Doesn’t matter. Let’s see what you got. I didn’t manage to find anything on EF, so it would be nice to see, at least, some figures…

…but that it only worked within a rather narrow set of circumstances. Actual combat seldome restrict itsself to such narrow circumstances.

The “bad” enemy does not behave in a way like in the own exercises.So exercise results have to be taken with a question-mark always.

Precisely. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The thing is though that the Phantom’s doctrine was untested when the statement was made and the error was due more than anything to the low reliability of the missiles used and not some inherent problem with the doctrine itself. They went too far by neglecting to add a gun, and it bit them on the behind; but they learned their lesson, and the F-22 is every bit as capable in a close-combat situation as it is at BVR, and its stealth doctrine has been tested operationally with much success.

Phantom+Sparrow was thoroughly tested and it wouldn’t enter the AF without certain certificates, issued by USAF/DoD, the same organization that certified F22…catch my drift?
I can’t tell (I can guess though) how the F22 will be brought down, but I’m fairly sure it WILL be. By that I mean in a hypothetical symmetrical war and that’s what F22 has been made for.
How could Willy Messerschmidt ever dream that most of his 262s will be shot down during landing.
I’m saying, if you’re smart you’ll leave a space for unforeseen and that’s precisely the USAF didn’t do with Phantom.

But, JB don’t worry. I know you’re not a FANiac 😉

The thinking may be the same, but the circumstances are not.

Not quite. This is the same argument the US war theoreticians had when they introduced Phantom, in a capacity of an all weather radar interceptor and look where it get them.

The F-22 has proven that it is simply invulnerable in BVR against threat-representative non-5th generation aircraft for all practical purposes.

This is another problem of perception. The F22’s actual combat score is ZERO/ZERO (at least officially).
Moreover, I didn’t see a single report of DACT against any nonUS aircraft+pilot combination, apart from “High Rider” (and I just saw fragments of it, anyway). If I miss something, please post the link. Thx.
Anyway, you can’t really compare RedFlag to actual combat and why is that is a too broad topic to get into right now.
Let’s just say and some interviews with actual pilots confirm, that top USAF squadrons worked HARD during the 1991, until they took control over the skies of Iraq and they had all the most modern systems on their disposal. It was by no means a “child’s play”!

As I said there will always be exceptions, and as I also said by no means should F-22 pilots be left untrained in close-combat manoeuvring. My point was rather that you can’t use the (very few) kills gained in dogfight training to ‘show’ it as proof for the ultimate value of a pilot well-trained in close-in manoeuvring in a real-world combat situation over all other factors, as exercises that I now appreciate are as hard as can be imagined tell us that WVR dogfighting is not representative of what actually happens. I have little time for marketing shtick but I’ll believe what I can see; this outcome has occurred over a sample space of thousands of trials.

As for the marketing, I agree and I don’t argue official F22’s figures, both training and performance. However, what I do argue is the context those have been presented.

Take for example AESA radars. From the moment the US fielded first AESA radars, they all of a sudden became a worldwide “must have”.
If we look into AESA structure we’ll see it consists of many T/R antennae (modules), which have been optimized for X-band and you can’t really shoot anything larger than a few centimeters of wavelength from such a small module and that’s the area the stealth aircraft are giving their best in terms of LO.
Now, take “old” MSA CAPTOR radar and it’s 1m (or so) diameter antenna. It has been proclaimed old and outdated. Fine, it has some shortcomings in comparison with AESA radars.
>>HOWEVER, CAPTOR’s antenna size makes it a realistic candidate for UHF/VHF, bands in which stealth becomes nonStealth. AESA’s modules don’t.<<
So, if this stealth story really becomes a new global trend, the aircraft will have to either, adopt larger antenna for longer wavelengths thus achieving ability to detect LO aircraft, or get shot down…
Now, I think US forcing small antennae (AESA modules), just on the verge of a LO dawn (as they predict), isn’t accident.
This is an example of context abusing and although I don’t expect the DoD officials run around yelling “I’m visible at low frequencies”, it doesn’t mean we can ignore this.
My point is, everyone is telling the side of story that suits him and so if we can’t tell the actual means of anti-LO warfare at the moment, it doesn’t mean those don’t exist, or are in the phase of planning/introducing into armed forces.

@djcross > The electrical discontinuities (ED) don’t have anything to do, with what you’re talking about.
The EDs have been treated in the new (Eurocanard, SH, SE, etc,…) aircraft, hence RCS order of magnitude of 0.1, but there’s still a long way to nothing (0.0001).
F117’s facet’s edges didn’t have ED problem, but scattering problem. The facets on F117 are single molded and where they’re not, that areas have been treated with LO sealing techniques (wheel doors, flaps, etc,…). The outer hull of F117 is a single conducting volume, as is with many other modern aircraft.
However, being a Farad’s cage, the aircraft gets induced, indeed. Among other situations, this happens when the incoming radio frequency is similar, in wavelength, with features of an aircraft (like distinct pieces of aircraft geometry).
For fighter sized aircraft that wavelength is generally in UHF band and for larger B2, it’s in VHF. This is a great problem, indeed, that has been dealt with for the last 30/40 years and several techniques emerged, but none managed to completely remedy this (f.e. super thin foil of superconductor spread all over the airframe, which acts as a radio mirror, therefore reducing the bandwidth of resonance and induction, anechoic chambers which attenuate radar signal by acting as large LC capacitors, etc,…).
This phenomenon exists regardless of observability level (goes, for B2 and B52).

And western ESM is good enough to triangulate on a jammer with enough precision to establish a track for a BVR missile launch.

ESM (electronic SURVEILLANCE measures) isn’t a tracking device. Radar is.
If there’s no radar search/track signal, the enemy doesn’t have anything to jam and will be silent.

Aircraft ESM can triangulate static (ground/sea) radar, but can’t airborne one, due the fact that the latter moves.

Airborne triangulation is theoretically possible, by using a link among multiple aircraft that have been illuminated.
In reality there’s no need for triangulation and that has been proven some 40/50 years ago, by measuring power signature in conjunction with antenna gain vector. This is how does the AIM-7 (SARH) and AIM-120 (HOJ) missiles work.
Missile’s head can’t triangulate the target and yet, it’s still able to home on radio beacon in 3D space.
I’ll be short, here. The missile scans some angle off the general direction of radio emissions, storing power signatures. After predetermined scan pattern is over, the missile’s INS compares power-outputs and antenna direction vector and guides itself towards the strongest (peak) radio value. The closer the missile gets to the radio source, the more precise it can pinpoint it.

Same goes for ground radars, especially ones whose radar envelope your RWR has stored in it’s memory.

But only in hypothetical dogfight situations which would never actually have happened in reality. The Raptor’s ability to track and fire upon any non-5th generation design long, long before the opponent knows it’s even there (i.e. before it gets to visual range, basically) means that a pilot need not know how to handle the aircraft in a dogfight to get a kill the vast majority of the time. Not, of course, that they shouldn’t be trained in it, but if they’re trained and equipped not to need it then the point is almost entirely academic.

Precisely this kind of thinking led to dragging, late Col.Robin Olds from retirement, during Vietnam War.

And as far as the whole stealth discussion goes, you guys are missing a big part of the equation. It’s way more than simple faceting or shaping or RAM/RAS work. Look at the intake of an F-117. If you can figure out why it looks like that, you’ll be onto something.

F117 has deflection grill (upwards, as being declassified) on the intake mouth and amplitude attenuating ram-duct which leads to the engine…no mystery there.

Actually, the Raptor can only supercruise for five minutes before it has to return to subsonic speed.

talltower, you’re joking, right? :confused:

I do know the leading edges of the B-2 Bomber’s fuselage is NOT straight! It is an arch with a radius of “2,475-ft.”!!! The maximum distance from the arc to the cord that ajoins the arc is 6-in. It was a wild math project to do all the calculations.

Thx. I found some more material of continued curvature stealth. However, from what it seems so far, continuous curvature stealth (CCS) is, in fact a “helping” measure, complementing deflection.
The problem with F117 facets is in edges that aren’t infinitely small (as in theory), but had some uncontrolled area. So, although F117 doesn’t reflect anything back from it’s flat surfaces, the edges do, scattering EM energy all over the place and that eventually gets picked up by radar.
So, continuous curvature measure has been devised (and used for the first time in B2), to reduce refection of the facet’s edges, by increasing edge’s radius, which reduced the magnitude of overall refection level, but somewhat increased the angle of detection. It seems that the sharp edge’s scattering was so high, that this was the price the constructors were willing to pay.
So, in terms of LO technology progress, the B2 is a F117 with smoothed facets.

The bottom of the F-117 is canted upward at a 10°, starting at the center-line. Even “if” a radar is perpendicular to an angle on an F-117, it will bounce one or two pulses off the F-117. If the F-117 is in perfect alignment, once it moves another meter or two the alignment is off, provided the distance is great enough.

Agreed.

In that particular case, the F-117 flew almost directly over the mobile radar site. As the SAM battery commander stated, it took less than thirty seconds from the time the F-117 was first detected until the SAM-3 made impact. The USAF attacked the same target area three nights in a row at the same time, the fourth night the Serbian AD was prepared. The Serbian figured (correctly) the F-117 approached the target from an area between two fixed radar sites. They positioned a mobile sight directly between the two fixed sights. The AWACS detected the mobile radar site when first started broadcasting, AWACS alerted the F-117 pilot but, he decided to proceed with the mission.
The reality is no other F-117s were shot down, the problem of detecting the F-117 remains.

I’d rather avoid getting into this discussion, but I can say that there was no warning prior the VHF spotting (from either source)…The F117 that got hit, wasn’t the only one shot upon…
It isn’t important now, anyway. I just used that example to illustrate the ability of VHF radar, to get a good enough echo to engage LO aircraft…