And now Saab really is rubbing it in by offering the Gripen as a Typhoon replacement in Austria..:D

How they’d manage to finance such a sale when they don’t want to pay to keep their existing fleet of Typhoons flying is beyond me. Why would the Austrians need to replace perfectly viable T1 Typhoons meant for the air policing role anyway?

Saab pitches Gripen as Typhoon replacement for Austria]

T1s can’t be equipped with AESA, insufficient cooling, and I guess they can’t afford T2s or T3s. Really they just can’t afford an airforce.

No. There is nothing like that written there. It says it’ll provide those capabilities [one day], nothing to argue about here. But it does not say it’ll provide those capabilities immediately when it’s introduced..
103..

Very clear, separate paragraph, absolutely no confusion:

http://www.armada.ch/aircraft-self-protection-sophistication/

Tranche 3 aircraft ESM/ECM enhancements have been focused on improving radiating jamming power with antenna modifications, while EuroDASS is reported to offer a range of new capabilities for export campaigns, including the addition of a digital receiver, extending band coverage to low frequencies and introducing an interferometric receiver with geolocation functionalities. On the jamming side, EuroDASS is looking to low-band jamming, more capable antennae, new ECM techniques, while protection against missile, is to be enhanced through a new passive MWS in addition to the active devices already on board the aircraft.

The latest support to self-protection will however originate from the new aesa radar which is to replace the Captor system, providing it a spiralled programme with passive, active and cyberwarfare RF capabilities.

It doesn’t. There is no time or date given.. There is no indication that Captor-E can currently do any of this.

Repeating the same garbage doesn’t make it any more true than it was at the beginning.
For every 100 times you repeat your bullsh!t I am here to write 101 times back that you’re talking crap.

It says that when it’s introduced it’ll provide those capabilities, how much clearer could it be? Even puts it in a separate paragraph to be ultra clear. Not my problem you don’t want to believe it. 102 for me then.:D

http://www.armada.ch/aircraft-self-protection-sophistication/

The latest support to self-protection will however originate from the new aesa radar which is to replace the Captor system, providing it a spiralled programme with passive, active and cyberwarfare RF capabilities.

Gain depend mostly of elements qualities before number. Focalizing on size or number to draw any conclusion on AESA gain assumes identical quality of T/R, which is not necessarily correct and affect result by a huge margin.

The test carried out for passive shot was with a MICA EM ,going active 18 km from target. Not an IR whose seeker would be active at least from launch. Note also no radar tracking were involved , only ESM and IRST. So it is not the same as firing behind wing line a WVR IR weapon at a target 5+ km away and conveniently low ,using a radar track.

As for the journo tour witnessing spectra acquiring a firing solution in the 6 o’clock ,it did not ended up in live firing but a screenshot with a 7.8 nm. It shows system do acquire routinely at least at that range. IR seekers would be of little use in the 6 o’clock for acquiring ,but handy for lock after launch in a shot over the shoulder and MICA has some legs there that allow a 180 turn and still have some reach,as demonstrated in another test in June 2007.

Please see document. For a given T/R module, gain depends on number and it seems reasonable to make that assumption, in fact the more recent radar may be better on quality too.

The shot used two aircraft and laser ranging, which is most certainly not passive and clearly indicates your position to any IRST that hasn’t already picked you out at 20km and LWR. The laser itself is only usable out to 20km for ranging purposes and 33km maximum for designation purposes and isn’t reliable through cloud. Basically this demonstrates that Rafale needs laser pulses to do ranging like the other IRSTs can do passively. Laser is actually even worse than radar because it’s an extremely focused beam easily traceable to source and gives the enemy bearing with pinpoint accuracy. As one general said, “tracers work both ways.” Well so do radars.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/new-radar-could-boost-rafale39s-export-prospects-318499/

The distance says “well in excess of 5km” for the ASRAAM OTS shot. The low altitude makes it more difficult – ground clutter, reduced range etc. Kinematically I would say the ASRAAM is superior to the MICA and maintains manoeuvrability after the burn phase is done, unlike TVC missiles. Dual-burn motor, lighter warhead, no datalink weight, less drag and advanced body-lifting see to that. The seeker range is also well in excess of the 7.8nm used in the MICA IR OTS shot, so no IRST required as it’s on the missile.

The second aircraft also passively tracked the target using its infrared search and track system and was able to achieve a lock-on by sending “a few pulses” from its laser rangefinder.

Exactly. IIRC, Ukraine uses the old Mi-24’s (e.g. V or P variants) which are not upgraded (so they have only basic optical systems and their situational awareness is quite low – e.g. no thermal sights, paper maps, etc. as are their defensive capabilities) AND they were used in chaotic anti-insurgency operations where it’s common to fly over a potentially hostile territory (thus can be easily ambushed with IR SAM’s) and their coordination with the ground troops was probably non-existent. I really fail to see how this would be relevant for the Polish context which would be primarily stand-off anti-armor use (over friendly territory) at which ranges they are pretty much untouchable for the IR missiles. Not to mention superior thermal optics, Longbow radar, defensive suite, digital maps with real time datalink, UAV’s, etc. which would make them much less vulnerable in other missions as well. And that’s without getting into training levels – I’d expect Polish pilots would be MUCH better trained than the poorly funded Ukrainian Air Force.

I guess in that regard it might actually work if you use it over friendly territory against advancing tank columns. That would protect it from most MANPADS, except maybe Starstreak, which isn’t a likely enemy weapon but other potential SAM threats would still be an issue even if used at very low level.

Firstly you seem to think that the Russian model of democracy where the same dictator is elected over and over again and any opposition figures are gunned down in the street is the norm but it isn’t. The people have the right to protest, period. That is not a coup attempt, it is not civil war it is simply politicians reaping the consequences of screwing up. Secondly if you think that I’ll believe that the Madan protesters shot at themselves you are barking up the wrong tree. Thirdly, you can also compose long lists of injustices the USA has been guilty of and you would be right but I can also compose a long list of injustices the Russians have been guilty of since the end of WWII starting with their oppression of most of Eastern Europe during the cold war although I’m not quite sure what you want to achieve with that. All great powers have skeletons in their closet, and Russia has more than most especially when it comes to partitioning, repartitioning and annexing Poland. Now can we please go back to talking about Polish helicopters?

This is the misconception, that Putin isn’t popular in Russia. He has his critics but so did Magaret Thatcher and she remained in power for 18 years in the UK. After Yeltsin presided over a failing economy for nearly 10 years and sold out most of Russia, Putin was actually a welcomed break.

It’s a coup attempt when they start shooting people from windows and when foreign governments then immediately back them politically before any election, that has all the trade marks of a foreign-backed coup.

The protesters were not just Maidan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31359021

A day of bloodshed on Kiev’s main square, nearly a year ago, marked the end of a winter of protest against the government of president Viktor Yanukovych, who soon afterwards fled the country. More than 50 protesters and three policemen died. But how did the shooting begin? Protest organisers have always denied any involvement – but one man told the BBC a different story.

It’s early in the morning, 20 February, 2014. Kiev’s Maidan square is divided – on one side the riot police, the protesters on the other.

This has been going on for more than two months now. But events are about to come to a head. By the end of the day, more than 50 people will be dead, many of them gunned down in the street by security forces.

The violence will lead to the downfall of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Moscow will call 20 February an armed coup, and use it to justify the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Eastern Ukraine.

The protest leaders, some of whom now hold positions of power in the new Ukraine, insist full responsibility for the shootings lies with the security forces, acting on behalf of the previous government.

But one year on, some witnesses are beginning to paint a different picture.

When the shooting started early on the morning of the 20th, Sergei says, he was escorted to the Conservatory, and spent some 20 minutes before 07:00 firing on police, alongside a second gunman.

A phone intercept also tied in with this account.

I don’t know, I think the US has many such skeletons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

The United States has been involved in and assisted in the overthrow of foreign governments (more recently termed “regime change”) without the overt use of U.S. military force. Often, such operations are tasked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

1 During the Cold War
1.1 Syria 1949
1.2 Iran 1953
1.3 Guatemala 1954
1.4 Tibet 1955–70s
1.5 Indonesia 1958
1.6 Cuba 1959
1.7 Iraq 1960–63
1.8 Democratic Republic of the Congo 1960–65
1.9 Dominican Republic 1961
1.10 South Vietnam 1963
1.11 Brazil 1964
1.12 Ghana 1966
1.13 Chile 1970–73
1.14 Argentina 1976
1.15 Afghanistan 1979–89
1.16 Turkey 1980
1.17 Poland 1980–89
1.18 Nicaragua 1981–90
1.18.1 Destablization through CIA assets
1.18.2 Arming the Contras
2 Since the end of the Cold War
2.1 Iraq 1992–96
2.2 Venezuela 2002
2.3 Iran 2005–present
2.4 Syria 2012–present

I’ll take your declaration that the military helicopter is dead with a grain of salt. There was an excellent article in AFM recently about Ukraininan helicopter operations during the recent Russian invasion. I take it you subscribe to AFM and read that article? It stated that Ukranian gunship losses were primarily due to poor tactics and a complete lack of any kind of a self-defence suite. Also if you are right the Russian forces themselves are wasting large sums of money on ~ 450-500 Mil-24/35/28 and Ka-52 gunships which according to you are all scrap metal.

Depends how you use them. If you intend to use them in a thoroughly SEAD’d area with jet cover, or in a theatre against a low tech adversary then they have uses, also useful for transport wrt the Mi-24/35. But sticking them out there on their own against well equipped ground units is just suicide. I would certainly focus on having an airforce first.

1. RWR antenna typically has a gain of about 0 dB due to wide angular coverage. Fighter AESA radar has a gain of roughly 40 dB. This means instant 40 dB advantage to the radar.

2. Radar can operate at much narrower bandwidth as it knows the frequencies it uses and RWR does not and has to operate at much wider bandwidth. RWR receivers have a sensitivity in the region of -40 to -60 dB while radar receivers have a sensitivity is roughly about -100 dB with digital receivers achieving even better sensitivity like -120 dB.

This can give additional 50 to 80 dB advantage to radar depending on exact design of the systems involved. As AESA has a very wide total bandwidth, RWR must cover that very wide bandwidth leading to much less sensitivity. As the radar signal has a quite narrow bandwidth and radar can process only very narrow bandwidth giving large advantage in sensitivity. For AESA the advantage can be for example in the 60 to 80 dB range.

3. Radar can code or modulate the signal so that it achieves significant processing gain over RWR. Either phase or frequency modulation/coding can be used. As radar knows the coding, it can filter out the signal from noise using matched filters. The RWR can’t know the coding and this gives the radar another big advantage in total gain. This is called Processing gain and it can be tens of decibels. The more complex the coding the larger the processing gain of radar is. Modern AESA radar using Digital Beamforming can use very complex coding schemes and basically only processing power and software is the limit here. A simple calculation about processing gain is dividing the spreading bandwidth (bandwidth where the signal is spread) with actual signal bandwidth.

All very good points. Radars have a massive beamwidth, power and gain advantage over a small AESA jammer that doesn’t necessarily know what exact frequency to jam until after the event. People also forget that the latest AESA radars can be used for passive monitoring purposes too and are far better at it, due to being a bigger sensor with a larger array.

A EW system trying to jam an AESA radar really has its work cut out. Even detecting the actual presence of an AESA is reasonably difficult, but actually jamming it requires damn near telepathic abilities.