mig 31 bm,

I don’t understand the need to make a point when you know this is wrong.

However iamnot wrong. Rafale fan know the weakness of rafale is it’s small radar, but they somehow think Spectra could replace radar in BVR. That is wrong that why I tried to explain
Probably i haven’t make my point very clear, a single Rafale cant use it’s Spectra to lock on aircraft at BVR

The rafale routinely engage targets at long ranges with Spectra only. This has been reported in numerous reports since many years.

Halloweene provided the test flight from the Brazilian test pilot engaging a mirage 2000 in its 6 with spectra only. But you can go with even earlier reports. Here is one of them but you can find many others :

actually Rafale never engage target from long range with Spectra alone, the test Halloween provided was at 7.8 nm
Never read anything official about an Rafale using Spectra to lock enemy fighter from 50-100 km like a radar ( even OSF can lock target from 20-30 km)

On a personal note I have talked to rafale pilots during the numerous previous Paris Airshows and this functionnality is totally operational. Reading between lines I understood that you don’t get the same accuracy than a radar but this is way sufficient to allow the missile to come close enough to find the target with its seeker.

from someone else on other forum who also talked to Rafale pilot

I talked to a Rafale pilot in june 2013, and I asked him 2 times if Spectra alone could target passively enemy aircraft.

1-can Spectra target enemy aircraft ?
“No, not accurate enough, aircraft move.” LoL

2-how could Vianney shoot rearward ?
“Spectra” (alone).

I guess the difference is a matter of range

*see for example http://users.isy.liu.se/en/rt/fredrik/reports/05bearingsonly.pdf, graph on page 5 shows that it takes less than 15 seconds to estimate range within 20% in an air-to-air scenario using asensor with a 0.3° resolution.

Very interesting but there are alot assumption was made to be able to measure range by that method :
1) enemy’s fighter fly at constant speed the whole time
2) enemy’s fighter doesn’t change heading the whole time ( the method measures range by calculate the changing of bearing between enemy fighter an ELINT aircraft when ELINT aircraft fly side to side ” zic zack pattern” , thus it wouldn’t be possible to apply the method if enemy fighter try pointed their nose to ELINT aircraft direction all the time)
3)enemy’s fighter will constantly emitting for the whole time needed for ELINT aircraft to measure range
4)heading of enemy fighter are known

The method also have several limitations such as :
1) ELINT aircraft have to perform specific maneuver for a period of times to measure range
2) the aircraft in example was using IRST thus have much better bearing accuracy than an ESM system
3) very inaccurate, 20% error in range is very significant, at 100 km distance that is 20 km error, at 50 km distance that still 10 km error, that is even worse than long wave VHF radar

BTW, where did you get the value : takes less than 15 seconds to estimate range within 20% in an air-to-air scenario using asensor with a 0.3° resolution?
here is their graph : [ATTACH=CONFIG]237198[/ATTACH]
they didn’t mention anything related to accuracy, if the vertical line represent accuracy then that would mean the error get bigger and bigger the longer you take to measure distance ? (for RPEKF method after 15 seconds point)

Several aircrafts in a patrol + L16 + Data fusion = a firing solution with ESM tracks

true , but it would required several allied aircraft working together
in that case, the enemy side will also working together ( they can have only 1 aircraft transmitting at a times and changing the transmitting aircraft after every few seconds)

No

yes

there was a reason why F-16CJ doesn’t become a super interceptor with ASQ-213 ( ESM, RWR cant geolocated airborne target)

There are no substitutes to a radar. An ESM system only detects radiating targets; every silent aircraft supported by off-board targeting will be invisible to it. Even something like the C-17 is akin to a stealth aircraft for an aircraft relying primarily on its ESM sensors.

also and ESM sensor alone cannot lock a moving air target ( cant measures range, speed and aspects angle)

I may have posted this before on this thread, but IMO this is what happens when fools think they can build a do all, end all, all things to all people airplane. Its kind of like they say about a person that is a jack of all trade, but master of none. IMO both services should have two planes, a combat fighter, and an attack plane.

1) all modern fighter nowadays are multi role
2) it alot cheaper to use multi role fighter
imagine a country have budget of a billion USD
a dedicated fighter cost 100 millions USD
a delicated bomber cost 100 millions USD
a multi role fighter cost 100 millions USD
so if they spend money on single role aircraft they will have 5 bombers and 5 fighters but if they spend money on multiple role aircraft they can have 10 aircraft that can shot down enemy and bomb their structure at the same time
3) you haven’t explain what yoi mean by ” this is what happened”

There are no indications about “extremely limited capabilities of RBE2-AA relative to other modern AESAs”. It’s definitely no worse than Captor-E, which, too, retains much of the back-end hardware from existing Captors. Likewise, the APG-81 is, too, based on previous designs, basically a combination of back-ends from APG-77 combined with TRMs from APG-80.

RBE2 is alot smaller than CAPTOR-E and APG-81 which mean less gain, less transmitted power =>less range , RBE2 also lack the electronic attack ability on other modern AESA like APG-81.. etc it is not canted thus results in higher head on RCS

A jammer only needs to generate as much power as to be able to cover up the reflected signal which greatly depends on range

Yes jammer need to generate as much power as to be able to cover up the reflected signal ( signal to noise ratio)
the signal to noise ratio is depending on transmit power of enemy’s radar, your reflected signal, your jamming power, and distance.

There is a distance where the jammer, no matter what kind is no longer effective, it called burn through range, when your jammer cant overwhelm the reflected signal anymore. The more powerful enemy’s radar the longer the burn through range will be, you can try to increase the transmitted power of your jammer to counter that, here is where an AESA jammer is much better than a normal jammer since they use very high gain antenna capable of generate very thin concentrated beam, thus with same out put they can concentrate their power alot more than a omnidirectional antenna on a normal jammer
Nevertheless, modern fighter, AWACs, SAM also start to use AESA radar. Enemy’s AESA radar could be a lot bigger, have higher transmitting power than your AESA jammer thus it not always possible to overwhelming them by your radiating power alone. You have to reduce your reflected signal as well ( aka your RCS)
and we already learned how reduced in RCS will reduce jamming power required and burn through range

. There are more important factors to consider, especially used techniques and algorhitms about which we all here know squat as I cannot imagine more classified topic than this one.

As explained deceptive jamming is not effective again modern AESA radar, and they are not very helpful for anything rather than final phase break missiles lock, that why noise jamming are still very important and modern dedicated jammer like ALQ-99, NGJ required such high power and the ability to focus it’s beam

Another load of guesswork, this time in clear contradiction to what has been actually tested and evaluated. The only huge advantage AESA offers is getting better selling points and higher MTBO. Sure, it would completely dominate in the improbable scenarios where you’re guiding four missiles at three targets while doing SAR mapping and throwing bombs in the same moment but these are only book examples to demonstrate capabilities, without much relevance to practical life.

I, too, agree that AESA is an amazing piece of machinery and the technology behind it is impressive just like we were all impressed with the first flat screens a decade ago. As the TRMs get more and more affordable, we will see all mechanical arrays slowly vanish in history just like we won’t find any CRT screens in production today. But the fact is that you could do most graphics work on an old CRT monitor every bit as effectively as you do with a modern OLED display. Well, yes, your eyes would hurt more but that’s about it..

AESA radar have many advantages when compared to old mechanical scanning radar such as :
Higher gain and radiated power => have much better detection, tracking range
LPI => much harder to detect by RWR
Electronic attack => modern AESA can be used as a powerful jammer
Changing frequency extremely fast => very resistance to deceptive jamming
Extremely fast scan rate => good for multi task, much better situation awareness
… and the list go on

Noise jamming is sure gonna get you in troubles and the more power you put into the worse it gonna get. Then radar and missiles no longer are even required to emit to know you location.

HOJ mode of missiles done by using a narrow band RWR sensor, And as i have explained before, RWR can only measures bearing again air target, thus the enemy wouldn’t know how far you are from them to attack . If they still decided to launch missiles anyway without knowing the range, speed then their missiles will have to fly a direct path rather than an arcs thus reducing their range and terminal velocity significantly, missiles in HOJ mode will home at the radiated source without knowing direction, aspect angle or speed of target thus they are unable to do a lead intercept and that will further reducing their PK again maneuver targets
the threat from HOJ missiles could also be solve by using a FOTD . For example : ALE-55, TRD, X-Guard, ALE-70.. etc or an automous jamming UAV such as MALD-J to do the jamming work

So I gather you are rather referring to some form of deceptive jamming in an attempt to fool the radar with deceptive signal to confuse and hide your strong reflection . You would have to be pretty close to need the kind of power being mentioned here

. The principles of deceptive jamming is the RWR received enemy’s radar signal, analysis it and retransmit the electronic signal with some false information ( common deceptive jamming included RGPO, VGPO, Cross eye… etc), Deceptive jamming doesn’t make the original target disappeared on enemy’s radar screen, but rather just make a more attractive target, Thus it mostly useful for the final phase break missiles lock. Advantage of deceptive jamming is that it doesn’t required very high power. However modern fighters like F-22, F-35, Rafale, typhoon, and modern SAM system are now using AESA radar, and AESA radar are quite immune to deceptive jamming. Because AESA use several method to achieved LPI ( they can hide from enemy’s RWR) thus their signal willnot be detect or analysis, furthermore they also change frequency extremely quick ( thousand times/sec) so it virtually not enough time for enemy’s deceptive jammer to analyse and re transmit false signal
that why you have to use barrrage noise jamming again AESA radar

Sounds some are getting confused. A lower RCS implies less power required for jamming , good for low RCS. This said, it does not mean a bigger RCS would require 10 power X much more power to successfully jam a radar…..

not only that lower RCS reduce burn through distance , jamming power required will decrease in the same rate as RCS reduction ,50% reduction in RCS = 50% less power required to overwhelm real radar reflection with noise ( you can work it out for yourself , 99.9% reduction in RCS= 99.9% less power required to achieve same level of effectiveness , and so on )
now let take example of 4 aircraft :
1) B-52 : RCS = 100 m2
2) Su-35 : RCS = 10 m2
3) F-16 : RCS = 1 m2
4)Rafale :RCS = 0.1m2
5) F-35 : RCS = 0.001 m2
now compared them :
from B-52 to F-35 then RCS is reduced by 99.999% =>99.999% less power required
from Su-35 to F-35 then RCS is reduced by 99.99%=>99.99% less power required
from F-16 to F-35 then RCS is reduced by 99.9% =>99.9% less power required
from Rafale to F-35 then RCS is reduced by 99% => 99% less power required
( it important to note that Su-35, F-16, Rafale will all have much bigger RCS when they carrying weapons)

By the time a jammer would need to match the power of any emitting radar/jamming source , it would be on top of it and have know its location for quiet some time. Meaning we are nowhere near stealth context . So talking on jamming power in a BVR context is really weird .

Anyway combining all in the radar : com, detection, jamming, .has its pros ,but also cons . Max power of radar is certainly not one of the key factor for adding jamming features there. So considering this a proof one radar being more advanced than a counter part that rely on T/R modules distributed over its airframe for jamming purpose is questionable at best.

Next time try Electronic attack ,that would be a different matter. Once it is established it can effectively work in real life that is.

max power is very very important for both jammer and radar , advance in algorithm and processing can help again deceptive jamming but again noise jamming, the only thing you can do is increase your transmit power so the signal-noise ratio is > 1 otherwise your radar is useless
and you dont have to go very close to the enemy’s radar to do jamming, there is something called standoff screen jamming as well, where the only information you only need to know is the general direction of the enemy radar ( which is very simple for the F-35 due to the fact that it have much lower RCS and more powerful radar thus will detect Rafale long before the Rafale can detect it)

And while the aircraft doing the jamming will show up on RWR, that doesn’t mean you can generate fire solution again them, here is why :
First let see how a modern RWR can geolocate a ground radar to generate fire solution for anti radar missiles :
there are 6 ways:

however none will work again air target using AESA radar
here is why :
1- triangulation method required target to be stationary , and take very long time
2- Azimuth / Elevation method will not work because you dont know enemy fighter altitude ( for a ground target you know the altitude is 0 ) thus cant use the Sine and Cosine function to work out the distance to target
3 – Time different arrival method required at least 3 aircraft stay at significant distance from the other ,but doesnt work again AESA radar due to it very small side lobe , and thin beam

there are some additional methods to determine distance by RWR included :
4- phase rate change : doesnt work again air target because it required target to be stationary to be accurate
5- determine distance by signal strength : required to threat radar characteristic to be known , and still doesnt work because F-35 can reduce radar transmitting power at short range to reduce probably of detection
6- RF doppler processing : doesnt work again air target because both side are moving ,and you dont know the moving speed or aspect angle of enemy fighter

=> RWR, ELINT system cannot locate airborne radar for attacking ( they are useless again air jamming asset for the similar reason as explained above)
P/S: F-35 can drop a MALD-J and let that thing do the jamming work as well