F-35A – 2800 km, external tanks are not provided
Rafale – 2000 km (without external tanks), 2440 km (1 tank), 2600 km (2 tanks), 3300 km (3 tanks), 3704 km (4 tanks + 8 MICA), 4000 km (5 tanks)

Those numbers are dodgy. 440km increase from 1 to 2 tanks, then 700km increase going to 3?

404 increase adding 1 more tank + 8 missiles and all their interference drag, then less than 300 if you remove all the missiles and add one more tank.

Something stinks.

Oops

Reality is a bit more nuanced than that. WVR was at the time (and still is) extremely important, but while “super maneuverability” was found to be very decisive in the classic neutral merge 1v1 WVR dogfight, it was much less advantageous for the more common WVR engagement setups. As an extreme example, no feasible level of super maneuverability will overcome a single super-agile fighter getting jumped by a 4-ship flight of F-16s.

After running a series of simulations depicting the types of dogfight setups that happen in real life, it was determined that WVR success is determined more by which side came out on top in the BVR fight (and thereby entered the WVR dogfight from a position of advantage) than by which side had the fighters with the best WVR capability. It was also determined that better avionics and HOBS missiles is more decisive than super maneuverability.

I HIGHLY recommend reading SMSgt Mac’s blog post on the subject here:

http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2017/06/fighter-aircraft-design-driven-by.html

When you take into consideration the short range at which stealth aircraft are detected vs legacy, the many vs many scenario is decided well before the first BVR shots are taken.

By detecting opposing aircraft significantly earlier than they are detected, stealth aircraft have opportunity to hold back at range and wait for additional friends to join the ambush.

What would have been a 4v4 shooting match with legacy ac on both sides would likely be an 8v4 ambush with stealth vs legacy.

Getting tied up in a turning fight against f-35s would often be a bad outcome. All they would need to do is keep you defensive with over the shoulder shots (even if they are low pk) while their friends plink at you from outside the fight with amraams.

…and again, separating targets from decoys is thaad’s purpose as well, hence the big, high frequency, high directivity radar with the ability to discern decoys from the missile. thaad interceptors are IR based I believe so ECM is of no use (a tiny missile jammer is not going to have any impact on a huge TPY-2 AESA). It comes down to maneuvering, and thaad kill vehicles are small, agile and use ACMs to maneuver.

As for US, it certainly seems their plan is so hit the S-400 head on with F-35s loaded up with mid-range standoff weapons and decoys containing jammers.

No you have made a baseless claim, it is on you to prove it. It is common knowledge within those that study MDA programs and Ballistic Missile Defense in the US that the TPY-2 a BMD sensor and not an IAMD sensor like the SPY-1 or SPY-6.

Those are also not comparable. TPY-2’s in FBM serve more to address the discrimination challenge than a purely early warning challenge hence the reason why the TPY-2’s Analysis of Alternatives narrowed down on a high frequency sensor at considerable expense in terms of cost, cooling, and power requirements. If EW applications/needs outweighed the need to provide better_than_SPY-1 discrimination they would have stuck to a much lower frequency sensor setup and would have saved a ton of money doing so. There is a significant cost and range penalty imposed on the TPY-2 on account of the X-Band design trade..

So your dispute is that the radar can’t be used to detect atmospheric targets or just doesn’t have the ability to discriminate a fighter or cruise missile target from a ballistic missile?

Thaad testing alone has been performed on low endo-atmospheric targets since as early as 2007. I provided an example of a test involving a slower flying cruise missile which you’re implying had nothing to do with the radar during the test (its on you to provide evidence that tpy had no involvement in detecting or tracking the cruise missile as it’s your claim is didn’t).

So we have numerous tests where Thaad has been proven against low atmospheric, high speed srbm targets including ftt-14 which involved very high lead angle in a “very high dynamic pressure” environment… ie low level, side on shot. A test involving a cruise missile being defeated by AEGIS in conjunction with thaad. It seems that low altitude and possibly low speed is not a problem for the radar.

Not Maybe, the TRIMM count on the TPY-2 is public knowledge and your figure misrepresents it by a factor of 2. Secondly, i was not speaking of technical reasons but actual real world performance where this sensor exclusively operates as a BMD system and had no requirements, nor did it test out other target sets during either its developmental or operational testing. Lets stay fact based and speak of real world deployed performance for the benefit of accuracy.

Again, if you (I or anyone else) claims that it is an air-and missile defense sensor as opposed to purely an BMD sensor the burden of proof would be on the person making the claim to prove it. At the very least show that they went back and preformed developmental and operational testing on those modes, and present data and the financial/contract trail of new software modes being sought, being developed, being tested and being approved as an upgrade.

The 2015 test where a pair of TPY-2s were use to control a network of thaad and aegis involved short and medium ranged ground and air launched ballistic missiles (both endo and exo-atmospheric) and a *cruise missile*. I would say a highly diverse target set, one in which a fighter would sit right in the middle of.

The picture is inaccurate… simple. Tpy-2 is an extremely powerful x-band. X-band does not provide oth ability, hence why oth radars have arrays that are literally 100’s of m across is size to support such low frequency with any sort of useful directivity.

Good to see the radar getting the respect it deserves from the Chinese and Russians at the moment, it is quite the world beater. TPY-2 makes the 3-4 piece combination of arrays used for the S-400 look like a toy. S-400’s early warning and engagement radar systems have dozens of single points of failure to defeat the kill chain, it is yesterday’s (decades?) news. The tpy handles both early warning and engagement for all aerial and space targets and at closer ranges has the raw power and gain to function as a directed energy weapon (52,000trm AESA with >16w peak output per module)

A lot of Sukhoi fankiddies cry like babies over my criticism of the the t-50’s half baked effort at LO and state that attention to detail and low compromise in regards to stealth is just a gimic, but the TPY-2 is the reason I’m correct. With the ability to detect a 0.01msq target from over a thousand km away, the T-50’s tennis ball frontal RCS would render it as detectable as a legacy fighter the moment it popped over the horizon against a deployed TPY (tpy can guide forward deployed patriot shots against aircraft, and in future whatever fills the slamram’s role which should be even more concerning… think front line fighting vehicles with a few anti air missiles, launched and guided by the TPY-2 hundreds of km behind the front)

Will be interesting if the lbx gets developed. 2 TPY-2s stacked on top of each other on a truck mounted turntable.

AFAIK , radar for PAK-FA is the one in the left in picture below, with 1552 T/R modules according to public information

where does that figure came from ?

Physical dimensions of both radars are the same if you factor the element spacing is most likely 1.5cm to prevent grating lobes and ensure the maximum level of density to value is maintained.

-81 just benefits from around 20 years of technology maturity, better components (especially in the area of transistor technology where US leads by a country mile) and a hosting platform that is multiple orders of magnitude stealthier than the competitor.