what could go wrong with the much more complex F-35. a glitch in the helmet software and you lose your HUD, a glitch in the fusion software and your displays shut down…

The F35 will get about 24MLOC (million lines of code), probably more in the upcoming software blocks.

In a standard project one can assume 1 bug per 1000LOC, and this is roughly what NASA came up with in the Rover codebase (2MLOC, ~2000bugs). But the larger the project, and the more interlinked the code is, the number of bugs will increase. Just look at MS Windows XP, 45MLOC and bugs didnt get fixed for over a decade. New fixes introduced unexpected problems in other areas etc.

For the F35, if we treat it generically, we can expect ~24’000 bugs at IOC (but the F35 source code, because of its size and how interlinked everything is, will have more). Flight critical parts of the system are included and this is why lines of code is the shi**iest benchmark for quality in software. This is how frequent data corruption is.

As an example, ZFS creator Jeff Bonwick stated that the fast database at Greenplum – a database software company specializing in large-scale data warehousing and analytics – faces silent corruption every 15 minutes.[9] As another example, a real-life study performed by NetApp on more than 1.5 million HDDs over 41 months found more than 400,000 silent data corruptions, out of which more than 30,000 were not detected by the hardware RAID controller. Another study, performed by CERN over six months and involving about 97 petabytes of data, found about 1.2 × 10-9 of involved data (or about 116 gigabytes) becoming permanently corrupted.[10][11]

One could, in normal conditions expect corrupted files on 27% of all HDDs after 41 months (only counting silent datacorruption). The F35 will have several HDDs and the drives in the F35 will experience A LOT MORE vibrations than the ones in this example. Every corrupted file could potentially mess up critical functions.

Thought it could be nice to know.

Serbian armored forces were intact because they were mostly concealed in hill bunkers. Last time I checked, DAS could not see through structures.

Many ppls tend to forget that ROE and politics made the Allied Force orbat less effective.

Here is what RAND concluded.

Yugoslav forces presented small numbers of mock-ups of equipment
items such as SA-6 systems. Some of the decoys were extremely
crude,

14 During a visit to the Threat Museum at Nellis AFB, Nevada, our study team was
shown an SA-9 decoy from Kosovo. It was roughly one-third scale and made out of old
milk cartons taped together and stretched over a light metal frame. The milk cartons
were turned inside so that their metallic liners would be exposed and presumably re-
flect radar signals. Light metal tubes mimicked the missile launcher. The whole affair
was painted green. We were told that the decoy did have a radar reflection and that vi-
sually the decoy looked quite real from the air. After the conflict ended, a NATO team
in a low-flying helicopter could not tell it was a decoy at a few hundred feet in altitude.

targets because their contents could not be ascertained. NATO air-
craft had to visually confirm targets before releasing ordnance.
When, for example, Army AN/TPQ-37 radars identified firing loca-
tions of Yugoslav artillery, NATO aircraft had to positively identify
this equipment before attacking it. They were not permitted to sim-
ply release against the suspected firing positions. As a result, aircraft
allocated to flexible targets (excepting bombers) had only about an
even chance of releasing ordnance. Many had to return with ord-
nance still under wing or, in the case of some carrier-based aircraft,
jettison ordnance at sea.

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1398/MR1398.ch2.pdf

This sort of tells how close the F35 needs to be. A few hundred feet above ground may be sufficient and possibly as far away as 15km from the targets.

What is clear is that despite of stealth one needs ISR-resources. Either boots on the ground, dedicated UAVs or other forms of intelligence gathering.

The next thing that is clear is that target discrimination only works better the shorter the range is.

So going back to your example MSphere, the standoff missiles like Taurus will be exactly as precise as the SDBs as long as the targets are correctly identified. And when it comes to getting the air superiority one only needs to find the enemies airfields and engage them (in Europe the KEPD350 is more than sufficient). Without airfields it is really hard to stay airborne over time.

Depends on if target is equipped with MAWS, and depends on agility of target,
what type of missile did a pilot dodge 6 of during package Q flight ?

The exact same type as the ones that downed the F117, at the specific altitude and flight time it should be able to pull just above 40G.

And about the myth that the F117s used the same route for a long time in Allied force…

On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

At about 8:15 pm local time march 27, with a range of about 8 miles (13 km) several missiles were launched. According to Sergeant Dragan Matić, who was identified in 2009 as the soldier who fired the missiles, they detected the F-117 at a range of about 50 to 60 kilometres (31 to 37 mi), operating their equipment for no more than 17 seconds to avoid being locked on to by NATO anti-air suppression.

It was shoot down on the fourth night. Hardly a long time to learn its “regular patterns”, but from a mission planning perspective the lesson was that 4 days may be enough for the enemy to learn your routines.

But we are talking about an abysmally small number of aircraft out of the huge NATO attack force. There where hundreds of targets in the air, most non stealthy and at lower altitudes than the F117, flying around. The idea that the Serbs specifically tracked the smallest target, with the least amount of sorties from day 1 in order to score a kill on that type is ridiculous. They tried tracking whatever flew, and they had spotters warning whenever any form of aircraft was going somewhere.

The lesson learned is that even with stealth you are not safe when you are within range. When you are though, good kinematics and good jammers are crucial for survival.

You haven’t provided any sources to support your claim of the SAAB offer being ‘more or less comparable’ to the F-35 package and therefore being ‘directly equivalent’.

SAAB’s far pricier quote for the Netherlands did not include spare engines, radars, HMDs or LDPs. No reason to suppose the offer to Norway included any of that. In addition, it didn’t include the costs of setting up offset agreements that would have factored into Norway’s F-35 order. We don’t know how inflation factors into it – what would be the markup on the Gripen for a deliveries spaced out past 2020. (F-35 costs are falling, Gripen costs are likely rising). Until we’ve seen the breakdown of the Norwegian contract, fact is we can’t compare those costs directly to the Gripen quote.

It included HMDs, press ctrl + f and look for “helmet mounted display system” in the document. The Gripen TCO will be lower than for Gripen C and because of the cheaper engine and better manufacturing process a lot of costs in production have been slashed as well.

Speaking of LDPs, doesnt the Netherlands already have those?

good point, but if you realize a Phalanx fires bullets from a moving platform to hit a missile going at extreme speeds above sea level, that is no small feat either

Now we are talking about bullets from a turret. Fighters, unfortunately, are too small for that.

in the same way I don’t think hitting a missile going Mach 4 is that much harder for a computer, it’s a matter of computing speed and data input

Its not harder to calculate, it just shortens reacton time and requires higher accuracy in the plotting of the movements.

I figure fighters have had the ability to track incoming missiles for some decades, in a forward arc at least
but yes, with modern day sensors tracking missiles at any angle can certainly be achieved
and then we’re talking about passive missiles, active sensor missiles should be much easier to hit

In forward arc is one thing, 360 degree coverage with precision enough to designate targets? Thats prety new. I think SPECTRA is the first suit to actually have that capability.

on turning and speed, I’m not sure about that: I imagine most missiles would fly directly at their target, making their path predictable to a computer, and thus relatively easy to hit

The missiles, facing forward, will still have to turn 180 degrees if the incoming threat comes from behind. Don’t they?

I don’t know about lasers, especially on a jet they lack range and rate of fire, seriously limiting the number of incoming missiles you can shoot down. missiles give you range and thus time

Yes, that is my biggest concern. The rate of fire. A laser may very well take down one missile, but two or three? Only a counter missile has that capability since they can work independently.

Yeah proximity fused warheads, I get your thinking. GaA laser fuse millisecond reaction times. There are actually proposals for both (HTK and fuzed weapons)for the U.S. army:http://defense-update.com/20130820_raytheon_ai3_c-ram.html , http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Lockheed_Martins_EAPS_Completes_Successful_Miniature_Hit_To_Kill_Interceptor_Flight_Test_999.html

I specifically said h-t-k for this reason: I was thinking along the lines of the CUDA, not sure if smaller ir missiles like the IRIS-T could be cued on a target and launched in time. Most have a range >10 miles. That would give a reaction time of 12 seconds or less. And that would be best case scenario of picking up the AAM either at launch or when it goes active. This of course applies to radar guided missiles.

Of course, how far away a missile like the AMRAAM goes into terminal mode is likely less than 10 miles and classified. Something along the lines of the Cuda with its longer range and forward control motors might have the agility needed. (really is an interesting weapon concept)
http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2013/…/cuda-update-more-revelations.html

If we are talking short range ir missiles, really only an autonomous system would have the reaction time. The defensive system ThNDR to be fitted to the F-35 is not meant to destroy the missile, just confuse the ir seeker.

Thats the thing. I could personally create a filter for my cellphone camera that would render any IR/specific wavelength jamming useless.

For instance, if the light passes above a threshold for one part of the spectrum the camera will just ignore that and go for a second frequency. And that’s the seekers we see today, going from IR to UV (and the middle ground is visible light). This is made with the most basic statements in coding, the if statement. For instance if (balance > 2) {aperture = aperture – 1}

What that does is to adjust the aperture depending on what the brightness balance is, if the lightness in the image is +2 or more (as it would be in a jammed situation) it will simply adjust the aperture until it hits the limit. This could be adjusted with a limiter or even made more advanced by comparing narrow bands to eachother to get a picture.

That is the simple solution to weak DIRCM, with more power one might have to change wavelength. Again, this is easily made with software upgrades as long as the seeker can chandle it (and I think the IRIS-T seeker can). Multiband QWIP-chips can easily change the wavelength (if software allows it) and thus become immune to DIRCM (as that is narrow band).

Lets say you have a power output of 5KW. That is impressive. But considering that you have 6 distinct visible light areas, 5 distinct IR bands + 9 distinct bands in UV you will end up with 5KW spread over 20 bands giving a jamming capability of 250W or 6 kitchen lights.

Now, if the sensors can adjust aperture accordingly this will make no difference at all. If the sensors in the seeker can discriminate better between specific colors (say double the bands) it will half the performance of the DIRCM and so on. So yes, the idea is great but it’s not something to rely upon. Killing the threat physically, at least in my experience, is the only thing you can count on for survival. Blinding it will work untill they use glasses or just filter out your wavelength.

I’m not suggesting putting those systems onto fighter, I’m saying it can’t be that hard for jet fighters to detect and thus shoot down incoming missiles
most fighters already have a big gun, and the Gripen does in fact have an automatic radar-guided aiming mode. and AESA is more advanced than the one used on the Phalanx
and the missiles used on the RIM-116 are about AIM-9/IRIS-T specs

so in theory it can be done

The RIM116 is interesting, but one has to remember that the incoming missile will travel at ca mach 4 (from any direction), RIM116 may be excellent for incoming attack aircraft or cruise missiles. But the mach 4 ones?

Also, the targeting systems havent been good enough in all aspect. For instance, how many fighters have good enough rear visibility to target a missile behind them?

Today with more advanced MAWS (like DAS, PAWS-2 etc) it may be done. Also, the missile will have to be able to perform a 180 degree turn at any speed up to mach 2/3 in a reasonable time (ie, pull many Gs). I think that the IRIS-T is the first to potentially have the capability… and it hasnt been proven yet.