The Mig-29/Su-30 series of aircraft are the most agile dogfighting jets in existence because of their high wing loading. If you were to increase their wing area they lose their ultra-agility. The F-22 has a low wing loading but maintains maneuverability by having very large elevator tail surfaces in relation to its wing size. This trick only works because the F-22 is FBW, as illogical as it sounds, the F-22’s huge barn door size elevator provides lift in level flight even when its providing down force in counter of wing lift. So increasing wing area to the Su-33 is out of the question, the only option for the UK is to start with a clean sheet of paper and design a naval jet like the F-22.

Obligatory’s right. You probably want to do some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_loading

How about this- Guizhou JL-9 (recent chinese jet trainer based on fishbed) with the following:

Helmet Mounted Sight/Display
Elta EL/L-8251 Jammer
Kopyo (or Grifo or Elta 2032/2052) radar
R-77 and R-73 integration
WP-14C turbojet
Digital FBW
Litening pod integration (w/both a2g and a2a modes- integrated with HMS and R-73 integration, also can be slaved to radar)

I have heard the upgraded Indian MiG-21’s PAF J-7’s made a nice asymmetric threat to US aircraft in training exercises. This builds on that, but with an updated platform.

Erkokite , your link is also an “eye opener” . 😎

I ‘ve noticed the ease of use for such a skin .

Its thickness is almost acceptable , it covers most of the X band and some of the Ku band (fighters and some A2A missiles bands) , the output power needed is minimal and the RCS reduction is said to be -20 db . Very good … 🙂

Obviously , there are some difficulties to implement such a skin on an aircraft ‘s airframe but it sounds very clever and doable 😎

I like it 🙂

Cheers .

Good to hear that you found the link interesting. 🙂

Similar surfaces can be made much thinner- the absorber in this case used a grid of PIN diodes as a frequency selective surface sandwiched between two conductive layer, forming an adaptive Salisbury screen. Other fss materials can be much thinner- simple conductive repetitive patterns, i.e. a grid or mesh can be thinner. These types of absorbers are called circuit analog absorbers.

Absorber performance for these types (particularly active types where a voltage is applied to FSS layer) is very good. However, one downside is that the voltage must be actively controlled to ensure best performance over a broad range of frequencies (for active types at least, not passive types). This doesn’t seem like a large issue to me, as it doesn’t need to be exact and a rough frequency estimate would probably work fine, and when shaping comes into play, slightly degraded absorber performance probably is not a huge issue.

I would say that it is likely that the F-35 uses this technology in its skin for an absorber, though as Lindermeyer says, it may more likely be a means for dealing with lightning or other atmospheric electrical effects.

you shouldnt tell fibs, i put furtivité active plasma into google and guess what i found
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=UoC&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=%22furtivit%C3%A9+active%22+plasma&btnG=Search&cts=1275260556623&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

so in french ‘active stealth’ is a generic term that means many things

is the french dept, minister of defense good enough ?
http://www.cnrs.fr/infoslabos/appels-offres/docs/DGA.pdf
MINISTERE DE LA DEFENSE
Furtivité
· Techniques de furtivité active : plasmas, métamatériaux

does the electrified mesh of the f-35 create an ionized gas/plasma,
something like a common tech ozone generator

Here’s the really violent way to make tons of ozone. It’s basically a thin piece of glass with metal mesh stuck to both sides. When about 5kV is applied to the meshes, a large area corona discharge occurs between the mesh and glass on both sides. This makes a LOT of ozone.

sounds like the 2 layers of electrified mesh that makes part of the composite sandwich of the f-35 to me, but its a secret and i cant tell you

I doubt this is what the meshing on the F-35 is for. It is related to stealth, but I think it is more of an absorber technology. I suppose it is possible, but I see too many problems with plasma stealth and too few benefits.

I believe the F-35 meshing is a specialized absorber technology involving reactive frequency selective surfaces/broadband Salisbury screens.

A google search found this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=salisbury+screen+voltage&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

The third link (http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/archive/00000803/01/chambersb3.pdf) is particularly intriguing, as are the citations it lists. The idea is that you can dynamically change the frequency at which your Salisbury absorber (usually a narrowband absorber in passive cases) operates best. Jaumann absorbers are also broadband, and are a similar, simpler passive technology, but I don’t know if they work as well. Wikipedia has good articles on Salisbury screens and Jaumann absorbers, as does Microwaves101. BW, I’m sure you’ll find this interesting as well. Happy reading.

This also differs from active cancellation greatly as you are controlling the surface absorbative properties of your aircraft skin. Active cancellation actually transmits another signal out to cancel return signals (I’m sure you are aware of the principle).

@ Erkokite
truth is i didnt know what a bragg cell was 12 mths ago, till bw was slapped about it, after reading something he liked and decided that the rafale had to have it
the consensus seems to be that rafale uses one of the analog types, most say the Superheterodyne which isnt instantaneous like the analog bragg and 2 others
i know there are a lot eu nations working in several partnerships on GaN and one eu manufacturer of it, i think
it will be COTS GaN as there are limited manufactures of it world wide and lots of development companies going to use it

Interestingly enough, I wasn’t aware of Bragg cells until BW started talking about them either. I had heard of Pockels Cells (which are similar). So I did some research on them and found they were pretty neat.

Do you have a source for the superheterodyne claim? I ask because information on SPECTRA is quite hard to find. Sometimes I think Thales chose the name just to make it difficult to do an unambiguous google search. Thanks.

The Bragg cell output is in the spectral domain, Bragg cells are an analog way of making Fourier transform over a wide band. So you can’t “digitize the signals for the phased array jammer”, it’s too late for that.

Actually, you could arrange a 1D array of binary light sensors opposite the output of the bragg cell which would give you a digital measurement of the laer deflection angle. There is a name for this sort of sensor, but I forget what it is. They used to be used on satellites (among other things I’m sure). A 1D CCD device could also work in a similar fashion.

Any engineer will tell you that you don’t spend 2+ years & $6+ billion reducing the weight of an aircraft only to have it end up heavier than it was when its weight was an issue.

Oh, I’m sure they took some weight off. My whole point was not whether or not the aircraft was heavier or lighter, just that asking for the current weight probably won’t be representative of the final version, and that probably not all interested parties (various air forces, prime contractors, subcontractors, all of their divisions and product teams, etc…) are even on the same page as far as weight. And then you have to find this info in the public domain and have some evidence that it is indeed the current weight and not some older value.

Also, sorry about the swipe at your name. It was too funny for me to pass up at the time, but reading my post this morning, it just seemed kinda dumb.:rolleyes:

all you have to do is build better planes with better tech than america, how hard can it be

Pretty hard if you have different needs than America or don’t have the vast budget for buying $200 million fighter aircraft.

mbda did the flairs
the secret is the french library, 1/2 the world have evaluated rafale spectra
airframers [or similar name that was posted before], do you want me to look it up for you, it was thales north america, i assume usa although it may be canada, wouldnt be mexico

this guy seems to know a bit http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/6-57541.aspx

Thanks for the info, but I wouldn’t take the musings of an (admittedly very, very biased and mostly wrong) strategypage forum post as gospel. 😀

Anyways, what he says does make sense about the low bandwidth MMIC’s- and I see why one might think they are from the USA, as the USA has (or had) a lead over Europe in the MMIC industry at the time of SPECTRA’s development, and likely the MMIC parts available at the time of SPECTRA’s development were probably very crude, especially if they were export quality. But MMIC’s are basically a low-level part and have nothing to do with the actual implementation (i.e. SPECTRA). For example, an American company might import parts made in Japan to make a radio, but how the parts are put together and used is up to the American engineers.

So while Thales could use (or could have used) American manufactured MMIC’s to implement SPECTRA, they actually did the design and programming of the system and sourced an American supplier for the parts they needed for the design. Now, of course, the parts they sourced are completely design-agnostic- an MMIC doesn’t care how it is used. They did this for an experimental AESA radar in the early 2000’s, using American made MMIC components on a modified RBE-2 radar. It would not surprise me if they did this with SPECTRA.

There is now a reliable and high quality European MMIC manufacturer (actually there is probably more than one now) in the form of UMS, so now Thales can source European components should they wish it- I know they are using UMS parts for the RBE-2AA radar. SPECTRA will likely use European components and receive bandwidth upgrades if it hasn’t already. I have heard that SPECTRA covers something like 2-20 GHz, so perhaps this has already happened.

I have heard that the highest modes available on SPECTRA are very much a state secret and pilots are not even allowed to engage them outside of france. 😮 So I think it goes beyond the threat library, though that of course is secret too (like Australia’s, the UK’s, the US’s, etc…)