I really did like the McD design, i would like to know why it lost out to the other 2.

IIRC the gas powered lift fan was to risky and their opting for “lift engines” (ala Yak-141) was a non-starter for the Program.

By the way did Sagem bid with its AASM for the F35 OTS agile munition?

AASM is not Block 3F compatible.

It might has to illuminate the target for the last 20 sec of the engagement, possibly less. The illuminating radar would only get a return if a “bad” face of the VLO asset is exposed to it due to maneuvering we talk about. Bear in mind that this is not any radar but a brute force 10.000 element large aperture x-band PESA which detects a 0,01 m² RCS target at ~75km.

Since the illuminator needs it’s own returns to know that it’s on target, the illuminator is susceptible to jamming, especially of the deceptive type, which would degrade it’s performance even further.

A VLO fighter does not have to even get within 75km of the illuminator to take it out as it can use JASSM, JSOW, JSM, SDB, JSOW-ER, or any number of smart, standoff weapons backed up with Stand-In, Stand-Off, and MALD-J jamming assets. Keep in mind that if a threat has the potential to be serious enough, it will be pounded to dust long before it can be an actual threat (most of the time). While armchair Generals like us sometimes get caught up in the “coolness” factor of a plane/weapon/etc, we tend to forget the big-picture & don’t consider tactics.

I didn’t. I just proposed a concept.

Got it :eagerness:

1. This is the basic starting point for the concept, a higher tier sensor must know a coarse location (e.g Container OTH) and a high power low-band system must establish a more accurate track and identification (e.g Resonaz, Nebo-M).

Low-band radars do not have enough accuracy to get a decent fix on a fighter, let alone a VLO fighter. This is why they are delegated to “trip-wire” types of systems that have a secondary high-band illumination radar.

2. A heavy heavy SAM like S-400 comes down from more than 25km altitude flying at a energy optimized lofted trajectory, I would even expect that down to the altitude of the VLO asset it will just consume the potential energy for its positioning maneuver while maintaining ist coasting velocity (incl. adding aerodynamic losses).

Missiles are too to have an effective low-band SARH seeker. There is a reason why the main low-band radar transceivers have their elements spread far apart.

3. That goes for a conventional fighter as well and is quite difficult against a sensor fused SAGG guidance.

I meant on top of all of the other issues (radar band poorly optimized to track target, missile seeker poorly optimized for tracking in a low-band, etc)

4. The missile has the absolute kinematic superiority to position itself to any position necessary relative to a F-35, the JSF will never win that game (engagement wont last long enough).

The F-35 will be tracking the missile as it gains altitude and can change course long before the missile gets into a position where it can lock onto the VLO F-35 give #1-3 above.

The strongest indication that this will not work is that despite SARH being well know to the Russians, despite SARH being much cheaper than active homing, and despite them knowing that they will have to fight VLO objects (F-117, B-2, F-22, F-25, Cms, etc) that they have chosen not to do this.

You are making some bad assumptions there:

1. The radar knows where the F-35 is in order to keep it in the illumination beam
2. The SARH missile has the spare energy to virtually pass the F-35, do a U-Turn, and then catch up while not being in the reflection cone.
3. You ignored jamming & decoys from the F-35
4. You ignored the F-35 maneuvering away from the SARH’s killbox before the missile can get a sniff of the returns.

Engine fix was permanent.

Budgets are usually released in the first week of February but are often delayed when a new admin comes in and especially when the party in charge changes.

For example, Obama’s 1st budget (FY2010) did not come out till the end of February and the docs were not available till May.