lukosIt would be foolish for Switzerland to buy Rafale or Typhoon as the supporting nations France, Germany, and Italy are the most likely to present a threat.
Seriously?:highly_amused::highly_amused: It’s more likely that Sweden would invade them because the world isn’t big enough for two ‘Sw’ countries.:highly_amused::highly_amused:
Not if it’s grounded because it’s too expensive to fly.
The Swiss are not poor by any standards.
well, they got there by being careful with their money, it can be assumed they are eying their Austria neighbors AF
Now Austria are going to invade Switzerland? I wasn’t aware so much hostility was around in central Europe. In that case they should definitely get the Typhoon because a Gripen won’t stand a chance against a Typhoon BVR and couldn’t catch one either, or fly as high, so Typhoons would just be flying over the top of them at Mach 2.35 and disrupting their airspace….. in fantasy world hostile Europe.
lukosThe article from 2014 clearly contradicts it.
No it doesn’t.
There’s SPECTRA for that.
Which has nowhere near as much focused X-Band power as a huge radar. And the actually point being discussed here is the extremely limited capabilities of RBE2-AA relative to other modern AESAs, so let’s not try play the ‘spectra is all-conquering’ card of garbage. This is what I don’t understand about Pierre Sprey types. On one hand they say, stealth aircraft can be detected by modern radar, then they argue that stuff like spectra can jam a stealth aircraft’s radar. Well which is it, because the required jamming power is proportional to the RCS of the jamming aircraft. So unless spectra can generate >100 times the jamming power of an APG-81 and ASQ-239 combined, without giving itself away whilst doing so, it’s pretty much screwed.
Why do I need to know it ?
Because high-end devices from 5 years ago are still better than mid-range devices now and a new plane might not necessarily be using new hardware, especially when it’s so cheap. The Raven ES-05 is a British developed radar and is very likely to be technologically similar to a Captor-E but smaller.
And, according to you, US NAVY don’t know that…
You don’t know what the US Navy actually tested. AESA radar has huge advantages in a peer adversary environment, but that is somewhat of a rarity these days. The fact so many militaries have invested heavily in it is pretty good evidence of that.
lukosWhat exactly are ‘dispersed sites,’ apart from sites that are dispersed like any airbases are?
lukosIf air policing is the main task, I would go for the Typhoon in all honesty. Intercept time can be critical and the Typhoon is able to get their the fastest. If they had a broader role in mind, then it would be less obvious. Given its position in Europe geographically and lack of involvement in war-fighting, it’s main task will likely be a scramble to intercept a renegade airliner or unidentified aircraft.
lukosThe really amazing thing about all this stuff is that no metric will be perfect. Subtle differences between country, year of development, engine availability, etc. will make even Andraxxus lucid explanation truth with variability. In essence countries all have different priorities. Sometimes certain designs pre-date engine availability and the design is anything but successful until it has the right mix.
Take MiG-21 for example. I would never classify the original as comparable to the later MiG-21bis. For all intentions it began as a somewhat heavy fighter and in two decades was anything but a heavy even with substantial growth in engineering. Bigger engines, radars, and payload yet considered a lighter weight class.
I agree, the trend across time is for all fighters across the board to get heavier. WWI Sopwith Camel -> WWII P-51 -> F-86 -> F-4 -> F-15 -> F-22
lukosThanks. It’s interesting how long people work on this stuff for before it becomes operational, i.e. passive anti-stealth radar was being demonstrated in the ’90s but to date, I’m not aware of any operational variants capable of targeting.
lukosVery astonishing performance if it is true ~ Especially when you consider that it may take EF-2000 no less than 70 secs to achieve such kind of acceleration……
http://eurofighter.airpower.at/technik-daten.htm
Beschleunigung von Mach 0,9 (~951 km/h) auf Mach 1,2 (~1.267 km/h) in Tropopause: 40 Sek.
Beschleunigung von Mach 0,9 (~951 km/h) auf Mach 1,4 (~1.479 km/h) in Tropopause: 62 Sek.
Now you know that isn’t an official source. The only official sources state the following for a fully fuelled aircraft with no tanks.
http://www.baesystems.com/enhancedarticle/BAES_156125/typhoon
Brakes off to take off in less than 8 seconds and supersonic under 30 seconds.
Brakes off to 36,000 feet Mach 1.6 in under 2½ minutes.
The slower quote of 2.5 minutes to M1.5 at 35,000ft (as in your source, copied from Typhoon technical manual) is with a drop tank.
We are dealing with an aircraft with a TWR of 1.2:1, and a delta wing for reduced wave drag. Acceleration and climb are not something it suffers with. Other aspects of manoeuvrability are anyone’s guess.
http://www.baesystems.com/enhancedarticle/BAES_156125/typhoon
Powered by two Eurojet EJ200 engines providing an excellent combat thrust-to-weight ratio in excess of 1.2:1 with 30% thrust growth available.
lukosagain how do you know it’s a sustained turn? Unless sitting in the cockpit with the pilot can you tell that the airspeed at the start of the maneuver is the same as at the completion of the turn? As for which has a higher sustained turn rate Typhoon or SU-27, to be honest I’ve only seen a suspect E-M diagram of the Su-27, and there’s nothing solid on a Typhoon. One reason I hate these type of threads, lack of empirical data leads to pi**ing contests.
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What are the units on that graph’s axis?
lukosYou have no set of facts. Just a statement of state of things valid 10 years ago.
And until something else contradicts that, it’s more logical to assume that it’s still true, since something would surely have been mentioned if it did, for marketing purposes, since they’re never slow to blow their trumpet.
A more recent article dated 2013:
http://www.armada.ch/aircraft-self-protection-sophistication/
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.
So an article dated December 2013, talking about an update then projected for 2018, and talking about RBE2-AA jamming capabilities as a longer-term proposition. Case closed.:highly_amused:
More like 12..
And you know the age of the actual processors now being used how? Cooling requirements on a small aircraft, space?
One would assume that they know how to test it without the need of consulting KeyPub.. :applause:
Depends how testing the tests are. If the tests were something that could be done easily with a last gen radar, then the improvements are marginal. If the tests are something that can’t be done with a last gen radar, then the improvements are groundbreaking. An Olympic triple jumper won’t find their limits playing hop-scotch.
lukosGrumbling about a perceived negative sounds like you are just rooting around for something bad to say about Typhoon. Anyway won’t Rafale be getting distributed arrays in the next several years ?
It’s been mentioned as a perceived concept, so in terms of future proximity, it’s about as close to realisation as the Perseus missile concept. I imagine the Taranis will likely be flying combat sorties before it happens. It requires £1bn of funding, which hasn’t been released, and will take 10 years.
http://rafalenews.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/thales-deliver-first-aesa-radar-for.html
Raytheon are however actively developing a demonstrator, and if Raytheon are only developing a demonstrator, that means it’s some way off.
lukosI am a bit confused by the article though,
It seems to me that they discribe 2 possible functions of the swashplate that operates in 2 opposite ways :
The swashplate is supposed to enable wider scaning and tracking range by moving the antenna towards the target but it is now also supposed to enable lower RCS by moving it away from the target.
Isn’t that a bit contradictory ?
BTW, couldn’t a fixed antenna aircraft achieve the same lower RCS trick by managing the aspect angle of the engagement ?
It can do both depending on the situation, much like the canards, it moves to minimise RCS on approach but after a missile shot it can move to retain track of the target for mid-course correction, whilst the aircraft disengages.
To do that with a fixed plate you would have to know where your enemy is, before you know where they are.
lukosIt’s also a simple, pure physical drawback that can be described in plain English ; a single point of failure.
A very incorrect statement. Assuming you mean the swash-plate jamming, that either leaves it tilted like other new-style large fixed AESA, or vertical, like the Rafale. So this ‘single-point failure’ only reduces the radar to the functionality of a standard fixed AESA. In reality, it’s an electro-mechanical device, shielded from the elements, making it less likely to fail that a whole load of other moving parts on the aircraft, like say, the landing gear. The electrical side is redundant and mechanicals are inherently more reliable than electricals. It does actually depend on the hinge design as to whether it is even a case of a single-point issue. Your statement is ill-conceived.
lukosI think it is significant. The article from 2005 seems to contain several things which might have been changed / reconsidered since then. The order for REB22-AA only came in 2007 and the development wasn’t frozen until ~2010. To take data from 2005 as in-face value is rather disingenuous, I think the article from 2014 is far more accurate. Full development of EW capabilities remains deferred to later software builds which we won’t distinguish externally..
Not that I disagree but then we both have to agree on that Gripen-E is another 10 years newer and as such having the opportunity to take advantage of the leaps in computing and networking technologies that took place in the 00s. Something tells me that you won’t like this idea as much as you like the previous one.
If we have one set of facts, we can’t assume anything has changed unless something specifically says it has. Is Gripen-E another 10 years newer?
Fair point, time will tell. Anyway, one quote about the Super Hornet says it all:
The APG-79 AESA radar demonstrated marginal improvements since the previous FOT&E period and provides improved performance relative to the legacy APG-73 radar. However, operational testing does not demonstrate a statistically significant difference in mission accomplishment between F/A-18E/F aircraft equipped with AESA and those equipped with the legacy radar.
Thou shall not expect wonders from buzzwords like AESA, these all are just small evolutionary steps.
Ummm… kind of disingenuous. Depends on how demanding the missions were. Unless mission demands stretch the envelope, obviously no difference will be noted. Unless mission specifics are detailed, the statement is meaningless.
lukosMushroom mushroom.
Snake, snake, it’s a snake.
lukosBut why is the radar mounted tilted up/back? Isn’t Typhoon in the interceptor role meant to be flying high and fast and hence mostly be hunting targets below it?
The Typhoon radar can be tilted anyway you like within 45-50deg, so you can have the range advantage of vertical mounting when you need it, except with a large radar, and you also get RCS reduction advantages by tilting it off-centre when you need it.
I like it because it’s a simple, pure physical advantage that can be described in plain English, rather than an onslaught of buzz words used to give the impression of an advantage where none exists and baffle customers into contract signature.
(The article also says ‘up or down 30deg’ for newer fixed AESAs.)
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