That isn’t what I am talking about, of course I know simultaneous bandwidth of radar is much narrower than their total operating bandwidth.

I apologize, mig-31. It was my misunderstanding then.

However, on your two points, I do still disagree in the notion that you “wouldn’t want a radar that operate from 1hz and 100ghz because it affects others things like directivity, grating lobes ..etc”

I do agree with you that directivity will be compromised on the low end of the frequency. I disagree that it is an issue though. The low frequency is really only useful for periodic scanning to see if there is a stealth platform *somewhere around*. Then, if it reveals the possibility of such, you can focus your scans within a generalized area and work through a very wide band of frequencies to find one that will work for a target lock. And directivity is not degraded along the great majority of ROFAR’s bandwidth. There are only advantages from this.

And element spacing is an engineering challenge. The bulk of what we know as a modern radar system will not exist as we know it in a LIDAR/ROFAR system. Right now, you can break up a radar system into two general sections: 1) a digital signal processing, control, and data acquisition system and 2) an analogue microelectronic system for up/down conversion and transmit/receive. In a LIDAR/ROFAR system that second part is all done photonicly. Getting that second part to be field ready is a long ways off, but it isn’t a valid reason as to why you wouldn’t want the capability.

Nobody denying that up to date avionics are critical, but I simply fail to understand what elements are so unique in Western 5G avionics that Russian and others do not have or cannot implement, progressively closing any potential gap present.

There aren’t any. Talking down the Su-57’s avionics is just fanboyism. Yes, the Russian microelectronics industry is lacking in relation to ‘Western’ tech (which, design wise, is centered around US/UK/Israel). But most ‘modern’ fighters have old – really old – microarchitectures. The central processors and the data busses of the Raptor or Typhoon are hefty enough so that you might be able to play DOOM on it. I’m talking about the original 1993 shooter though and not the 2016 remake! It’s all ancient. And the T/R units in the radars have been replaced – as with associated DSPs which helps a bit – but that still leaves considerable weaknesses.

The avionics package of newer aircraft such as the Su-57 and J-20 will (in most respects) obliterate that of everything in service with the exception of the F-35. They will even hold their own to that fairly well. Anyone saying otherwise has never heard of Moore’s Law, or they are arrogant enough to disregard it.

More importantly, the avionics packages of the F-35, J-20, and Su-57 can GROW in ways that those of other aircraft simply cannot!

It would be a shame for the carrier program to fall behind because of the jets. But they have to do something.

They are behind, and so they don’t have to worry about anything. They can’t replicate our 100 year experience with flat tops in only a few years. And I disagree with your assertion. I think they are going about it right. It would be foolish for them to commit large resources to carrier based dreams until they really understand what they are doing. Go slow at first…you can always pick up the pace down the road. It’s not like they don’t have time. The US isn’t going to launch some massive attack against them. Nor would they attack us in such a manner. If a conflict does break out it will be because some dumb stunt went horribly wrong. This means it will start out small. Hopefully, all of our leaders will be smart enough to cut it off quick so that it doesn’t go beyond that.

I really see Switzerland going with the cheap option. And that is not bad plan when you are Switzerland and never go to war.

We tested the ability of our aircraft to be detected by the F-22 and F-35 in a short deployment to Syria. After gathering the data, we found significant cause for their (the Su-57s’) improvement

The thing is, if you are interpreting this correctly then such a scenario actually benefits the Russians. This implies that the Russians know that they were likely detected. There are two ways this could have happened. 1) F-22s and/or F-35s placed a radar lock on the Su-57. 2) The Su-57 allowed itself to approach the known threat radar to were it would have a reflected SNR (for that specific test aircraft) high enough so that detection was likely. Then, the Russians used target motion analysis to gain the precise distance to the US stealth platform. The Su-57 could have done this by itself by performing a rapid maneuver or they were also using a second platform to track the USAF aircraft’s emissions. Either way you get two bearings from two known locations, and where they cross is where your target is (the whole principle of TMA).

This benefits the Russians because 1) it proves that their Himalayas system can keep up with our low probability of intercept radars. 2) The radar signature of the production variant of the Su-57 will change drastically from the test aircraft sent to Syria due to final touches on the absorbent coat, ITO treated canopy, product 30 engines, etc. This means that the RuAF has gained known signature information on the F-22 and F-35 and can develop engagement and avoidance tactics for the production model to use. The USAF did not gain similar useful information from the encounter and can only use guesswork when formulating tactics.

It takes some serious dedication to haul a model that large to a flying field. And kudos to him on the landing. He’s lucky that happened while he was flying a high wing monoplane and thus had more prop clearance.

The Hellfire is a HEAT round, SpudmanWP. Such a weapon is good for punching (melting really) a hole through around a foot of steel. It’s not so good at punching though several meters of substantially different materials (compacted earth, high compressive strength concrete, and high tensile strength steel rebar). And if it fragments from axial force then I maintain that it will not be a good penetrator as oblique impacts are a fact of life. Field conditions will inevitably involve axial stresses and then the weapon will shatter and fail.

Now it might be that in the future you can change out the whole front section of the Rampage for a penetrator munition (which will have a reinforced casing). But they aren’t advertising it.

Let me clarify myself, FBW. There is no physical law that says an aircraft with a DSI cannot go faster than Mach 2. Rather, there is just substantial empirical evidence that when an aircraft such equipped approaches Mach 2 the ability of the DSI to force flow in the boundary layer becomes increasingly reduced and thus engine efficiency plummets. And so there is a practical limit at Mach 2. Why would the engineering team choose to spend upgrade funds to further increase speed in spite of plummeting engine efficiency when they could improve the aircraft in other areas with more bang for the buck – such as better sensors. Engineering is all about tradeoffs.

The F-35 was conceived as a stealth strike fighter. The DSI provides it with reduced RCS compared with a diverter, particularly at low frequencies. And a strike fighter is expected to do a lot of low altitude, ground support work where high supersonic flight is not of much importance. The J-20 is still mostly an enigma, but many seem to think it is geared for a strike role as well. Personally, I don’t think one can tell until we see it fly with the Ws-15 Emei.