I like 51’s new paint job. Blue just looks kinda weird to me.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/18/us-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110318

“Britain will deploy Tornadoes and Typhoons as well as air-to-air refuelling and surveillance aircraft,” Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament.

Either France or the UK would have no trouble and would likely make quick work of Libyan SAM’s and quicker work of the fighters. A couple of years ago France basically took control of the Ivory Coast in a day or so. However, France and the UK understand the concept of international law and diplomacy. In this case, IMHO, that’s a bad thing. Overall it’s probably good that they respect international law. There is no one law fits all though.

I have to say, for a small(er) company Selex has some really impressive achievements in AESA radars. They were already offering AESA technology for export in almost every airborne application(fighters, helicopters, MPAs and UAVs) years before the RBE2-AA became a reality. It’s a pity the Vixen doesn’t seem to have many takers outside of Sweden.

US Customs has bought the Vixen 500E for use on its Cessna Citations. Granted a Citation isn’t exactly a fighter and they only ordered 3. I suppose this may change in the future though.

Well if the RBE2AA 10 kW power output figure is true (don’t know exactly where I read it) then it is more than likely that the RBE2 had a considerably lower output which would “qualify” as limited output. Most newer fighter radars offer a peak power between 10 & 20 kW.

That all E-scans suffer from performance degradation is true. PESA is even worse here as the transmitter loses (concerning all TWT based designs including MSA & PESA) means additional loses and antenna gain is usually lower as well. Another issue with the 2 lens system on the RBE2 is that the transmitted energy must pass two lenses before it’s being radiated meaning even more loses. The AESA solves at least these issues and if power output is increased than it’s understandable that a 50% range increase is achieved.

Thanks, Scorpion. You answered TMor’s questions much better than I could. 🙂

Anyways, speaking of the RBE2 PESA, my understanding is that it works much differently than other E-scan radars when it comes to beam forming. I think it uses dielectric lenses to combine vertical and horizontal beams from 1-D arrays to provide 2-D beam forming, rather than using a 2-D grid like other systems I’ve seen.

Does anyone have a diagram or technical papers on this sort of configuration?

Thanks.

Snafu :

The Rafale Pesa RBE2 already demonstrated an edge versus the Typhoon ‘s Captor but since the last meeting where some Rafale had the RBE2-AA , the BVR fight was even more one sided .
It also has to do with the RCS but this is not the point here . 😉

Cheers .

The RBE2-AA isn’t in service yet. I’d like a source showing that the RBE2-AA was flown against the Typhoon. I was always under the impression that any BVR edge demonstrated over the Typhoon had more to do with RCS than radar. The RBE2 has a much lower range than CAPTOR. It does have some nice E-scan advantages, but IMHO it’s kinda Rafale’s Achilles Heel.

I meant single crystal blades etc.

And AESA radar not just modes.

Single crystal blades are nothing new at all. Every MMRCA candidate has them. Even the Su-30’s currently flown by India have them. Now that they are getting help from SNECMA on the Kaveri this shouldn’t even be an issue.

As for an AESA, all MMRCA candidates have an AESA. Perhaps the American offers are a bit more mature, but you can bet India won’t be getting full ToT on an American AESA (at least not on a non-watered down version), despite what the RFP says.

The ventral fins are canted, which probably helps, or they may be made of a radar transparent material.