lukosOh yes…
Oooooh nooooo it doesn’t. Care to state a quote that specifically contradicts it, I’ve shown one dated a year ago that continues to confirm it.
Those mythical “next-gen capabilities” of the Captor-E only exist in your head, for the rest of the world it’s simply a me-too warmed up M with old back-end and new antenna.. Here some eye-pleasing quotes for you..
All posts from > 5 years ago, many of them stating that the Captor-E-equipped Typhoon should have been operational 2 years ago. So why the wait? Increased development, expanded capabilities. Latest information dated December 2013.
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 in a spiralled programme with passive, active and cyberwarfare RF capabilities….
A few months earlier (last February), risk-reduction activities were announced for the F-3R version of Rafale to be available from 2018 which, in addition to the Thales PDL-NG targeting pod and the long-range MBDA Meteor air-to-air missile, will also introduce new enhancements to the Spectra. This is part of the spiral upgrade programme, which in the latest research and development stage is also known as Incas (INtegration de nouvelles CApacités a Spectra), provides improved detection and jamming and introduces the latest version of transmitter modules – not only on the RBE2 radar but also in the Spectra suite. In addition to shared computer resources, the aesa radar could in the longer term be used as part of the self-protection capabilities.
Oh, let me guess, and Typhoon’s RCS is so much lower.. :rolleyes:
Retractable IFR probe, smaller canard span, recessed AAM carriage, smaller tail, swashplate-mounted radar vs vertically-mounted radar.
http://www.eurofighter.com/downloads/Eurofighter_World.pdf
Page 21
RARAR CROSS SECTION (RCS)
REDUCTION
People often consider that RCS is an absolute
– you are either stealthy or you not. This is not
the case. There are fighters with a relatively
large RCS like the F-15 and Flanker; at the other
end of the scale the F-22. Eurofighter
Typhoon and Gripen sit somewhere in the middle,
with high composite structures giving a
balanced relatively low RCS but stores mounted
externally. But what many do not realise is
that one of the principle reflectors back to an
enemy aircraft is your own fighter antenna.
When we look at a fighter jet what we see
is an aerodynamic masterpiece: a sleek nose;
a wafer thin profile, and the reflection of many
hours of work by thousands of talented people.
That’s not what an enemy radar sees.
Consider that the aircraft nose is designed to
be completely invisible to radar. It has to be,
for the aircraft’s radar to work. What their
radar sees is, more often than not, a huge reflection
straight back off an antenna pointed
straight at them.
Think of it like this and, instantly, you have
a different image of the world of fighter-jets –
each flying around with a massive reflector on
the front saying ‘I’m here, shoot me first!’
Now many of the most recent AESA antennas
are tilted up or down 30° from the horizontal.
As a result, most of an enemy radar’s
incoming energy is harmlessly reflected away
from the enemy aircraft. This gives a big reduction
in effective RCS.
Examples where the AESA antenna is still
mounted vertically are either older designs (F-
15), or aircraft whose nose size only enables a
smaller antenna (F-16 and Rafale). If you already
have a small antenna an additional 15%
reduction in power (roughly the loss to the
aperture at 30°) to achieve an RCS reduction
is probably a poor pay-off.
For Eurofighter Typhoon this is not an issue,
our antenna is big enough to mount well
over 1400 TRM’s on a large swash-plate.
Now you might think that a big reflector
may make us vulnerable. Well it would do if
the swash-plate didn’t allow us to angle the
plate to minimise its profile to enemy eyes.
None of our serious competitors with a decent
sized antenna, are able to move their radar arrays.
They are fixed, usually at about 30° facing
upwards and forwards – the usual position
for a fixed plate AESA radar.
Ours though has a unique range of movement
on the swash-plate which maximises its
effectiveness and which can minimize vulnerability.
You need to consider that we now
have a large moveable radar array which has
significant reach and which has the best field
of regard of any radar out there. It gives us a
major advantage.
The point is that I don’t have to.. NAVY has enough experts who do even without the need of asking some biased armchair expert from KeyPub
Now you resort to insults.
Anti-jamming, anti-detection.. 🙂 Lots of garbage, your Captor-E doesn’t even know what these are, and neither do you..
You’re missing my point, I’m asking if the navy tested this or not and how fully they tested it. I’ll say again, YOU DON’T KNOW THE DETAILS OF WHAT THEY TESTED.
For all intents and purposes, you can sue US NAVY that they have destroyed your little dumb world of buzzwords..
Money talks and the same navy invested a lot of money in the same systems you claim offer little advantage. Another thing you should consider is that sometimes the military releases what they want you to believe rather than what actually happened.
Now could you please go back to the Rafale thread and talk about whatever you like concerning the Rafale there rather than here.
lukosHeh, guess no one thought to include the Tu-160.
Russia to Renew Production of Tu-160 ‘Blackjack’ Strategic Bomber
That really makes no sense to me. I’d be modernising my fighter fleet first.
lukosDrawing useful and realistic conclusions from these datas requires some background not available to the average Joe. What you wrote here or there just shows you’re not fully qualified.
That’s basically why the conversation with you degenerates to an exchange of fishermen’s tales.
Not at all. I am well qualified in the matter and pointed out some very obvious factors. Obviously there is information not available to the average Joe, which I why I used the information that is. Unable to counteract these points successfully, some members then resorted to fishermen’s tales and making unfounded accusations in an attempt at provocation, ring any bells?
lukosI would choose Su-35 and MiG-31 for either of those (A or B) on reflection. Don’t see the value of a large bomber these days, especially when ballistics missiles and a vast array of other cruise missile platforms exist, so Tu-22M is out. Su-34 – you need air superiority before operating larger fighter bombers and the Su-35S can help achieve that whilst also carrying the majority of the weapons the Su-34 carries in smaller quantity. Su-30/MiG-29SMT – Su-35S is better really, enough said. A MiG-31BM with a new AESA and R-37s would be pretty effective against most enemy fighters too, especially if used in conjunction with large, ground-based VHF AESA.
lukosTrue but the Rafale gave A2G integration a way higher priority and you can judge by F-35 testing that the A2G focus is high there too.
lukosIIRC most of the objectors didn’t see the need for any new fighter.
A more expensive aircraft would probably have been rejected by a larger margin.
To get a different result, first, voters have to be persuaded that new fighters are needed. The issue of which new fighter seems to be secondary.
LOL. So basically they could petition away any fighter that wins the competition anyway on the basis that they don’t want one. Maybe they should have a referendum on whether they want a fighter first to save everybody the trouble. I think this is a good one to sit out and save some time and money. I bet with the money one saves by not wasting their time you could integrate a new capability or two.:cool:
I remember one time ago when a fighter would win a bid and then get built for that country. These days it seems a bid win leads to 2-3 years of political subterfuge or a referendum. As one lady once said, ‘ain’t nobody got time for that.’
lukosI got involved in this discussion because one party said the Typhoon had A2G as part of its design requirement from the beginning and the other said it didn’t. I know that the Typhoon was always intended to blow things up as well as shoot things down and have provided some interesting links about the origins of the programme for those that can be bothered to look into it.
I don’t want to have an argument with anyone about it.
That’s not really what I said. I said it was primarily an A2A design and not a true multi-role design and gave very well substantiated reasoning ranging from design features, to use, to capability development priorities. Any fighter can have A2G as a secondary feature but that doesn’t make it a multi-role design.
lukosYes but if you look at who came up with the big boxy chin intake first and then stuck to it throughout, it was the Germans with designs for the TKF-90 requirement.
The EAP came at a time when the main layout had been decided upon by the partners and was therefore in need of refining. The overall design owes plenty to the German requirements and research.
In short, whilst it may be optimised for A2A engagements, the Typhoon was always slated to be able to do A2G. The weight which this requirement carried just changed once the Cold War ended.
The ACA came out 4 years before the EAP, another BAE design. It was just a general change in thinking and focus, which happens across the board at very times in fighter evolution.
Sure, it was always intended to do some A2G because, as mentioned already, A2G capability can be tacked on to any fighter but that wasn’t the principle design focus. I don’t think the end of the Cold War affected weighting that much, as mentioned in a Typhoon documentary, because the ex-Soviet planes were still likely to be cropping up in other theatre conflicts, just as they did in Desert Storm and the Balkans.
lukosWell…The Typhoon is already out so I don’t understand the point of the discussion ????
Well I’m sorry to hear that but then the Swiss obviously aren’t too serious about air defence anyway having operated an F-5 for so long.
http://www.janes.com/article/50817/switzerland-to-relaunch-f-5-replacement-effort-in-2017
Sounds a lot like the Eurofighter GmbH is just concentrating on upgrades for airforces already operational without wasting time on politically motivated selection processes. In retrospect, I reckon they’re probably glad they missed out on the MMRCA deal given the farce that turned out to be.
Secondly, in 2008 the rafale was already supposed to have weaker radar (PESA vs Captor M) & engines but still outperformed the Typhoon. Irony is that RBE2 PESA quality was praised on the technical evaluation…I don’t see the situation changing.
How would a mechanically scanned radar be better than a PESA radar? Captor-E will completely turn the situation on its head, because it’s then a more modern, larger, expanded capability, swashplated-mounted AESA vs a small, vertically fixed, old AESA, with a PESA back-end and no RF jamming, passive detection or data-transmission ability. It’s not really that difficult to understand, RBE2-AA is a first generation AESA, Captor-E is a larger second generation AESA.
And this is what emerged later on the typhoon about the swiss technical evaluation :
Yeah, again, so much changes in 10 years. What was true in 2007 will not be true in 2017 for reasons already very plainly stated.
Probably those are the reasons the Typhoon was ejected from the new competition by Mindef Mauer. To costly for the actual performance in real life scenarios.
Well that’s odd because the RAF manages fine. I guess a lot depends on the level of maintenance and the safety record you expect to achieve from it. The Typhoon is a clear leader on that, so I wonder if they factored in an extra 5 aircraft losses and potential collateral damage into the calculation of costs??
Losses/100,000 flying hours
Typhoon – 0.727 (275,000 flying hours across 7 operators), 0 in >100,000 flying hours with RAF.
Rafale – >5 (100,000 flying hours not yet reached, French AF sole operator).
Gripen C – 3.125 (5 in 160,000 flying hours).
lukosOn the subject of intake position, the chin intake was something Germany was largely responsible for. All of the designs that directly lead to the Typhoon from Germany has the boxy chin intake, whilst the UK was less convinced of the absolute need for them to fulfil its requirement.
It is perfectly possible to say that the UK requirement was for multirole whilst the Germans has A2A as a priority as the design coalesced around the form we see today.
So could you not say that that the UK required a secondary A2G capability to be built into the design (multirole rather than the ability to drop dumb bombs) but ended up with a design optimised for A2A.
Strange statement because the EAP and ACA were both BAE designs and BAE continued development even in the absence of the other partners when they withdrew funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_EAP
The P110 was more of a multi-role design but that was a 1981 proposal drafted in the late-70s, which was before the MiG-29 and Su-27 were introduced or widely known about. After that, it became apparent that the P110 wasn’t going to cut it, hence the ACA and subsequently the EAP.
Even the P110 was intended primarily for air defence though.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/bae-p110.htm
The P110 had been designed primarily for the air defence role, although it could have a capability in other roles.
lukosI think the Gripen is the perfect choice for Switzerland, considering all factors. But, looks that’s not going to fly, so to speak. So to me, it looks like the FA-50 is best suited. Or how about the JF-17? 😀
True. I guess the Swiss voters have already turned down the Gripen once, so the key question is why they rejected it. Unless we know that reason, we can’t really predict the end result.
lukosLet the Swiss Air Force check your “facts” in 2017 then.
I’m sure they well, but this discussion is about likely factors that will be relevant in 2017, which doesn’t entail anything from last decade.
lukosCan the position be controlled manually?
Automatic like canards. Ideal position is determined in conjunction with DASS and AIS suite.
lukosI’m suddenly reminded of Peter Cook telling John Cleese ‘A whale is not fish but an insect. It lives on bananas.’ He then says it’s a joke, of course. I have a feeling dear lukos isn’t going to be so obliging.
A label doesn’t determine primary design focus, especially when every single feature of design, use and capability development priorities contradict that label. It’s that simple. I could put a suit and tie on a bear but that wouldn’t make it an accountant.
What about Tornado F series? Were they not interceptors because their primary design was based on a strike aircraft?
People are too obsessed with trying to categorize aircraft by type, generation etc. Each aircraft should be judged on its own merits 🙂
Well that only goes to prove my point. The F-15 was designed as an air superiority fighter, someone heavily modded it and transformed it for strikes roles, which it did pretty well. The Tornado F2, which I’ve already mentioned, was a strike aircraft, dynamically identical to a GR1/4, that was forced to become a fighter, and it didn’t really fit that role too well at all, probably the least manoeuvrable fighter of the 1980s and 1990s but it could shoot down bombers, which pretty much any fighter bomber could do if equipped with AAMs and a radar.
It is difficult to classify aircraft, but if we use the overly simplistic definition of having A2G and A2A capability to define a multi-role aircraft, then just about every fighter is multi-role, since all have been equipped for A2G in some guise, except perhaps the MiG-31, but I certainly wouldn’t say the F-15, F-14 or MiG-25 were designed to be multi-role.
I agree here. The Brits wanted to replace the light attack Jaguar fleet and for that, an A/G capable but pure A/A design of medium weight was enough. It would have been different if a direct replacement for Tornado or the Spanish Hornets had been wanted.
Got it in one, they had an entire airforce of strike aircraft and a strike aircraft design posing as an interceptor in the Tornado F2. Absolutely nothing remotely resembled an air superiority fighter and everything was hopelessly outdone by MiG-29s and Su-27s. Therefore that was the capability gap to fill.
lukosBased on the logic being bandied about here, the ‘F’ and lack of ‘F/A’ make it a fighter only.:highly_amused:
The Su-34 is definitely a fighter bomber. The F-15E is a version of an air superiority fighter heavily modified for strike purposes. So yes it’s a strike aircraft but the design focus of the F-15 as a whole was air superiority. The F-111 however is another fighter bomber that someone briefly had the screwed up idea of using as a naval interceptor before getting their head straight. As mentioned previously, adding A2G to a fighter is easy but turning a fighter bomber or attack aircraft into an air superiority fighter is much more difficult.
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