You fell into a similar trap with your claim about IRST-systems. Such face similar limitations in range and detection capabilities. The claimed range data can be achieved only, when the fighter has a rough idea in which sector at a given time a prominent IR target will show up. Datalink is a tool to get that in time f.e. Just at that moment you can close in with you fighter do the IFF till you get a lock from the sensor of your weapon to allow its release. In general IRST-systems were operated similar to fighter radar. Radar have similar reductions in detecting something in an otherwise wider envelope and went active in the last moment to prevent early detection at all. By the way more and more modern fighters are equipped with sensors to warn of the release of an AAM. Today positioning and time-management are key-parameters in A2A combat, to win the time-race to hit the target, before the firing cycle can be broken. The closer you can get undetected the higher is your hitting propability. All claims about performance gains are time limited, because that trigger a response to deny that by tactics and/or technical items giving a constant technical race to achieve that.
I wont argue against that as it is very sensible.
But IRST systems of today have pretty fast scan speeds so I would call the search time negligeable. What is needed is high resolution (as in pixel/m² at long range, not high resolution imaging chip), fast enough scan speed and good sensor fusion. Also, the sphere the EODAS creates prohibits magnification of the imagery. This means that the same 10 year old camera could be used by competitors with a different lens and by that getting 10 times longer detection range (at the expense of a narrower search band).
There are so many different ways one can use technology. If there is enough space one could use variable optical zoom and thus combine wide angle of search with a narrower band for ID.
Most jets today don’t fly alone so the probability of the narrower band search missing anything is pretty small.
This is what the F35 is going to face @ 2018.
* Enemies that have advanced high resolution IRST-systems with higher resolution/detection range than the EODAS.
* Enemies with more powerful jammers (like the Flankers)
* Enemies with more modern radars
* Enemies with radar warning receivers that can track LPI fairly easy.
* Enemies that can kill supporting AWACS from 400 km range (like MiG 31 with R37)
* Enemies that have superior kinematic advantage
What the F35 offers at the same time
* Lower radar cross section, possibly first shoot capability if the AWACS can lead the way. Using the own radar makes the F35 a target unless the enemy doesn’t have semimodern RWR.
* IRST that has wider search than the rest but lower resolution than all modern competitors. Luftwaffe might be an exception. Unless the F35 has another IRST-system apart from the fixed magnification 6 camera setup this will be the case.
This is where we are. If I see variable magnification being part of the EODAS I might remove the last point.
And then we have a plethora of cool stuff that has been defeated in other arenas. One of them is DIRCM that was defeated by using IR tracking with better dynamic range and better filtering (Shtora being one example that now is scrapped). Sure, DIRCM might give an edge for up to 10 years until new seekers are being installed on a wide basis. Also it will have trouble with multiple incoming IR seekers.
DIRCM is a temporary solution that works on legacy systems when fired one at a time.
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