crobatoIf I had the data of the wind-tunnel testing,I could comment.
BTW..after having canards on the Su30 series,the Russkies abandoned it on the Su35.
Mainly because canards are not as beneficial being tacked on to an existing airframe than it is with a brand new one, Kfir and Cheetahs not withstanding. This has been tried from Phantoms to F-15s and even J-8IIs.
The original idea of putting canards on the Flankers is on the Su-33, meant to shorten takeoff. And its still there for the Su-33UB.
crobatoIs the aerodynamic advantage so great that any potential increase in RCS was deemed acceptable by the designers.
What potential increase in RCS? This really hasn’t been proven. What tailed planes do offer is a better use of space, since the control mechanisms do not have to be in the center of the fuselage, which can get in the way of your stores, or in the case of the Typhoon, in the nose, which can get in the way of your avionics.
Furthermore, is it possible for canards to reduce drag.
Very much so. When you have both canards and wing contributing to positive lift, as opposed to just wing alone, for a given turn, you can trim less, reducing drag and improving turn rates.
Both canards and LERX generate vortices for control at high AoA. But in cruise, the canard can tuck into a neutral position, reducing drag, while the LERX remains a lump in the airstream.
Conversely, the wake of a canard does disrupt the flow over the main wing, compromising cruise aerodynamics somewhat.
Can be reduced by design. Typhoon open canard delta reduces the wake over the main wing by its sheer distance. The J-10 uses another system, where as the canards are dihedral and the main wings are anhedral. From a forward point of view, the plane looks like an X. This forces the wake to move over the fuselage and away from the main wings. This means however the rudder has to be big to compensate for the wake. A small strake that runs all along on top at the spine of the fuselage, also helps smooth the airflow.
However the canards generates a down wash that also rests some lift to the main wing and can not aliviate the pitch down force generated by the wings flaps.
Not if you spaced the canards properly either by distance (Typhoon) or lateral configuration (J-10, Rafale).
Tailplanes are behind the downwash of the wing, they do not affect the wing aerodynamics as the canard does and are less difficult to position on a platform alignment arrangement, with thrust vectoring the americans cured the disadvantages the tailplane drag/trim causes to the aircraft handling
Tailplanes are affected by the downwash of the wing, which is why to achieve the same control authority, the tailplanes have to be bigger than the canard. Bigger tailplane, more drag, more weight, and bigger mechanism to move them, which also adds more weight.
TVC offers better control authority over low speeds, but as speed goes higher, the advantage goes to aerodynamic control surfaces. For their very fast flying Python 5, the Israelis chose not to use TVC altogether. While control surfaces do create drag from the trimming, TVC on the other hand, reduces thrust by parasitic losses when it is vectored offbore.
I wonder why.
I wonder why they stuck to a nonassisted delta layout when just about everyone in the world has abandoned it.
As I said earlier, canards work best coupled with delta wings.
Not true. Burt Rutan clearly has a different opinion on this.
He lists the advantages that he sees with delta canards:
These advantages also go with other canard layouts as well. Check with Mr. Rutan.
So canards are bad bacause Northrop and Lockheed deemed them so? Guess someone forgot to let the Brits, Chinese, French, Germans, Russians and Sweds know.
Lets not forget the Israelis. The Japanese also centered many of their ATX proposals around a delta canard.
How about we all act our age and discuss the merits and flaws of both design approaches with knowledge and reason instead of just flag waving?
We have done an extensive thread and one that is much better discussed in detail than this thread in Paul Martell’s site, which is however currently having some issues. But when the forum is restored, you can check out
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk.
is the position of the canard above the main wing better or just in the same level of the wing, like the x-29 and many Russian fighters?
Preferably on a different plane to reduce wake over the main wing. As you can see with the J-10, Rafale and Gripen, the canards are also turned dihedral (shallow V shape when viewed from the front) for this reason. The Typhoon is the exception with anhedral (like a shallow inverse V) layout for canards, but the canards are moved further forward, keeping distance from the main wing, and the anhedral canards may even route some air into the engine intakes.
crobatoThe name is usually a good clue and is logical most of the time, but we only have to look at the Russian marketing on post-USSR military aviation to confirm that we cannot rely on designations and naming conventions alone.
See this link for a little history:
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher4/f16_4d.html
From Joe Baugher, the author.Another one:
http://www.ausairpower.net/aesa-intro.html
I know some people do not like Carlo Kopp’s analysis and opinions, but when it comes to basic facts and explaining the aviation fundamentals, it’s not a bad read.
Yes but the point remains is that the APG-80 is such a significant modification over the APG-68 is that it has to be considered a new radar.
APG-63(V)2 would be replaced by APG-63(V)3, and USAF probably do not want the Congress to think that F-15 with AESA radar is a better and cheaper solution than F-22. Singapore already ordered APG-63(V)3. On that front Raytheon is still doing OK.
Yes but then the Koreans chose the MSA version instead. Not exactly a vote of confidence.
Point remains that the APG-63V2/3 may not necessarily be better than the APG-80 other than sheer brute force. There are a lot of other issues. Northrop Grumman seems to have the current edge in the race with Raytheon,winning most of the APG-77 contract _and_ the APG-81.
Cannot really comment on the GD-53, because the info at hand is sketchy at best. I do expect it to be a major upgrade in terms of features and modes.
Expect is the key word, but the problem remains how much evidence is there for it? You see that’s the problem. If the other things have been mentioned, why are there not more things mentioned at all about the upgrade? Any improvement in range performance, etc,?
crobatoI hardly think the APG-80 is based from the APG-68. If the APG designation has a different number, it does mean its a new design.
Furthermore APG-80 is likely to be sharing components with its bigger siblings, the APG-77 from the F-22 and the APG-81 for the F-35, as all three is made by one company, Northrop Grumman (NG has the larger share of the APG-77 than Raytheon). With the current competition going with Raytheon, Northrop Grumman has grabbed an undeniable lead with the higher workshare on the APG-77 and for the F-35 contract. Raytheon on the other hand seems to have its problems; APG-79 failed its OPVAL, and the APG-63V2 didn’t seem to impress enough to continue its orders.
I have no objection to the logic that newer radar will likely to take advantage of better technology. But ultimately it depends on the selection, which is still unknown for JF-17.
The selection won’t matter much if the radar on the Ching Kuo isn’t seriously upgraded, as since “old” APG-67/GD-53 is showing its age to any of the current “new” small radars in the market today, e.g. Grifo 2000, ELTA 2032. And the PAF isn’t aiming low as the ROCAF; they’re not looking to engage just J-7s. their rivals are hosting much more advanced aircraft than J-7s. Whatever they pick, it will be at a high level of specification. It will most certainly reflect the esteem and priority Pakistan has on the JF-17, which is definitely tons greater than what Taiwan has shown on the Ching Kuo.
crobatoI have never claimed it onmnipotent. If I thought it were I wouldn’t have espoused one of the advantages that the F-22 brought – close in SIGINT surveillance of the battlespace. You, however, have tried to make out SIGINT to be a dead end with the advent of phased arrays – which is patently untrue.
No. You are patently making SIGINT as if it can be used for direct long range targeting, which is not true in a lot of conditions. Call it requisite of ideal conditions. Even in the case of JDAM bombing, SIGINT/COMINT aircraft only cue or vector fighters to the suspected area, and so often it is up to for fighters in the immediate battle zone to actually find the targets directly.
Stray or weak signals recieve from long range has so much ambiguities due to range, atmospheric conditions, that it is not a reliable basis as a direct targeting method to expend rather expensive ARMs. The quality of information is like a “hunch” or “whiffs of smoke”, as opposed to a fire you can directly see.
I suggest you find out more about the PNU. If the target within its specified zone is not acquired, it is programmed to destroy itself in a pre-determined location. it wil not go off hunting for another radar from a geolocation outside its specified limits.
http://www.ausairpower.net/API-AGM-88-HARM.html
“In all modes the HARM employs flex logic, and will automatically acquire the next highest value (priority) target should the intended target go off the air. This ensures that the weapon is not wasted once it is committed.”
As said before, it doesn’t matter if the target has changed freq, so long as that freq remains in the HARM’s seeker band. Naturally, friendly units have their location specified in the HARM’s no-go zone.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2002/08/mil-020808-usn01.htm
What are you not getting at? If emission A shuts down and emission B starts up, and emission B is within the HARM’s seeker band, then HARM goes after emission B, which may be a decoy.
The phased array doesn’t have to illuminate the HARM launcher in order for the HARM launcher to have the location pre-set into the HARM for a Pre-Brief mode launch.
No the phase array can shut down the moment it sees the HARM aircraft or even the missile in PB mode. Missile in PB mode isn’t going to go active till it reaches the waypoint.
You seem to be sufferig from selective memory loss. I recall you quite clearly saying that an ARM could be sent against the F-22 if the F-22 used its AESA radar. Which makes it quite ironical that following that when the situation was turned around you tried to assert how invulnerable phased arrays are to ARMs.
I don’t recall saying that. An ARM against a Prowler or E-6 Sentry maybe.
What the hell makes you think sidelobes are totally eliminated?
What makes you think that it needs to be completely eliminated at all. It only needs to be eliminated to a point that it has no use over a distance.
You can always use a probe to measure the sidelob emissions for the prototype radar at various distances, then work that out to eliminate that as much as possible.
They fired HARMs, suppressing the AD system, and with that the job was done.
They did not kill what was rather a small and obsolete point AD force over a duration of months and rather despite a large expenditure of HARMs.
i didn’t fire. The coalition did. Those were old generation HARMs, and even if they did their job of suppressing the radar sets, the fact that they could not eliminate radar sets which had shut down was an identified deficiency. Which leads us to the PNU upgrade and the future AARGM upgrade. If you think SEAD measures/techniques hasn’t progressed since that conflict, then you are a fool.
And if you think that radar technologies and countermeasures have not evolved beyond that point—which BTW didn’t even fully test the best systems available that time—then you are a bigger fool.
High resolution SAR imagery is taken in strips, which are inadequate for finding targets, which means that they have to be cued by SIGINT sensors.
And that may still have to be done, yes. But the target isn’t that small either. Finding the target even in if the target is in EMCON represents the ultimate goal.
The US EW concept involves a network. Sure standoff sensors are facing difficulties with low powered devices (usually taken to mean commercial comms devices), that is why programs like Wolfpack and concepts like Sensor-Forward are in place. That doesn’t mean stand-off SIGINT is doomed. Far from it.
No but stand off SIGINT does not have the omnipotence all the time silver bullet accuracy you always hype about.
crobatoLOL.. I am sometime amuse by yr reply. What makes u think cluster bomb will either hit it accurately or completely miss it,like 1000m away???
Yeah, the guy is really funny. He sounds like he does not know what a cluster bomb does. Shrapnel will always exist as long as explosives are used in the military.
crobatoI don’t know WTF you are saying that I am comparing the FC-1 radar performance to matching that of the Castor. Go back to all the posts and find me where I said that.
I am saying that the FC-1 radar performance is likely to be better than the GD-53, whose design roots goes back to the early eighties when the APG-67 was fitted on the F-20 Tigershark. The radar on the FC-1 is not only new, but quite likely to have been preening on the experience from studying examples like the Russian Kopyo, Fiar Grifo and ELTA 2032.
While the FC-1 may originally have been low cost, it is increasingly being gold gilded, adding things that were not in the original plans, like DSI, optical MAWS, 9×13 MFD screens, a whole array of AGM and ASM options, and a rather sophisticated RWR setup. The FC-1 is being driven by continiously rising and demanding PAF requirements, so much to even say in my observation, these requirements will even push the radar and avionics performance past that of the current J-10.
I really don’t know what is placed on the Ching Kuo C/D in terms of RWR, but I suspect the plane may have a built in rangefinding RWR to make use of the ARMs in LOAL modes. Which is a good thing, since previously, range finding RWRs have to be installed as pods to aircraft that is not customized for SEAD missions.
And this—
F-15’s AESA APG-63(v)2 is indeed better than Block 60 F-16’s AESA APG-80. The F-15’s non-AESA APG-63(V)1 is indeed better than older F-16 blocks’ non-AESA APG-68.
Is not true on the first statement. The back end of APG-80 is not on the same chronological/technology level as the back end of the APG-63V2. APG-80 is a much newer project with everything developed pretty much from the ground up, while APG-63V2 is an AESA fitted on an existing platform. Especially when AESA is so processor dependent.
APG-63V1 represents a complete overhaul of the design, making its relation to the original APG-63 by name only. APG-68V7 and V9 is likely to be improvements made on top of the APG-68V1 to V5, unless V7 represents an overhaul of the APG-68, which is not likely in my opinion. APG-66V1 is likely to be better than APG-68 pre V7, as the design appears to be an overhaul.
When it comes to new design or overhaul vs. upgrade, new design or overhaul is likely to be better on the long run. Even with just a traditional antenna, there are so many things you can improve on a radar set if you choose to design it from the ground up, as opposed to slapping a new extra modules into an existing design.
Current systems use about half that capability leaving the other 50% for growth, he said. As a swing-role aircraft, it is configured on the ground for either air-to-air (quick-reaction or combat air patrol) or air-to-ground (deep-strike, close-air-support interdiction or air defense suppression) missions.
The one thing I didn’t like about the original RDY is this Either-Or thing when other radar sets can take the same sentence and put –AND– in the middle. Good thing the RDY-2 changes that.
crobatoShrapnel is everywhere in modern warfare. Like if people drop cluster bombs on your airfield. And of course the universal ground fire/FLAK/ack ack/mikes mikes.
Here is something that you won’t encounter in simulations and exercises, but will encounter in actual combat—hitting debris from destroyed aircraft, especially when like they’re in front of you.
crobatoAnd this helps your argument how? The Rivet Joint still receives the signals, from both the main beam and the sidelobes.
Which may not be enough for a true EOM mode of attack
Read the article carefully. While it does not say that Rivet Joint cannot receive that signals, it does not mean that Rivet Joint is omnipotent. It suggests that offboard sensors are not reliable enough, and even COMINT/SIGINT aircraft has to cue the SEAD/DEAD aircraft to the suspected area, in order to use their onboard localized sensors to actually determine the exact threat.
As said before, the radars can be pinpointed with great accuracy. (they have to be or JDAMs will not work) So unless they are going to so obligingly place two or more radar sets so close to each other, the HARM will not be confused.
JDAMs can also work via surveillance by other means. If you want that kind of accuracy, you still need LOS, signals not interrupted by terrain, earth curvature, and a highly polluted signal environment.
I’d like your source on this. What I have found only mentions this for the 9M96 missiles.
I read this in an article before, never bothered to save it. But go check out the pictures of both the 48N6E and 48N6E2. No FINS.
What has the F-22’s RCS got anything to do with the 48N6E2’s phisical cross section?
I thought you were referring to the 48N6E2’s RCS.
Doesn’t matter as long as the frequency lies within the HARM’s receiver freq range.
Yeah, and so will the decoy.
It is true that HARMs will continue on its path even if the radar is shut down, via INS or GPS on newer version. But what happens if a second source starts emitting? The HARM assumes the original target is destroyed, and will try to acquire the new emission, since it will not waste itself like in having multiple HARMs trying to destroy the same destroyed target. The new emission may not be the frequency previously set by Pre Brief aka Pre Specified aka Pre Emptive mode or whatever it is called.
Then as it chases the second emission, the second emission shuts down. The missile is in a free flight again. But then a third emission arises, and so on, rinse and repeat. The end result is the missile runs out of fuel somewhere along this is happening.
Determined before launch. If the radar is in EMCON, good. shutting down the radar was the whole purpose in the first place. Virtual attrition, again.
If the missile searches for a frequency predetermined before launch, it gets into trouble if the missile reaches the PB aimpoint only to find the target has shifted frequencies, ala agility, hopping etc,. It will have to go autonomous, looking for frequency unknown, and chances are vulnerability to decoys, and worst yet, a friendly emitting unit if it happens to be in the vicinity. The seeker has no geographical limits to its detection other than the range of the emission and its own sensitivity.
You are contradicting yourself again. So only the phased array radar scans the skies, but somehow other phased arrays don’t scan the skies thus the HARM cannot get a lock?
This works only if the phase array is illuminating the target aircraft which happens to be carrying the ARMs. In which case, if farther range, the aircraft can use aimpoint based mode, aka Pre Briefed what ever you call it with LOAL. If closer, maybe through target of opportunity kind of mode with missiles set at LOBL. In either case, there is a fair chance the aircraft itself can get nailed, possibly resulting in a case of mutually assured destruction between both aircraft and surface radar.
There is one basic situation why a naval PAR like AEGIS is more vulnerable to a ground PAR like PAC via HARM attack. Its the terrain. Sidelobs tend to go low and peripheral to the main beam. On earth this can often be obscured by terrain forms ranging from mountains to hills and even buildings. Not so against a clear sea.
If the radar set is not aware of an incoming HARM then it will not shut down, and hence it is providing a guidance signal, right?
And the HARM will not have a main beam to ride on, if the radar set—an FCR type—happens to have a thin beam illuminating the fighter, and not the missile. With little or no sidelobs to lock against the FCR, the HARM will go after either a decoy or a volume search radar.
Oh yes, somehow advanced AESAs like the F-22 can provide guidance to ARH missiles as you earlier asserted… but flip the situation around and it doesn’t apply anymore? :rolleyes:
What situation are you talking about? Its called ARM, not ARH. You call an AMRAAM an ARH.
yes, that’s true. But what makes you so sure that ARH missiles are rendered obsolete versus new phased array radars. In fact, if they were rendered obsolete, why are there new ARH programs underway? Quick, go tell them of their folly. Tell them they are building weapons valid only against old threats.
:rolleyes: Every side is advancing, not only radars. Digital RWRs and ESMs provide big improvements over older analog RWRs.
ARH = Active Radar Homing. ARM = Anti Radiation Missile. Get your acroynyms right.
Just because you have a program one way or another, does not necessarily mean, the path is towards a dead end. More and more SEAD/DEAD is involving JDAM/JSOW as the kill vehicle.
Does not matter if your RWR is digital or analog or how sensitive it is, if you don’t have any sidelobs to detect on, you don’t detect through the sidelobs at all. You cannot make detection against a vacuum. Advances in RWR will at least help you deal with detection of main beams that may try tricks like frequency hopping or pulse compression. But then you are becoming more and more dependent on a direct contact with the main beam, which does not eliminate the detection of the surface radar, but it does greatly reduce the distance which that radar is detected, and for that matter, would require LOS with that unit.
In serbia the Coalition suffered heavy virtual attrition as a result of attacking decoy tanks.
So they’re dumb enough to fire over 1000 HARMs against decoy tanks?
There is no indication that they suffered virtual attrition from attacking decoy radar sets – which happens to be the topic here. Putting up a strawman argument wont help.
The fact that you fired over 1000 HARMs over an area as small as Serbia, and many obsolete SAM units are still intact tell you something.
SAR only shows vehicles. The JSTARs can differentiate between tracked and wheeled vehicles, but that’s about the publicly acknowledged limit of its discriminatory capabilities. Knowing which blip is a radar set, or a SAM command vehicle, requires aircraft capable of SIGINT.
LOL. How is it hard to differentiate a large planar array from a vehicle huh? SAR can often go down to 1 meter resolution.
Notice that he, unlike you, did not say that they were undetectable by the SIGINT platforms. He said that it was more difficult, and it is true. This has driven the upgrades for equipment in the Rivet Joint, upgrades which are already being implemented.
He wrote his article in 2003 which makes it quite timely. I don’t believe the man has that much faith on improving offboard-standoff sensors as he has on improving onboard sensors. The threat has evolved to a point its only going to make it harder for offboard/standoff sensors.
crobatoOne thing.
Detection and engagement are two different things, yet people confuse them. Someone will take a detection range quote and compare it to another radar’s engagement route, and then take the higher distance as proof of the first radar’s superiority.
Here is an example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDY_(Radar_Doppler_Multitarget)
“The RDY can select one of three PRF (Pulse Repetition Frequency) modes, namely low, medium and high when operating in the air intercept mode (Auto Waveform Management). Low PRF is employed in the Look – Up mode. High PRF is best suited to long range Look – Down, while Medium PRF is used at all altitudes due to its reliable target detection properties. Thomson – CSF have developed algorithms that continually optimise the wave form to guarantee the highest target discrimination, even when the enemy is using advanced ECM. RDY has proved its ability to accurately measure target range even in heavy ground clutter and consistently demonstrates a “False Alarm Rate” of zero. When operating in the air-to-ground mode, the RDY employs Doppler Beam Sharpening, terrain mapping and air-to-ground ranging. RDY can simultaneously detect 24 airborne targets, irrespective of their altitude, track the eight most threatening and auto-prioritise four of them. Thomson-CSF/Detexis quote the look-up,look-down, shoot-up,shoot-down performance as being 70 km. In actual practice engagements conducted by the French AdlA, RDY has demonstrated its ability to detect, reliably, fighter size targets at 140 km. Great effort has been made reduce the effectiveness of any ECM that the enemy might choose to employ. Of significance is the advanced signal processing and the Monopulse receiver with its three independent channels.The RDY is however being developed further. The latest version, RDY-2 has a 15% greater air-to-air range, a SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) mode that allows ground mapping with a resolution of less than one metre and refined moving ground target tracking.”
So here you see engagement = 70km. Detection = 140km. Detection is roughly 2x over engagement.
How far is 140km over the CASTOR’s over 160km detection range? If RDY-2 adds 15% on top of it, it putting on the same range. The SAR resolution being quoted is even higher than CASTOR’s.
crobatoYup its correct, 500mm.
crobatoYou really don’t know what you’re talking about eh? Range at which detection can occur depends as much on receiver sensitivity and signal processing as the power of the emitter. Asking for a range simply betrays your ignorance.
But then again, you are not detecting from the main beam, you are detecting from the sidelobs, which are not often aimed at the sky either.
Oh ho? Do then enlighten us? I stand by what I said. With geolocation possible within seconds, blinking will not work when a SDB/JDAM is sent to the coordinates of the radar. It will not even work against a HARM, not with its capability to set geographical exclusion zones which will be preset before launch.
Against a JDAM no. Against a HARM maybe because the second or third blinker may still be within that geographical zone.
It is on public record that it could cruise at M1.9 at 60,000ft. (Nelson, Melissa. “Pilots Say New U.S. Stealth Fighter Has No Equal.” Bradenton Herald 21 Dec. 2005. 9 Jan. 2006 ) Eat that! 😀 As a matter of fact, the Raptor was the first plane to get a waiver from the USAF requirement to have a pressurisation suit when operations are conducted above 50,000ft. So you see, high altitude is Raptor territory – it was designed to operate at such altitudes without sacrificing speed and maneuverability.
Well I know it can go Mach 1.5 at 50,000 feet.
The Buk doesn’t have any TVC or attitude control devices. In fact, most SAMs don’t. [COLOR=”Red”]The 48N6E2, as I understand, doesn’t have an attitude control system. The 9M96E does.
No, the 48N6E2 has a transversal control system that works like jets on the side. The missile is also intended for limited ABM purposes.
I have no knowledge of the RCS values at that aspect. I am not even sure if your statement is valid, which I doubt. However I should say this again – the F-22 was designed to operate at that altitude.
0.5m is the 48N6E2’s physical cross section. Your RCS can range from that to lower.
It seems the implications of the HARM’s Precision Navigation Upgrade (PNU) is lost on you. The HARM can be sent to a predetermined geographical zone which SIGINT aircraft have already identified as containing an emitting radar. Emit and the radar dies.
And somehow frequency agility and hopping is lost to you. By the time you have set the frequency, the frequency of the target may have changed.
Even if the HARM cannot detect the side-lobe emissions at its full range (which you have no proof it can’t do), by the time it gets close it would be able to home onto the emissions. In fact, this is already an operational mode on current HARMs,known as Pre-Brief mode.
In order to get close it has to know where the radar is in the first place and not a decoy, which can mimic the sidelob, waveforms and frequencies. this assumes the radar isn’t in EMCON.
Persistence. Not survivability/replaceability. The GH is not cheap – they are not going to send it into danger just because it is unmanned. Did you really think the EC-130s and RC-135s were made obsolete by phased arrays? :rolleyes:
As a matter of fact, I think increasingly they will be. Or at least they can serve as processing nodes linked to UCAVs who will do the actual search.
Funny. Why didn’t I hear this argument when you were arguing about how capable the ARH KH-31 is against the (gosh!) electronically scanned SPY-1? :rolleyes:
I never said that HARMs won’t be useful against older radar sets, equally like AGM-88s to Tombstones and Flap Lids. Newer radars may get a lot iffier. AEGIS does scan for missiles, AshMs in particular. That can make them ARM bait if the missile that happens to receive the scan isn’t the AshM.
The seeker on the HARM has very wide bandwidth. In fact, the AGM-88C was developed specifically to address rapidly changing threats and the need for a new guidance and control section that could cope with more sophisticated radar systems that have frequency-agile and spread-spectrum capabilities.
And the same way, the radar sets are also being evolved to address rapidly changing threats including HARMs.
This works only when there is something out there to provide early warning on when to start up the radars. That means reliance on off-board information. Which means the links have to be working (what do you think the Compass Call and Project Suter is for?), and the EW radars have to be operational. (Guess who’s going to do the low freq jamming?)
For all your talk about Compass Call and Rivet Joint, they could not kill all the Serbian units, didn’t they? Even after months of hunting and bombing.
I don’t see how SAR surface mapping in combination with JDAM bombing would rely on off board information. You can have one plane doing the mapping, sending the data to the other planes that would deliver the strike. I don’t have to rely on an additional command layer.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/spr03/pietrucha.html
“Any suggestion that an F-15 pilot could rely on data-linked information from airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) aircraft, to the exclusion of its own radar, would be inaccurate and unwelcome.
Similar limitations exist with other sensors. Electronic surveillance (ES) sensors removed from the immediate battlefield have serious physical limitations; they are not generally in the radar’s main beam and are often unable to see weak signals. Air-breathing sensors may be blocked by terrain and the curvature of Earth. All of these factors combine to make a distant sensor’s picture incomplete.
Low-power signals are particularly difficult for our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors to pick out at long range. The distant collector often has to detect the low-signal-strength sidelobes or backlobes, rather than the main beam. Additionally, the strength of a signal is further attenuated by distance3 and atmospheric4 and weather effects.5 Thus, a distant sensor has much more difficulty picking up any signal. For example, a radar signal detected at a tactical range of 20 nautical miles (nm) is 100 times stronger than it is at 200 nm. This becomes a critical detection issue for ingressing aircraft because low-power signals, such as missile guidance, are less likely to be detected by sensors at standoff ranges (i.e., Global Hawk, RC-135, or space-based systems).
In addition, radar signals travel in straight lines, and both terrain and the curvature of Earth may block a signal’s line of sight (LOS). For example, a collector must be at 25,000 feet to be able to detect a signal source at 195 nm, even with no obstructing terrain, due to the effect that simple Earth curvature has on the radar horizon.6 The higher the collector, the greater the advantage; at 65,000 feet a collector can “see” a sea-level emitter at 315 nm. Unfortunately, this relationship is true only for very flat terrain or over the ocean, since high terrain can also block signals. Obrva airfield is located in the Kragujevac river valley in the center of Serbia with high ridgelines to the east, north, and west. It was very well defended, and its position made it difficult for off-board collectors to search and detect signals. Therefore, no air-breathing standoff collector outside the target area could reliably detect signals in the valley because their LOS to the source of those signals was blocked by the high ridgelines. In our scenario, if the strike aircraft were reliant solely on off-board sensors, they might arrive at the target without any threat warning. “
“Putting aside the fact that current RWRs on US strike aircraft were not designed with the modern threat in mind, a hypothetical ES sensor suite (think advanced RWR) in the target area has a much greater chance of detecting a radar signal in its vicinity than would an off-board sensor. After all, the strike aircraft is nearby; and if it is being targeted, it can be assumed that the sensor is in the main beam and has a direct line of sight to the radar. Thus, the onboard sensor detects concentrated energy from a radar beam pointed directly at it rather than a much weaker sidelobe or backlobe that is scattered in other directions.”
crobatoQuite plenty actually. Shrapnel from exploding AAMs that fail to take down an aircraft, may still puncture some parts of the skin. Or shrapnel from an airbase that was attacked. Taiwan’s Ching Kuo was designed that way for this reason, although composites are still there in the tail and main wing.
crobatoThe sense of beauty, as well as cuteness, is inherently biological. We consider what is beautiful, is what makes a sexual mate that will pass better biologically fit offspring. Cuteness on the other hand, is designed to instill parental instincts of protectiveness to the young.
When we apply “beauty” to aircraft, is because we unconsciously see biological forms within these aircraft.
For example, unconsciously, many aircraft have a penile shape. You have the nose and the radome suggesting one thing, and the side intakes suggesting the nuts. A penile shape stands for male virility and strength.
The body curves on an aircraft suggest another. Things like fuselage blending and area rule reinforces the unconscious suggestion of the female body and waist.
Our biological instincts are also triggered by animal shapes and forms, perhaps as a genetic memory. We do fear the look of a certain shapes, like the predatorial look of a shark, and this fear leads to respect, which inevitably leads to a beauty of its own. Some planes may trigger this genetic memory with their suggestion of a predatory appearance. The intake of an F-16 is sharklike, and the nose like the beak of a raptor. The eyes are often drawn into these features. Open inlets for example, like planes in the fifties, suggest an animal’s mouth.
It can be said that even the plane’s designers are increasingly drawn to animal forms once we have become more interested with aerodynamics. And the first lesson when people didn’t know much about aerodynamics was to look at birds, which provided the primary intuitive model. So intuitively and subconsciously, we continue to blend animal forms into aircraft.
The third sense of beauty is something else, besides sexual and animal forms. It is the form of mathematics. Our minds are triggered by seeing perfect mathematical forms. like triangles, angles, and of course, in seeing symmetry. Engineering creates its sense of beauty in mathematical forms, planes no exception.
crobatoOutside of SAM range would be sufficient.
Tell me how far the sidelob emissions of a modern phase array can be detected.
If the range of the main beam of the ESA based SAM radar is for instance, 50km, the range of the sidelob emission is going to be far less than that.
Actually, from the way you hold out blinking as an unbreakable method against SEAD techniques, I suspect you are the one not too clear on what you’re typing. :rolleyes:
“Blinking” as it is called is not unbreakable, however, what you suggested tells me you are not familiar with this one.
Now you know why the F-22 has thrust vectoring.
Except that turbofans also don’t work very well in high altitude either. You can reach the altitude, not necessarily that you are going to be fast on it.
[quot]
Now think about the maneuverability of a 9K37M with its small fins at those altitudes. The missile is essentially travelling ballistically by that point. It also seems that you have little understanding that as the target gets higher, the range of a SAM gets smaller. [/quote]
Not necessarily a Buk, but some SAMs use TVC, and rocket motors don’t lessen at high altitudes. I’m not sure if the Buk uses TVC. The 48N6E2 uses a transversal jetting method for control, which is even better since TVC does impose parasitic losses on the main thrust.
Another problem of going very high is that you’re exposing the underbelly of the plane and that has a tendency to increase RCS.
LOL! What?! Dead end? Excuse me but I think your knowledge has reached a dead end. :rolleyes: So SAM’s radars will have undetectable emissions but somehow the F-22’s radar will be found. Oh nevermind the fact that it is LPI. All the programs out there continuing research on passive emitter location techniques must be a failure then? You should go to DARPA and tell them the folly of their ways. Expert Crobato forsees the end. 😀
Chill out. No one ever said that the F-22’s radar is easy to detect. Detection against the F-22 will have to be done by other means. I have never heard of anyone trying to target an F-22 with a missile based on the emissions of its radar alone.
But this does not change that the use of HARM is getting iffy against modern electronic scanning radars. Previous threats have been against old style mechanical radars, like a parabolic antenna that is rotating.
Locking on sidelob emission has been the heart of the HARM. Once you’re tightening the beam, and reduce these emissions, you need to come closer to detect and read these signals. Hence things like EC-130s and RC-135s are not what you want to bring into these ranges, and why do you think they’re investing on UCAVs like Global Hawk? Now things get worst if some sort of active sidelob cancelling is used.
Another problem is the fast scanning. ARM seekers require a certain dwell time in order to get a lock. An electronic scan can go so fast and won’t even provide the dwell time for that lock. Add LPI, frequency hopping and pulse compression into the mix.
Even if your SIGINT has identified the channel and the frequency, and the HARMs are set to that channel and frequency, it may not be that frequency and channel by the time the delivery planes can there, thanks for frequency hopping and agility, which by the way, isn’t limited to AESA since TWT designs can achieve this.
djcross has an important point. Of course the attacker has the initiative. However this initiative is conditional—a cooperative one. It suggests that the targets are not in EMCON in the first place. A tactic with SAMs now is stay quiet and you are literally flying over them, then all hell breaks loose underneath. Cooperative/conditional initiative is not a good model in the long run. Its better to hunt the SAMs even when they are in EMCON, using another system of ISR, preferably SAR surface mapping. That gives you total nonconditional, noncooperative intiative. Furthermore it better deals against technological advances in SAM radars. And looking at things, this is the direction where everyone is headed.
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