What were these F-15s doing? Radiating with their APG-63 in fruitless effort to locate the F-22 with radar.. Idiot’s tactics because they have nothing else to rely upon.. Don’t expect fighters equipped with IRST and passive detection and tracking systems to do the same mistake..

About passive detection :
RWR : ( even if we discount LPI)
1) RWR cannot really be used to geolocate ( measures , speed, heading) airborne target in 1 vs 1 engagement ( reason already been explained several page ago)

2) in many vs many engagement, RWR can be used to geolocate enemy’s aircraft by triangulate between multiple aircraft using data link, however in many vs many engagement, enemy can also data link their aircraft and only let 1 fighter radiating, thus rely on RWR in this situation would actually be very terrible since pilot may think there is only lone enemy fighter on the sky while there are actually many.

3) Typhoon, Rafale, Su-35, F-15… etc all lack stealth directional datalink thus the fact they turn on their datalink will betray their general direction in the similar manner if they were having their radar turn on

IRST :
1) IRST cant provide information like heading, speed, altitude, range by themselves , to know information like range, speed, you have to come pretty close and use your LRF ( or use radar and send a few pulse, which favor stealth aircraft anyway)

2) IRST to have the advertised range that you often see floating around internet, they have to operate in maximum zoom = very narrow FoV, and IRST doesn’t actually scan as fast as a radar ( image processing is lots harder)

3) IRST affected heavily by weather, cloud.. etc

Why is the SA of an F-35 “much superior” (if indeed, better at all) than the Rafale/Typhoon/Gripen NG

F-35 have better SA due to :
1) Bigger radar => more range ( f-35 radar is bigger than all typhoon, rafale, Gripen NG radar)
2) Significant more effective jamming ( not only because AESA jamming are more focused, but also due to lower RCS, 50% lower RCS = 50% less power required and 25% reduced burn though distance… etc)
3) DAS
4) Stealth data link

Now you can argue that Rafale also have DDM-NG ( sort of like DAS but with less angular coverage and res) , Gripen NG will have stealth data link, UK Typhoon Trance 3 will be able to do electronic attack by their radar… etc, however F-35 already have the whole package while others lack 2-3 things from the list. Thus i concluded f-35 have better SA. It is also important to note that apart from good SA, F-35 also have VLO characteristics which make it much better than having SA alone ( an AWACs for example have very good SA but very bad signature characteristics thus often become the main target)

Mmm… that sounds a lot like nonsense to me. You seem to be saying that if you are in a secure area eg Switzerland (and are not under threat) a non-F-35 choice makes sense but if you need to meet some military/security need, you must have F-35. F-35 is not a particularly good fighter compared with Rafale, Typhoon and F-15 so why is it your only choice?

F-35 isnot the only choice but it sure better than Rafale, Typhoon, F-15

. In the mission profile for Rafale and Gripen there is still 200 km left in excess range left on top of the 1700km in the mission profile with 3 x EFT

i really cant see where is the extra 200 km range you mentioned in the graph
anyway look at the picture below

Notice the Gripen NG? in SAAB calculations the Gripen NG with 3 EFT have about 1700 km range ( which is similar to Rafale range with 3 EFT) , in Dassault comparison between Rafale, F-18E/F and Gripen NG they sneakily cut off one of Gripen NG fuel tank, reducing it’s combat radius to 1230 km, now what will happened if you cut off all 3 of Gripen NG’s EFT? what would be it’s range? same for Rafale?

Also, that is Dassault estimation, LM also have their own estimation , In their estimation of combat radius for air to air mission profile Rafale have 896 nautical miles range, F-18 E/F have 816 nautical miles range, F-35 have 751 nautical miles range, Eurofighter have 747 nautical miles range, Su-30MKI have 728 nautical miles range, Gripen C have 502 nautical miles range
, all but the F-35 and su-30 were carry 3 EFT ( remember that F-35 in comparison have end-of-life engine performance with 5 percent degradation in fuel economy and 2 percent in thrust.)

( Gripen have shorter range because it is C version rather than NG version, Rafale have shorter range may be due to different fuel tank, Rafale have different kinds of EFT as far as i know)

.
If you respond, please keep it factual and concise. Otherwise I will just ignore your post.

there are posters with comments like EFT is better than internal fuel and F-35 is bad because it suck, and you complaint about the accuracy of my post? really?

Look, it’s not that complicated. Either you emit a narrow pulse in which case it’s very hard to find and the RWR has to rely on IFM techniques that degrade its sensitivity by ~30dB.

Or you use a spreading technique that widens the pulse to spread the power over a large band (say from 10kHz to 10MHz) in which case you get a 30dB processing gain but the RWR don’t need IFM anymore as it can find the signal easily. In which case its sensitivity is back to -110dBm.

1) RWR have much higher frequency and angular coverage ( 360 deg) thus it’s sensitivity is lower than radar which work at narrow frequency range and only directional
2) For RWR to work, it has to detect a signal (radar pulse or pulses) distinguish it from background noise . LPI radar on the other hand tries to hide the real radar signal in noise to counter that. The problem for RWR is that it doesn’t know what kind of signal the radar is sending (mismatched filtering), but the radar of course does (matched filtering). This is not a problem with relatively simple radars as the signals they send are also simple and do not change. So once the signal is detected, it can be stored and easily used against the radar.
Modern LPI radar on the other hand does a lot of things to make things very difficult for EW systems. They send complex waveforms that is like noise and can only be made sense with filtering. The radar uses matched filtering as it knows exactly the characteristics of the radar signals it has sent (like frequency, PRF, modulation, pulse width). The EW receiver of course does not and must only guess the parameters and and integrated signal overtime that give radar advantage in processing gain

PRF is limited by the time needed for the waves to come back. For a 150km range, that’s 1ms.

In practice, you need extra margins to account for returns by large objects at a greater distance but you can compensate by coding your pulses and hoping they don’t come back too garbled for disambiguation. Still it means that PRF is typically in the kHz range.

Actually it’s not insignificant at all. You need tens of pulses (if not hundreds) to detect anything reliably and each of these pulses has to wait for the previous one to come back. So in the real world radar dwell time is typically in the order of 0.1s. And it doesn’t matter if your radar is ESA or MSA, it’s all about getting a reliable track by sending enough energy.

According to you, mechanical factors are the reason for the current MSA radar scan rate even though these rates haven’t changed for decades. Do you really think we haven’t been able to make faster electric motors in all that time?

(hint: we are and we have. Last gen MSA radar have very fast and accurate drives but these are not there to improve scan rate – which is limited by dwell time & beam width – but to mix scan & track modes)

Last time I checked, the area in front of an aircraft for a bit larger than 120°x20°…

speed of radio wave is around 300.000 km/s
let say we set the radar range at 300 km ( quite unnecessary though, since you cant really do anything at that distance ) , the radio wave will have to travel total of 600 km ( go and reflected back) , the times it take is 0.002 seconds, ten pulses take total of around 0.02 seconds, let say the scan sector is 120*20 degree, the beam width is about 3*3 degree, the total area of scan sector is around 266 times the area of each beam, so it take about 0.02*266= 5.6 seconds
sure you can argue that the total area in front of the aircraft is larger than 120*20 ( azimuth – elevation) however according to basic trigonometry, with the elevation scan angle of 20 degree, at distance of 300 km aways the radar can see anything fly from grounds to altitude of 110 km, at distance 200 km aways, the radar can see anything from ground to altitude of 72 km, at distance of 100 km aways the radar can see anything from ground to altitude of 36 km. even at distance of 50 km away the radar can still see everything from sea level to altitude of 18 km. A What does it mean? You only need scan volume > 120*20 at relative close range ( since fighters cant really cruise at altitude higher than 18 km) , and at that range why bother with thin beam ? , thin beam only needed when you need to see far ( more focused beam = more range) at very short distance the scan volume has to be higher, but then they gonna use wider beam at short range anyway , From calculations above it totally reasonable to assumed radar will use a smaller scan volume at long range thus the scan time reduced even more.

Careful there, look at the mission profile in that image, “Hi-LO-LO-HI”. The known combat radii of any JSF version was always presented in a “HI-HI” flight profile, a very diferent thing.

Thankfully the Boeing presentations to the FAB have the actual combat radii of the “Super Slow” with three externals in a “HI-HI” profile.

the data from boeing and LM actually similar ( if you look at F-18 range, LM is about 10 nm generous to the F-18 there) , it safe to assumed they used the same mission profile
in that same mission profile the Rafale have 896 nautical miles range, F-18/A have 816 nautical miles range, F-35 have 751 nautical miles range, Eurofighter have 747 nautical miles range, Su-30MKI have 728 nautical miles range, Gripen have 502 nautical miles range
, all but the F-35 and su-30 were carry 3 EFT ( remember that F-35 in comparison have end-of-life engine performance with 5 percent degradation in fuel economy and 2 percent in thrust.)

:highly_amused: check JSF presentation to norwegian AF for ex? Pitiful range

mission profile, combat time, loiter time

Spot on… by further tweaking the numbers you can come to a conclusion that the Tu-22M-3 is an even better fighter than the F-35 because it has a much better acceleration, max speed and range when hauling 15 tons of bombs plus 50 tons of bombs. For shooting down the target you simply pass it by and then shoot it down with the 23mm cannon facing backwards.

F-35 on internal fuel can reached around the same distance that rafale, Typhoon, F-18, Gripen would need 3 EFT, it wouldn’t be exactly fair to compared their wing loading, T/W if they carry similar percentage of fuel would it? , obviously if you compare them when they carry heavy load it will be in favor of F-35 since it is a bigger aircraft, thus less affected by heavy load, but even if you want to compare them when they carry light air to air load, and flying similar distance then f-35 still wouldn’t fare too bad since it can fly very long distance on internal fuel compared to others fighter ( since it carry alot more internal fuel) ,
btw you seem to missed a few pages of this thread, let me help you, no need to thanks

As a numbers guy, I am really curious about WHY F-35 is called bad, F-15/16 good, and F-22 phenomenal.. All F-22 lovers may trash my post all they want but;

Comparing F-15E vs F-22 and F-16C vs F-35A;

F-35 has 146,2% empty weight of F-16C.
F-22 has 138,1% empty weight of F-15E.

Wing area linearly contributes to drag, and Thrust directly counters the drag.

F-22 has 138% wing area of F-15E. It also has 121% Thrust.
F-35 has 153% wing area of F-16C. It also has 146% Thrust.

In thrust/drag department, all else being the equal (I am not saying it is, just making a point), F-35 is 4% inferior to F-16, and F-22 is 12% inferior to F-15E.

At their empty weights;
F-35 has 99,8% T/W of F-16C.
F-22 has 87,8% T/W of F-15E.

F-35 has 95,4% Wing Loading of F-16C
F-22 has 99,7% Wing Loading of F-15E.

Now I generated a term equalised fuel, based on aircraft’s SFC and Cd are all the same, wing area alone will dictate thrust is required to move the aircraft, and this thrust will be directly proportional to range. ie, if F-16C carries 27,87*X amount of fuel, F-35 will need 42,7*X, because its more draggy. Taking X=50, at this equalised weight;

F-35 has 99,1% T/W of F-16C
F-22 has 87,7% T/W of F-15E.

F-35 has 96% Wing Loading of F-16C.
F-22 has 99,8 Wing Loading of F-15E.

*I assumed F-22’s engine thrust to be 156kN. If anyone has better value I can input that, but I must say, F-22 needs 177,8 kN thrust from each engine to match F-15E’s T/W.

Heres the table;

Now according to these values, F-35 is much more closer to F-16 than F-22 is to F-15. Any assumption due to advances in technology (improved aerodynamics, improved SFC) that may benefit F-22 would F-35 even more.

Its true that F-35 looks ugly as sh!t, and F-22 is cool and looks more aerodynamic, but on numbers alone, it doesn’t give one reason WHY F-35 is underpowered, (it fares just as well as F-16, far better than F-22), or unmaneuverable (Very similar wingloadings and general layout and features).

On the contrary, F-22 looks clearly underpowered when compared to F-15E. Though addition of several aerodynamic features (negative stability, LE flaps etc) would offset this disadvantage, its important to remember F-35 has them too.

My point? Every claim about F-35 cannot dogfight (based on its heavy, or underpowered or have small wings) must also apply to F-22; either that or this claim is wrong.

Speaking of features like my F-15/F-22 post.

-Both F-35 and F-16 blk50 have same wing loading
-Both F-35 and F-16 blk50 have same T/D assuming Cd0 and inlet performance is the same.
-Both F-35 and F-16 blk50 have same T/W assuming inlet performance is same.
-F-35 has DSI F-16 has fixed pitot inlet. By all reports, there was slight performance increse when DSI is tested on F-16.
-GE-132 has lower bypass so it should work better than F-135 at high altitude.
-Both aircraft have negative stability.
-Both aircraft have LE flaps, but F-35’s TE flaperons are way larger and Flybywire algorithms improved.
-F-35 is 25+ years newer so cd diagram should improve.
-F-35 has VLO concerns, F-16 is pure aerodynamic.

All in all, there is nothing to indicate F-35 should perform any worse than F-16 but people are clearly convinced it is *significantly* worse. (while on the contrary F-22 has IMO clear indications that makes it worse than F-15E, people have no problem believing F-22 is much better).

Well my 0.02; There is just too much propoganda and assumptions with all the new aircraft. I don’t believe there is significant kinematic difference between 4th 4.5th and 5th gen aircraft. The problem is in the internet, one writes a report from his rear end. Another copies it, and another, and as a result it becomes the truth. And whats worse, if something is repeated too much by too many people, any indication to contrary is also rejected. Only undeniable hard proof will convince most (and even then, not all).

The consensus about F-22 is that its very good. All the indications to contrary (that its repeatedly defeated in BFM, its airshow turn/climb rates suck, and numeric guestimates) is merely ignored, or “disproven” by another copy of a copied report.
The consensus about F-35 is that its very bad. All the indications to contrary (numeric guesses and aerodynamic feature list) and the lack of evidence (F-35 is not tested, not in service, and not seen maneuvering in airshows) is ignored or disproven by “hot air”.

And worse, F-22’s alleged performance is now used as a benchmark to trash talk F-35 further. All logic fails there.

You know not long ago (10 years), every USAF guy and their devoted forum people were claiming Su-27 can only maneuver in airshows, and its maneuverability was real bad when armed. Even 3-4 years ago people, including some in this forum, were claiming Su-27 can only make sharp turns not sustain them. Half were only to be convinced by airshow videos and flight manual data, other half just quietly disappeared. And now, all the talk about F-22 or F-35? They are all to be proven wrong like these.

Both F-15A and F-16A demonstrated 24 deg/s turn in airshows, MiG-29A demonstrated 23deg/s and Su-27S demonstrated 26deg/s; all sustained for full 360 degree circle and within a few years into service. Note that those are ABOVE their 50% fuel STR rates (as they carry minimal fuel). If they are SO good, where are Typhoon, F-22 or Rafale videos? 10-14 years into service, and not one exceeded 18-19 deg/s. Technically an F-4E with minimal airshow fuel loadout can do 18 deg/s too. My point? If we are questioning manufacturer claims, and looking proof of high maneuverability, there are WAY more questionable aircraft around than F-35.

Yawn. So can an APG-68 if you redefine “entire FoV” as a typical AtA 120×20° scan (ok, it takes 11.5s because you lose 3×0.5s repositioning the antenna between each sweep).

the antenna take time to sweep ( steering) as well and an AESA can steering alot faster than a mechanical radar.