RLS was installed.. You can see the corresponding control panel on the right console
If RLS was installed in combat coded F-117 , iam sure someone like Alan Brown and Sherm Mullin would have know. They are F-117 program manager and Skunk Works engineer after all. Moreover, we don’t even have an official designation for RLS on F-117 while we already know the designation of ELINT systems on much newer aircraft such as ALR-94 (on F-22) , ASQ-239 (on F-35) , ALQ-218 (on EA-18G) , AN/APR-50 (on B-2) ..etc further suggest that it doesn’t go into full rate production
Btw your photo is too small for me to see what exactly written in the panel .But there may be 1 or 2 F-117 tested with the RLS for the study between 1984 and 1985 though (hence there may be the switch in some cockpit).Possibly similar to F-16 Vista program but much less popular. Accodring to the article, there is even one F-117 tested with PESA radar.
The F-117 cockpit at national musion doesn’t seem to have the RLS control panel though
the slightly more modern F-117 cockpit doesn’t seem to have it either
I think there might be some careful phrasing going on; note that the designer states that “This picture doesn’t look like anything that was ever put on a F-117A airplane”. Which does indeed appear correct, but doesn’t state that the RLS wasn’t fitted
Sherm Mullin actually specifically mentioned that the RLS wasn’t installed though
Mr. Brown was even nice enough to contact his successor as F-117 program manager, Sherm Mullin, to see what his thoughts were about the RLS enigma. His reply was just about the same as Mr. Brown’s, stating that “it was never put on the F-117, period.” Although he did mention that it could have been a concept from a study that occurred from 1984 to 1985 that apparently went off the rails conceptually and was disbanded with prejudice as a result.
This is likely the same case as the F-22 side array, the hatch exist but no sensor is put there
I know you’re an intelligent person so beware of mass stupidity my friend.
….
1/ i believe that i explained enough about the radar and canopy so i will not repeat it here
2/ the paint color changed because they use a new RAM that reduce cost and save works hours per airframe.
3/ There are dozens fighters that use dark color paints :
4/ F-22 and F-35 practically have the same color 
5/ F-16 is as dark as B-2 while F-18 is much lighter but that doesn’t mean F-18 is a fighter while F-16 isn’t
Here is another oddity… the Wiki entry for APG-81 has a different array which is likely bigger in count & size to the know APG-81 array. The number of T&R rows is more than the known array and the monting points are different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/APG-81
If anyone want to, here is the 3k x 4k version of the above pic:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/AN-APG-81_Antenna%2C_2005_-_National_Electronics_Museum_-_DSC00393.JPG
T&R design clearly points to a Northrop Grumman product as they are almose identical to the APG-81 T&R design.
Looks like it came from the National Electronics Meuseum.
http://www.nationalelectronicsmuseum.org/military-radar-systems.shtml
The picture on wikipedia look like they tried to scram as many T/R modules on the aperture as possible without any spare space at the edge, likely ended up with many more elements than what we counted before. But as it looks very different from APG-81 in production line, i think it is unlikely to be used on production F-35.
I’ll take some less radiating elements in the frontal but the possibility of having a complete radar coverage over a 240° blind zone 365+1/4 days at year, thanks.
And an L-band radar also instead of the cherry on top, please.
Side arrays on PAK-FA have around 358 T/R modules , which is around 35% the size of APG-80 on F-16. It likely to have very short range, function probably same as DAS. Another use could be for SAR. AFAIK, The L band array is for IFF and ECM, beamwidth would be too wide for targeting purpose as the aperture is rather small for L band.
You realize these are dummy antennas do you???
APG-81 used in test on BAC-1 and shown in factory line have the same configuration
dummy or not there are upper and lower limits to T/R elements spacing
I think you are basing that assertion on several photos on the internet that count the number of TRM’s on the AN/APG-81 antena, giving it a 1600 plus count, am I correct?
Some two or three years, the TRM diagram of what looks like to be the AN/APG -81 hardware got out (you can find the images in this forum), one of the “low’s” that was counted has a “TRM” (on the extreme right of each one of the TRM modules, if I remember correctly) was actually an open space, someone here did the math and got to something like around 1440 TRM’s (I think) for the entire antenna.
The discussion was here, but was reproduced around the web on several other forums
I based my assertion on photo from this thread:
About the question of the number of T/R module for CAPTOR-E AESA radar…….
（16*2 + 24*4 + 32*4 + 36*6 + 40*6）*2 = 1,424 T/R modules.
And this
The production costs of the modules must also be worked on. The Eurofighter’s radar antenna, which contains 1,424 modules, would cost well over EUR 1.5 million for a single component of more than EUR 1,000.
http://www.airpower.at/news06/0922_captor-e/index.html
APG-81 T/R count from this
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?128252-Eurofighter-Typhoon-Discussion-and-News-2014/page24
Assuming the T/R modules of F-35 is notch radiator then each notch will accounted for 1 T/R modules. If we assume SpudmanWP counted the prongs , not the gaps ( which he said he didn’t ) then you can deduce number by 1 for each collume, there are around 50 collumn of T/R modules on APG-81. So 1626 – 50 = 1576 T/R modules, still higher than CAPTOR-E number
Your 2 pictures are not from the same angle. If you look at pictures from the same angle you’ll see the difference is probably about 10cm.
Regardless of what angle you look at it, i don’t see how PAK-FA canopy would offer any better reward visibility, it is probably worse.
If the cockpit is elevated by 10cm that means that the radar would be 20cm more in diameter, that might be a bit too much.
No, if the cockpit go up by 10 cm and everything remain the same then in theory you get 10 cm more for radar, but much of that probably gone into structure strengthen for bigger frame
Note also that the edge on the side of the F-35 fuselage is at an angle ( up towards the intake ), contrarily to that of the T-50, so that gives the illusion from those pictures that the difference is not much.
Their canopy are practically the same, and if you consider that all aircraft fly at positive AoA when turning then a slightly higher canopy doesn’t really make any different. A full bubble canopy such as on F-16 or Eurofighter, on the otherhand , do give much better reward visibility but they don’t have anything similar to DAS
DUH! Of course I’m not talking about changing the shape now. You think about that when you design the plane. And btw, when they did the requirement for the plane they didn’t expect that the JSF would face stealth planes that soon, and that it would be so late. The Chinese have had plenty of time to study the F-35 and may well have chosen a larger antenna deliberately to be on par.
Now I was thinking about that yesterday, if they are looking at an F-35 derivative for the future a2a dominance fighter to save costs vs a new gen plane, maybe modifying the forward fuselage for a larger antenna and exploit the extra width for side arrays could be an idea… Of course there would a CoG issue to solve. Bigger modifications than that have been done on other planes. Think Su-34 for instance
If the problem is adversary stealth aircraft then getting biggger radar is not really solution given that stealth aircraft can comfortably hide from much bigger and more powerful surface radar. By contrast, a bigger frame to accomodate bigger radar could be a disadvantage in this case since it means bigger aircraft, likely easier to find with IRST
These F-16s have a special coating for low RCS for the SEAD role, it has nothing to do with visibility issues.
You said the multirole F-16 has much lighter paint, which is clearly not the case if we looking at the newest one. Moreover, it is hard to know how much a slightly lighter paint would improve visibility, there are others factors such as altitude , time and weather in play as well
So have you seen the PakFa radar array, and have you counted the T/r modules?
AFAIK , radar for PAK-FA is the one in the left in picture below, with 1552 T/R modules according to public information
0to 40 000 fts in slightly less than 2 mins for Rafale. Not very precise, but documented.
where does that figure came from ?
No it doesn’t have a very big radar. The typhoon’s radar is probably even larger.
F-35 radar has more T/R modules than even PAK-FA’s radar. Unless they use vastly different frequency ( which is highly unlikely because of resolution and what not), F-35 do have a bigger radar than Eurofighter.
The negative effects in aerodynamics would be minimal, and that would be largely compensated by increase in radar range. VLO is not an issue here.
Those statement would need to be backed up by hard data. You don’t know how much radar range will improve or how much it would affect aircraft signature , aerodynamic and weight
The T-50’s canopy is a bit higher, the F-35’s canopy would have looked almost the same had the cockpit been like 10cm higher.
I don’t think so. They look the same,there may be 2-3 cm different but offered no advantage for backward visibility.If visibility was top piriority then the canopy will look more like F-16’s
AFAIK the current T-50 canopy is not the production design. The production design will probably have better rear visibility.
Highly unlieky, if you change the canopy shape then alot others factors like aerodynamic and siganture will change. I don’t think they want to do all the test again
You can check numerous videos and pictures of the F-35 and other planes next to each other and you will see that the F-35 is significantly darker. The F-16 is multi-role and has a much lighter paint scheme and the F-35 is meant to replace it.
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