This is not how it works in a 4.5/5 gen a/c like Rafale or F-35. Sensor fusion is handling this automatically, no need to “forget” about the RWR or anything.

http://www.dassault-aviation.com/en/defense/rafale/the-sheer-power-of-multisensor-data-fusion/

See above. In the Swiss eval the Rafale, for all its amazing sensor fusion, received a Situational Awarenes and Force Coordination score of just 0.25 ahead of the Typhoon. This hardly matches the marketing hype we’ve been drenched with over the past few years. Same with EW really. Good bit better than Typhoon (1.5) but only 0.5 ahead of the Gripen C. Certainly good, but this hardly seems like revolutionary technology.

“Above” in what sense? In terms of survivability, definitely. Also in terms of completing most missions successfully, in particular when the Indian upgrades are implemented. The F15E can carry a bigger load a bit further but that’s about it in terms of advantages over the Rafale.

There is more to Rafale than just an “avionics upgrade”, I thought you knew that by now…

The IAF, and the Swiss Air Force both understand this.

How do you rate it above a fully upgraded F-15E in survivability without even knowing the details of EPAWSS or APG-82 current/future capabilities.

The F-15E can carry a bigger load further, and fly higher, and fly faster. It also has a bigger better radar and will be upgraded to RF attack/cyberwarfare along with the F-18SH.

No, the Rafale is literally a 4th gen aircraft with decent up-to-date avionics. Advertising it as anything else is dishonest, much like advertising the Gripen E as 6th gen.

Swiss eval wasn’t that outstanding. Yeah it had good EW (+1.5) and detection (+1.5), but what is that other than an AESA upgrade and EW upgrade away? SA/Force co-ordination – for all the hysteria over Rafale’s amazing sensor fusion, it was only +0.25 above the allegedly, “massively out-dated Typhoon, with no real sensor fusion, a hopeless federated avionics architecture and grossly inferior non-interferometric RWR.”:highly_amused: A similar story with identification, +0.25, whoopdeedoo. Engagement pretty poor (-0.75), arguably very important, especially when detection and identification is often palmed off to AWACS in a modern scenario. Performance was mediocre, well below (-2) the Typhoon. Workload was also inferior (-1). Endurance/loiter time, it won by 0.5, with those huge 2,200L drop tanks vs the 1,000L items on the Typhoon. Huh, not so amazing.

So no, it’s not really that amazing to be going around saying that it’s the only true 4.5th gen. Rafale largely won the Indian deal on price (the Typhoon was 11% more expensive IIRC) and better A2G support and, crucially, way way better marketing – that’s something it completely blitzes the competition on, oh those marketing goons. So no amazing reason there either. It’s a decent aircraft, currently slightly better than its nearest competitor, but it isn’t earth-shattering by any means.

No, not worse everything… In some ways an F-35 deal would have been worse. Would the US allow an Indian F-35 carry Indian Nukes? Would the US agree to the same level of ToT as France? Etc.

Also to call Rafale a “legacy 4th gen aircraft” is not very accurate. It is far above and beyond the teens, which are very much the archetypal “legacy 4th gen aircraft”. That’s why I prefer to refer to Rafale as a 4.5 gen aircraft. It is not in the same league as the F-35 however the difference between Rafale and e.g. the F-16 is so significant that it fully deserves recognition for this. Rafale will also be above and beyond Typhoon and SH until those move closer to a proper “4.5” gen configuration with AESA, improved sensor fusion, improved EWS for Typhoon; and improved EWS, improved sensor fusion for the SH*.

IMHO currently there is only one 4.5 gen a/c, and that’s the Rafale! Gripen E/F seems to tick all the boxes and become a fully fledged 4.5 gen fighter, it will be interesting to see if also the TYphoon will meet Lokes strict requirements with future updates…

*OK the SH guys got the Growler, more than one way to skin a cat.

ToT no. Nukes? Well if you can design a nuke to mimic a conventional load, then yeah, there’s a get around. Frankly I don’t think they’d actually have sold an F-35 to India anyway. Sure they offered it after MMRCA and HAL FGFA were a done deal, but if it really came down to it, they wouldn’t sell it to India.

Is it above a fully updated F-15E with APG-82 AESA and EPAWSS? I wouldn’t have said so. And the F-15E comes with far more weapons support.

Sadly your opinion doesn’t count for much. An avionics upgrade can be applied to any 4th gen but it’s still 4th gen. You can call it 4.1, or 4.2 or 4.5, but it’s still 4th gen.

And I don’t blame the people who fired the missile anyway. I blame:

a) The airline for flying over a country at war;

b) Ukrainian ATC for diverting it over an active air defence zone at the last minute;

c) The authorities for allowing flights over a war zone after a troop transport plane had already been shot down;

d) Ukrainian AF for flying military operations simultaneously; and finally

e) Idiots who mention flightradar24 as if it somehow should have prevented this bound-to-happen disaster.

If you leave a set of precarious circumstances, you can’t point the finger at the final person in the disaster chain, when something dangerous happens.

Conclude this, conclude that but why doesn’t Ukraine just release radar surveillance data from the day in question?

Crotale work at very high frequency though, I am under the impression that we are discussing X-band fighter radar.

Actually , I was talking strictly about angle tracking , about range tracking radar is simply much more superior both in speed and accuracy

I have linked some X-Band radars in the 2nd link. Yes they are for SAM engagement but these are discussing tenths of milliradian accuracy <0.1deg. This would be completely impossible using the calculation Blue Apple provided.

Thanks, I understood that. I was explaining in layman’s terms why it’s not simply a matter of taking beamwidth and saying, “that’s your accuracy.” There are all these methods available when dealing with a steerable beam, or multi-beam configuration that are simply not possible with with RWR. And of course, as you say, it’s a real world environment, not a lab test. There is noise and other sources out there making things difficult. But with radar, particularly with AESA, you know exactly what you sent and what you are looking for.

Some facts:

Interferometric receivers (that are only fitted in US & French types although they’re an option on the Gripen NG) can determine angle of arrival with an accuracy of ~1° at 1GHz and ~0.1° at 10GHz.

Spiral antenna-based RWR have typically 5-10x less resolution than an interferometric one.

A parabolic antenna has a beamwidth (in degree) of 70*lambda/D where lambda is the wavelength and D the antenna diameter.

So taking as example the Typhoon radar which operates at 10GHz and has a diameter of 70cm, its resolution is at best… 3×3 degrees.

AESA are a tad better, with an extra 10dB of gain you can expect resolution of around 1×1° (useless for scanning but intersting if you already know where your prey is thanks to another source. It’s also nice for SAR modes to achieve sub-metric resolutions).

For “sub-milliradian” resolution, you’d need something like the SBX-1 (22000 modules, whole system weights 45000 tons…)

You seem to be quite confused, applying techniques used in interferometric receivers (phase difference measurement between pairs of dipoles) to the inner working of AESA, reaching the conclusion that the multiple elements in an AESA will allow more phase difference comparisons and improve accuracy.

But that’s not how an AESA works at all! In an AESA radar, the same signal is sent to all elements which are all shifted by a given phase delta to achieve the required emission pattern (e.g. if phase = 0 on all elements, you get a narrow 1×1° beam sent right in front of the plane). On each elements of the array, the receiver part shifts the received signals by exactly the same amount of phase and the signals of all elements are summed then processed. There is no comparison between the signals of individual elements like in a RWR, the radar works exactly like a classic mechanically scanned one except that it now has an antenna that can be steered/reconfigured on the fly.

Never read such nonsense. Nobody has claimed an accuracy of 0.1deg for an RWR. Spectra claimed 0.5deg.

https://www.forecastinternational.com/archive/disp_old_pdf.cfm?ARC_ID=662

DASS claims 1deg.

http://eurofighter.airpower.at/sensorik-dass.htm

That aside radars claim accuracy of tenths of millradians, i.e. tenth of 0.05deg, or 0.005deg. Some as low as 0.05 milliradians for SHORAD systems. Garrya has already demonstrated why it isn’t a simple matter of beamwidth. In a nutshell, as the radar is scanning, very rapidly in case of AESA, it will receive a reflection at several beam positions, as well as obtaining an accurate velocity, it can therefore calculate that the object lies in the centre of this range. RWR has no such ability.

Also, do you understand what a parabola is?

No you don’t need something like SBX-1 at all.

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-HQ-7-Crotale.html
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Engagement-Fire-Control.html

You’ve been wrong on nearly everything so far, so I’d be careful about who you’re saying is confused. We’ve already linked several theses describing the benefits of increased modules and increased Rx SNR. Any measuring device has inaccuracy and not just due to SNR. There is inaccuracy in the way phase is measured because there is no such think as a phase-o-meter. You have to examine the amplitude at the two points and compare it to peak, if the difference is lambda or lambda/2 (for zeroes) then you have a null. By having more wavelength separations over a wider antenna, you apply the same absolute magnitude of inaccuracy to a larger number and the percentage inaccuracy reduces. You also get rid of nulls.

Does not bring any thing new to the table. Sub degree accuracy performance claim,in absolute, on an RWR dealing with larger range of frequencies than a radar,should invite to reflect on how it perform on frequencies similar to radar ones.

SNR requirements for Radar, to filter our in its purest form specific return signal , and enable TOA and Doppler shift measurements , is nowhere relevant or indicative for the need for direction finding an emission.

See above. There is no argument since empirical evidence on radar vs RWR accuracy proves you wrong. And yes SNR is important.

http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/~anita/new/papers/militaryHandbook/sig-sort.pdf

Read it. Learn something. You must be wrong because the measured bearing accuracy of radars is >> the measured bearing accuracy of RWR systems. No RWR in existence is claiming sub-milliradian accuracy. So this isn’t really even a debate, it’s a known fact.