And I’d bet that in peacetime operations they’d use the standard RCS adjustment devices for no other reason than to make them show up on air traffic control radars. We do the same thing, have been ever since the F-117A started flying around. That’d make any such RCS measurements worthless. Better to just send someone to an airshow, take some photos, browse commercial imagery, build an accurate scale model, and throw it onto an RCS range yourself. You still won’t be truly accurate as you have no clue as to the effects of the aircraft’s RAM or internal structures, but you’ll be far more accurate than if you merely pointed a radar at a Raptor flying around in peacetime.

Agreed. However, any kind of combat simulation, evaluation against inservice F-15 would require complete stealth. There is no point of making an excercise with 20m2 RCS Raptors. F-15, or any other Japanese F-22 training “adversary” would show up on Russian radars. Now, they aren’t engaging in a combat formation against clouds, aren’t they?

This gives me a massively amusing idea. I wonder how hard it would be to scratchbuild a scale, accurate HAVE BLUE or F-117A model and model its RCS? Sure, you won’t be accounting for the RAM and whatnot, but you’ll get some interesting data I’d imagine.

If you have blueprints accurate enough, you could run a computer simulation based on those. Of course – only the shape reduction. Go a bit further – break into Belgrade’s Museum of Aviation, and steal a piece of F-117 airframe, then send it to your local chemistry college. They’ll figure out an RAM RCS suppression variable 😉

The American complaint was because 97% of USAF airplanes and 100% of USN airplanes (all gen 4) emit RF through fire control radar, communications, datalinks, radar altimeters or jamming pods and are detectable by Tamara ESM. Only 36 F-117s and 18 B-2s would be undetectable because they are designed to not emit during their mission.

Any kind of active emission can be detected. That’s why F-117 doesn’t have any active elements onboard, not even a mapping radar for lousy wheater operations.

Would it be possible for F-22 to use a following technique : if the TWS detects a emitting aerial threat, ranging and plotting could be done via laser rangefinder. Then launching an AMRAAM without an initial lock, only on the whereabouts, and leave to the missile seekerhead to do the job itself.

Same tests were done with K-37M, only the K-37M has threat emission seeker, doesn’t need command updates from the platform to home in before terminal.

It’s not passive, but you don’t have to have your radar online. As of my knowledge, of all built fighters, only MiG-35 has onboard laser emission detectors.

If we rule ourselves with the “old but capable” hypothessis, we could order MiG-21 Bison. It has a new radar, and new avionics.

But, we are trying to modernize our airforce, which is rather small, and we should consider most modern aircraft. I know that JAS-39 doesn’t have combat records, neither does the Flanker (except few engagements in Etiopia-Erithrea wars, and that example measures little or nothing), but the Flanker sales are going great these days, and no-one can dispute that it’s the one of the greatest pieces of flying metal ever built.

24 August 1990, 2 JNA combat aircraft allegedly intercept a Croatian police helicopter trying to disperse a crowd near Knin (???).

31 December 1993, Croatian Defense Council (HVO) reported that at 2055, a NATO jet fighter fired two short bursts at one of their helicopters on a filed medevac flight to Nova Bila. The helicopter was not hit, but returned to its base without completing the medevac.

What’s so strange about the first incident? Rebelled Serbs had their headquarters in Knin region, called Krajina, and JNA was, at that moment, an fully indoctrinated army filled with Serbian extreme nationalism, not resembling anything that “older” JNA was, rather an direct opposite. In 1990, Croatia did not have it’s armed forces, we were relying on special police which used modern arms and helicopters, to do the combat. So, you can picture our police as our army, and JNA as an enemy army “defending” rebelled Serbian nationalists.

For the second incident, i am not sure, however, at that time, USAF and other airforces conducted the “Operation Deny Flight” over the skies of Bosnia, trying to keep the war only on the ground. HVO was operating in Bosnia, and the MEDEVAC helo might have been mis-indentified. As it was probably an Mi-8, temporarely serving as air ambulance.

Mig21pilot, you said that our AF will consider JAS-39, F-16, MiG-29 and Mirage 2000. I can see why the Gripen, it’s a thing for countries like ours, small, flexible, affordable, modern. Made for export. Falcon, because of our relations with U.S, and Fulcrum was proposed to be purchased via the clearing debt that USSR had to Yugoslavia, but that fallen off because of new helicopters, and other industrial infrastructures being paid off from that source. But why Mirage 2000? It isn’t cheap, and you know that we don’t have enough money to just go somewhere and buy two squadrons of fighters. Maybe something from the France-Yugoslavia relations in late eighties, regarding project “Novi Avion”? It was designed carry french engine, french radar, and french/domestic weaponry, and when YU dissolved, the first production prototype was only months due to initial launch. Perhaps we have some unsettled financial stuff with them also, bound with that project. Cause i think that our goverment only consideres purchasing fighters from the source that’ll give as certain finantial benefits.

If it’s F-16 vs JAS-39 at the end, i vote for the Gripen. You said that F-16’s we’ll be getting are from 1995, that would mean Block 50/52 version, which is in pair with JAS-39 capabilities. They both have something better than the other contender, but it’s pretty much the same to us, in a nutshell. However, JAS-39 is a rather new aircraft, will be upgraded in the decades to come and supported in the years to come, and it was created with export deals in mind. F-16 is going to get replaced soon by F-35 in USAF, and in next fifteen years, probably on a worldwide scale in many Falcon operator countries. Then we’ll be stuck again with an unsupported/semi-obsolete aircraft, just as we are today.