3.1 billion, sound like a 50% increase or so… looks to me that it’s much closer to what rafale and eurofighter were proposing, isn’t it? this story may not be over yet…

actually, the training part would probably be more interesting with the french, as they’re just across the border and have offered to open the french airspace and facilities to swiss pilots for training which would give them quite a big playground anytime they want right at their doorstep…

Funny how some arguments come around without thinking a bit about it:

– the US say it’s right so it must be…

er, it is the US who made the F-4 without the cannon because “cannon would be useless ot it”… after they had a couple wars (WWII and Korea) that were pretty recent… well, that doctrine seemed rather inaccurate, in the end

– “other countries have bought it… so it must be great…”

considering that the buy is decided by politicians (and in the case of the F-35, obviously without any solid data since it wasn’t even developed), and considering that politicians never admit being wrong, and considering also that in many air forces if not all, it is not very good for your career to speak against your superiors when you’re in the military, that argument is somwhat weak, to say the least…

As for “the 4th gen fighters are useless”… it’s LM PR crap aimed to help sell a product that managed to reach the goals, basically, only when the goals were brought down to it…

thing is, once you have their position more or less precisely (even a couple of km precision is enough) you can direct interceptors which will take a closer look.

as for the idea of “ranging”, these passive radars don’t need it as such. once you have three or more “reception radars” getting a bearing all you need to do is get the right position through triangulation ( their bearings will necessarily join in a unique point where the target is)… the same may work for elevation as well (to get the altitude)

Spud

a jammer, to do something, has to emit… now, if you emit your emissions are either directed at the receiver (can’t work in this case as the receiver(s) are passive and you have no idea of where they are) or you emit all around the place (and in that case you emissions will be reflected as well from the very aircraft you’re trying to hide

You guys talk about bistatic radar.. in such case, you have ONE emitter with a known position and ONE receiver.

The passive radar we talk about is a simple antenna that receives echos from anything that flies, echos of emissions coming from more or less any EM transmitter, be it a TV station, radio station, cell phone network, military transmissions, etc, etc… and you don’t use one (as they can only give you a bearing of the object that echoes the signals) but multiple receivers whose data are analysed by computers which calculate the positions of the objects that have reflected the emissions.

therefore you don’t need to be in a precise location, as you get the targets position through triangulation, basically. Stealth aircraft use RAM to reduce the reflections and, most of all, are shaped in order to reflect emissions somewhere else rather than back to the emitter. With the Cassidian’s system, the receivers are “somewhere else”, and your reflections will potentially reach them (or at least some of them).

As for the F-35 being tested against any radar in existence, I’m not so sure Cassidian will provide their system just like that for the other F-35 nations to test their toy against it and, eventually, manage to develop ways to counter it… On the other hand, if the F-35 flies to a country who has such a system in service, they’ll obviously jump at the opportunity to test and calibrate their system (especially as for the F-35 of any other aircraft, it will be completely invisible)

you obviously forgot to read about what stealth means…. 😉

some read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft

oh Mack, come on, next you’ll say there’s no santa and no easter bunnies… 😀