By: Levsha
- 2nd September 2014 at 20:04Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
1] the trend is increasing demands of positive ID,
Not in a real war against a real aerial threat I'd imagine. Positive visual ID a Su-35 or Y-20 - not likely.
Wondering why pilots preferred (ahead of engineers) a new TV channel to a new IR on Rafale's OSF?
American F-4 had the TISEO television sighting system in the 1960s. Iranian F-4s might still have it?
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By: lukos
- 2nd September 2014 at 20:07Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
difference between SARH & ARH is irrelevant in terms of range,
except autonomous missile have an advantage at close range when the shooter might have problem keeping the nose pointed at target
but would be interesting to compare survivability of the shooter of respective missile
It's actually completely relevant in terms of both the accuracy of the homing and the time the enemy gets to develop jamming and it's even possible they may end up having to jam the aircraft and missile radar at the same time. Upon introduction of the AMRAAM, Pk almost doubled over that achieved by AIM-7M is Desert Storm, even though the shots were taken from a lot further away on average. The enemy was of the same calibre or better (East European) than that in Desert Storm, so there are no arguments to be had there.
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By: lukos
- 2nd September 2014 at 20:10Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Wondering why pilots preferred (ahead of engineers) a new TV channel to a new IR on Rafale's OSF?
Me too, because IIR has better range and you can still clearly ID an enemy aircraft unless they're flying exactly the same type of aircraft as you are and you need to look for tail markings.
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By: obligatory
- 2nd September 2014 at 20:12Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
ok, i'd imagine in a real war, -that is, with real munition and launches, demands on positive ID goes up,
as opposed to red flag when pressing a fake button for a fake launch for a score on a range that is unlikely to actually hit
if it was a real missile
By: Mercurius
- 2nd September 2014 at 21:41Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Theoretically the current ones can if you pick the target up on IRST but at those kinds of ranges BVR separation is unlikely to be maintainable and a merge is likely.
I can only report what people involved in developing future weapons and tactics tell me. You are free to choose not to believe what they say. But I will place more credence in persons actively involved in this field.
The main advantage of AESA over PESA is the ability of separate T/R modules to operate on different frequencies and combine frequencies in a single beam.
This is a common belief in enthusiast circles, and I have even seen it cited by some defence academics, but can you point me to a published statement or technical paper by a radar manufacturer that confirms it? (I am always happy to be proved wrong. That is how one learns.)
Dubious. Operating a 4GHz, you'd be hard pushed to perform a pro
gram of any complexity in 400 clock cycles.
The Journal of Electronic Defense is a trade journal published by the professional organisation of the US EW industry, which runs US and international EW conferences classified at up to 'Secret - US only' level. I would hesitate to regard anything they publish as "dubious".
I have checked through my back copies, and the article in question was published last December. Had the statement been wrong, I would have expected some reaction from the readership. Do you remember the brouhaha several years ago when Theodore Postol of MIT published what turned out to be incorrect and over-optimistic estimates of the performance of an Iranian ballistic missile? Several persons with extensive expertise in missile modelling were quick to criticise his data, and point out weaknesses in his reasoning.
At extremely high frequencies it will also fall down. MWR and IR Lidar could be a problem for it.
I cannot speak for lidar, but a leading seeker designer has stated that using MM wave rather than centimetric wavelengths is of no help when trying to engage a stealth aircraft.
By: mig-31bm
- 3rd September 2014 at 02:38Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I cannot speak for lidar, but a leading seeker designer has stated that using MM wave rather than centimetric wavelengths is of no help when trying to engage a stealth aircraft.
from what i can understand while MMW radar may not work again Stealth aircraft , they may be useful again a stealth destroyer , vessel or a stealth tank
Ex :
these assets while dont have very low RCS like stealth aircraft , they operate in very high clutter environment ( sea , land reflect radar wave ) thus make them invisible to radar ( because radar have to reduce gain again sea-ground target ), they also have reduce IR method in them ( and they dont really have high IR signature like aircraft ) that make them invisible in infrared as well , but MMW seeker can solve that problem , because they can actually see the 3D picture of target thus less affected by clutter , it also less affected by jamming
By: FBW
- 3rd September 2014 at 04:29Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
like i said, it makes no difference in terms of range,
if anything, added electronics volume & weight in an autonomous missile reduces range
In theoretical range perhaps, the difference is in operational range. One reason why the USAF was keen on the AMRAAM in the first place was the critical advantage it would have provided the F-15 over Central Europe in conjunction with AWACS. With a SARH missile, the launch aircraft would have to get as close as possible to fire and guide the weapon with as little reaction time as possible. The targeted aircraft's best defense would have been to illuminate and fire toward the launch platform guiding the SARH missile. The idea was to make the attacker break away. With the advent of the AMRAAM that was not really possible. The targeted aircraft may have gotten a twitch on it's RWR, yet the AMRAAM itself would not have gone active until ~10 miles (or less) to the target, giving little time for a counterattack as the targeted aircraft would be forced into the defensive. Obviously, RWR and countermeasures have improved, but your premise that there was not a range advantage is just plain wrong.
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By: obligatory
- 3rd September 2014 at 06:34Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
no i'm plain right on range, and 10 miles range at launch would be a rather typical BVR shot,
(if there is such a thing as typical shot, with all the possible closure rates that can be)
pilots & a2a theorists are better suited to distill the primary advantage of an autonomous missile,
my opinion is the primary positive fallout is freedom of maneuver after launch
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By: lukos
- 3rd September 2014 at 10:24Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I can only report what people involved in developing future weapons and tactics tell me. You are free to choose not to believe what they say. But I will place more credence in persons actively involved in this field.
I'm not disbelieving anyone, just pointing out facts.
This is a common belief in enthusiast circles, and I have even seen it cited by some defence academics, but can you point me to a published statement or technical paper by a radar manufacturer that confirms it? (I am always happy to be proved wrong. That is how one learns.)
If it's a commonly acknowledged fact often stated by defence academics, I think the burden of proof rests on you to disprove it.
This means that the radar is able to track more targets
at any one time as the AESA can switch frequencies and produce
beams in a variety of different frequencies simultaneously,
giving excellent situational awareness. The AESA can
produce strong signals whilst still remaining stealthy.
'Simultaneously' clearly implies at the same time. Signal processing is then used to detect the response. I can tell you that the amplitude of the different frequencies can also be varied during pulses which leads to a characteristic pattern on the response, which is easily extracted from the noise on return by signal processing. It should be remembered that radar SP is as good as jammer SP and it has the advantage of knowing what it's looking for.
The Journal of Electronic Defense is a trade journal published by the professional organisation of the US EW industry, which runs US and international EW conferences classified at up to 'Secret - US only' level. I would hesitate to regard anything they publish as "dubious".
I have checked through my back copies, and the article in question was published last December. Had the statement been wrong, I would have expected some reaction from the readership. Do you remember the brouhaha several years ago when Theodore Postol of MIT published what turned out to be incorrect and over-optimistic estimates of the performance of an Iranian ballistic missile? Several persons with extensive expertise in missile modelling were quick to criticise his data, and point out weaknesses in his reasoning.
Dubious can simply mean 'misleading'. You still haven't mentioned the radar it was working against. The problem with your reasoning is that you are expecting equal computing technology to be as good a radar back end at detecting its own signal without knowing what it is. That's like putting a needle in a haystack and someone else claiming to be able to find where it is as fast as you with only the same observational powers.
I cannot speak for lidar, but a leading seeker designer has stated that using MM wave rather than centimetric wavelengths is of no help when trying to engage a stealth aircraft.
Depends on power. Obviously MWR is range limited due to atmopsheric absorption at the current levels hence why it's no help yet but I'm willing to be that RAM is nowhere near as effective against it. Because stealth aircraft are visible to the human eye, we can deduce that higher frequencies are less well absorbed.
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By: lukos
- 3rd September 2014 at 10:34Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
ok, i'd imagine in a real war, -that is, with real munition and launches, demands on positive ID goes up,
as opposed to red flag when pressing a fake button for a fake launch for a score on a range that is unlikely to actually hit
if it was a real missile
Depends on the enemy. Positive ID was specified in Desert Storm simply because Iraqi aircraft, for one reason or another, weren't able to target allied aircraft BVR. If they were, then there's no way pilots are going to be told to wait for positive ID when missiles can be fired at them long before positive ID.
Scepticism is good to a point but overcooked in many case. Modern missiles are tested against manoeuvring aircraft using ECM. This wasn't true in the Vietnam era.
People claim that Vietnamese pilots were better than Eastern European and Iraqi pilots but in reality, even if they were they weren't, because '60s Soviet MWS and RWR wasn't that great and a pilot can't respond if they don't have SA. The missiles in the Vietnam era just performed worse because they were worse and were under-tested.
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By: lukos
- 3rd September 2014 at 10:44Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
no i'm plain right on range, and 10 miles range at launch would be a rather typical BVR shot,
(if there is such a thing as typical shot, with all the possible closure rates that can be)
pilots & a2a theorists are better suited to distill the primary advantage of an autonomous missile,
my opinion is the primary positive fallout is freedom of maneuver after launch
I believe 21.6nm is the current record for the longest AMRAAM shot in combat but that was 15 years ago or more and the trend is towards increasing range.
Guns (1914-1953: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~0.2nm)
IR missiles (1956-1991: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~5nm)
SARH missiles (1960-1991: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~10nm)
ARH missiles (1992-Present: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~20nm) - Circa 40nm claimed for AIM-54 in Iran-Iraq war.
IIR missiles (1998-Present: 50km tested range)
AESA radar and ramjet missiles (2015-Future: 100+km tested range).
By: Mercurius
- 3rd September 2014 at 12:18Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I'm not disbelieving anyone, just pointing out facts.
You are citing your beliefs based on the facts as you perceive them. I have been talking to persons professionally involved in this field in order to learn what sort of weapons and tactics they are working to develop. As someone once told me, "If you want opinions about dogs, talk to dog owners. If you want facts about dogs, you'd need to talk to the dogs".
If it's a commonly acknowledged fact often stated by defence academics, I think the burden of proof rests on you to disprove it..
"Commonly acknowledged facts" sometimes turn out to be wrong. And I did not say that it was "often stated by defence academics", I merely noted that some have made this error.
Any "burden of proof" lies on those who believe that a coherent wavefront can be created by a cluster of emitters operating at different individual frequencies.
The source you went on to cite is not a technical journal, but a trade magazine, so was written by a journalist, whose limited understanding of the subject is easily illustrated by his statement that "The modules can work together or in groups enabling them to perform multiple tasks at the same time."
In practice, current AESA radars perform multiple tasks by interleaving their operating modes - at any one time the array is performing only one function, but is switching between these modes so rapidly that for practical purposes it will seem to the (user(s) that it is operating in two modes simultaneously.
This is another instance where I have obtained my facts from talking to the dog - or to be precise, one of the main companies involved in AESA development.
The problem with your reasoning is that you are expecting equal computing technology to be as good a radar back end at detecting its own signal without knowing what it is. That's like putting a needle in a haystack and someone else claiming to be able to find where it is as fast as you with only the same observational powers.
Hang on a moment - it is not my reasoning. I'm simply citing what has been published in a widely-respected professional journal dedicated to EW, and noting that the statement has not been challenged. (Although I did take the time back in December to check in the EW literature to see what sort of response times were being described.)
Obviously MWR is range limited due to atmopsheric absorption at the current levels hence why it's no help
You really think that a seeker designer would have selected a frequency that suffers high atmospheric absorption? The major absorption peaks are at 24 and 60 GHz. Several MMW spectral regions provide 'windows' where propagation can more readily occur - around 35, 94, 140, and 220 GHz.
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By: lukos
- 3rd September 2014 at 13:11Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
You are citing your beliefs based on the facts as you perceive them. I have been talking to persons professionally involved in this field in order to learn what sort of weapons and tactics they are working to develop. As someone once told me, "If you want opinions about dogs, talk to dog owners. If you want facts about dogs, you'd need to talk to the dogs".
Need to fix a dog, a human has to take it to a vet, who is also human. I stated that IRST works but only at close BVR ranges. That is a fact. In order to use radar-based NG BVRAAMs to against stealth aircraft, first you need stealth beating radar on a fighter. I'm not aware of any such development as of yet.
"Commonly acknowledged facts" sometimes turn out to be wrong. And I did not say that it was "often stated by defence academics", I merely noted that some have made this error.
Any "burden of proof" lies on those who believe that a coherent wavefront can be created by a cluster of emitters operating at different individual frequencies.
Having read your last few posts it's clear that you don't understand the technology properly, so it's a waste of time taking the matter further. Basically your tact is to deny all evidence I post and make your own assertions based on hearsay with no substantiation, claiming that the burden of proof still lies on me. No, it lies with you. AESA produces a complex wavefront consisting of a number of frequency components that it is able to reconstruct on receipt due to a knowledge of what they were and signal processing techniques.
The source you went on to cite is not a technical journal, but a trade magazine, so was written by a journalist, whose limited understanding of the subject is easily illustrated by his statement that "The modules can work together or in groups enabling them to perform multiple tasks at the same time."
Your evidence for this being wrong is based on what exactly, your own opinion? Thanks, I'll just dismiss that.
This is another instance where I have obtained my facts from talking to the dog
No doubt.
Hang on a moment - it is not my reasoning. I'm simply citing what has been published in a widely-respected professional journal dedicated to EW, and noting that the statement has not been challenged. (Although I did take the time back in December to check in the EW literature to see what sort of response times were being described.)
So you're choosing to believe this journal? You still haven't mentioned the radar type it was against. I've cited plain logical reasoning that refutes the ability to jam the most sophisticated AESAs and so far you've offered no valid counter points. Assuming both radar and jammer have the same signal processing power, the radar knows what it's looking for and only has to detect. The jammer doesn't know what it's looking for and has to detect and develop effective jamming. Seems to me that the radar has the advantage. In knowing what the signal is, it can also employ programmable hardware to do a lot of the processing, which massively speeds things up. The jammer can't because it wouldn't know how to program the hardware.
You really think that a seeker designer would have selected a frequency that suffers high atmospheric absorption? The major absorption peaks are at 24 and 60 GHz. Several MMW spectral regions provide 'windows' where propagation can more readily occur - around 35, 94, 140, and 220 GHz.
I didn't say it was the highest attenuation band, I implied it suffered higher attenuation than X-Band, otherwise all fighters would be using it because the resolution is far superior. V-Band suffers even higher attenuation. The MMW attenuation minima is actually at ~96GHz.
By: Mercurius
- 3rd September 2014 at 13:50Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Your evidence for this being wrong is based on what exactly, your own opinion? Thanks, I'll just dismiss that.
Don't you actually READ the postings you respond to?
I told you that I had obtained this information from a company in the AESA field. (it was from a senior figure in their AESA team.) But you are just going to dismiss it.
Are you claiming to know more about how AESA works than he does?
Or are you claiming that I am not a reliable witness to what was said?
Or perhaps he was one those work-experience interns that you claim post wrong data on company websites...
Either way, this just illustrates the pointlessness of responding to your postings.
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By: lukos
- 3rd September 2014 at 14:27Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Don't you actually READ the postings you respond to?
Sadly, yes.
I told you that I had obtained this information from a senior figure in an AESA team.But you are just going to dismiss it.
My own personal knowledge says otherwise. The irony is that you complain about other journalists misunderstanding information passed to them by senior figures.
Are you claiming to know more about how AESA works than he does?
Or are you claiming that I am not a reliable witness to what was said?
Or perhaps he was one those work-experience interns that you claim post wrong data on company websites...
Depends who he is. Perhaps you've just done the very thing you accuse other journalists and academics of. The latter is actually a valid criticism. Trust me it happens, because some 17 years ago I was an undergraduate doing just that, which is how I know.
Either way, this just illustrates the pointlessness of responding to your postings.
So you go against common knowledge and then after receiving evidence you claim the experience to be pointless. It might surprise you to know that pre-AESA radars have been able to swap frequency in between pulses for some time and there's even such a thing as FMCW which has existed for some time, e.g. Clam Shell. If all AESA did was swap frequency between pulses, it wouldn't be particularly new.
By: FBW
- 3rd September 2014 at 14:59Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
no i'm plain right on range, and 10 miles range at launch would be a rather typical BVR shot,
(if there is such a thing as typical shot, with all the possible closure rates that can be)
pilots & a2a theorists are better suited to distill the primary advantage of an autonomous missile,
my opinion is the primary positive fallout is freedom of maneuver after launch
You cannot take two charts from POGO as proof of your point. They, like APA, do a great job of producing wonderful official looking charts that are based on biased opinion and flawed analysis of "lessons learned". I've posted quite a few papers on this previously: http://www.scaredscriptless.com/imag...aneuvering.pdf, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24445455/BVR-Missiles, http://www.ipcsit.com/vol16/24-ICICM2011M054.pdf, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/98-210.pdf
and that POGO archives document where you got that chart.
The bottom line is that trying to compare a ARH missile to a SARH missile as far as operational range using 1960's Pk statistics with 1980's tactics isn't going to work. As far as the "Primary positive fallout is freedom of maneuver after the launch", that is the point. A SARH missile (at least those available up to and including the Gulf War) had two disadvantages necessitating launching at as short a range as possible: a. the targeted aircraft was "lit up" the entire flight of the missile allowing the pilot to be forewarned and take evasive action b. the launch aircraft was open to counterattack, if the targeted aircraft counter illuminated and fired back, the launch aircraft would have to break away, lowering the chances of the missile to hit. The ARH missile, after receiving midcourse guidance, is free of those limitations.
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By: obligatory
- 3rd September 2014 at 15:11Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
ARH missiles (1992-Present: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~20nm)
When did this occur and what was the target ?
i'd like info on this event thanks
By: Mercurius
- 3rd September 2014 at 17:06Permalink- Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
My own personal knowledge says otherwise. The irony is that you complain about other journalists misunderstanding information passed to them by senior figures.
I cannot follow the logic of many of your responses. How can your personal knowledge tell you whether or not I discussed radar-mode interleaving with a senior member of an AESA team?
What other journalists talking to what senior figures? I do not understand your use of the word "other". I have only mentioned a single journalist - the one who wrote the AESA article you were citing. It was generally a decent piece - all I did was to point out some errors that showed that he/she was not a specialist in the subject.
In my work as a defence consultant, (that is no secret; I say so in my profile), I have to stay abreast of what is published in the defence and academic press. Naturally, I have learned over the years to know which of the current and former writers have a good track record of getting it right, and (most importantly) in what fields of defence and defence technology their work can be relied on. Inevitably, even the best will sometimes misunderstand what they have been told. This is a particular problem in defence journalism. An academic can try to specialise, but a reporter whose expertise lies in warships and submarines could well make a mess of reporting on a new main battle tank. I sympathise with anyone who is having to operate in this sort of multirole mode.
When I asked (referring to my AESA discussion) if you claimed to know more about how AESA works than my informant did, you replied "Depends who he is". I make the assumption that if I am speaking to a senior member of any profession other than my own, he or she is likely to know more about their subject than I do.
Perhaps you've just done the very thing you accuse other journalists and academics of. The latter is actually a valid criticism. Trust me it happens, because some 17 years ago I was an undergraduate doing just that, which is how I know.
Accused journalists and academics of what? Making a mistake? Making mistakes is something that I do on occasion, and cheerfully owned up to one recently in another thread on this forum. I don't have to go back 17 years to find my last one! But my job basically consists of providing clients with the specialised knowledge that they do not have in house. My error rate is still low enough to ensure than I am kept uncomfortably busy despite being well beyond my biblical three score and ten years.
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By: Levsha - 2nd September 2014 at 20:04 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Not in a real war against a real aerial threat I'd imagine. Positive visual ID a Su-35 or Y-20 - not likely.
American F-4 had the TISEO television sighting system in the 1960s. Iranian F-4s might still have it?
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By: lukos - 2nd September 2014 at 20:07 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
It's actually completely relevant in terms of both the accuracy of the homing and the time the enemy gets to develop jamming and it's even possible they may end up having to jam the aircraft and missile radar at the same time. Upon introduction of the AMRAAM, Pk almost doubled over that achieved by AIM-7M is Desert Storm, even though the shots were taken from a lot further away on average. The enemy was of the same calibre or better (East European) than that in Desert Storm, so there are no arguments to be had there.
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By: lukos - 2nd September 2014 at 20:10 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Me too, because IIR has better range and you can still clearly ID an enemy aircraft unless they're flying exactly the same type of aircraft as you are and you need to look for tail markings.
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By: obligatory - 2nd September 2014 at 20:12 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
ok, i'd imagine in a real war, -that is, with real munition and launches, demands on positive ID goes up,
as opposed to red flag when pressing a fake button for a fake launch for a score on a range that is unlikely to actually hit
if it was a real missile
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By: Amiga500 - 2nd September 2014 at 20:15 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
In the same way very smart people have been working on the problem of space propulsion for many years.
Still using rockets (or mNewtons for non-reactive engines) for propulsion though.
Sometimes physics just doesn't want to play ball.
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By: obligatory - 2nd September 2014 at 20:58 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
like i said, it makes no difference in terms of range,
if anything, added electronics volume & weight in an autonomous missile reduces range
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By: Mercurius - 2nd September 2014 at 21:41 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I can only report what people involved in developing future weapons and tactics tell me. You are free to choose not to believe what they say. But I will place more credence in persons actively involved in this field.
This is a common belief in enthusiast circles, and I have even seen it cited by some defence academics, but can you point me to a published statement or technical paper by a radar manufacturer that confirms it? (I am always happy to be proved wrong. That is how one learns.)
The Journal of Electronic Defense is a trade journal published by the professional organisation of the US EW industry, which runs US and international EW conferences classified at up to 'Secret - US only' level. I would hesitate to regard anything they publish as "dubious".
I have checked through my back copies, and the article in question was published last December. Had the statement been wrong, I would have expected some reaction from the readership. Do you remember the brouhaha several years ago when Theodore Postol of MIT published what turned out to be incorrect and over-optimistic estimates of the performance of an Iranian ballistic missile? Several persons with extensive expertise in missile modelling were quick to criticise his data, and point out weaknesses in his reasoning.
I cannot speak for lidar, but a leading seeker designer has stated that using MM wave rather than centimetric wavelengths is of no help when trying to engage a stealth aircraft.
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By: mig-31bm - 3rd September 2014 at 02:38 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
from what i can understand while MMW radar may not work again Stealth aircraft , they may be useful again a stealth destroyer , vessel or a stealth tank
Ex :
these assets while dont have very low RCS like stealth aircraft , they operate in very high clutter environment ( sea , land reflect radar wave ) thus make them invisible to radar ( because radar have to reduce gain again sea-ground target ), they also have reduce IR method in them ( and they dont really have high IR signature like aircraft ) that make them invisible in infrared as well , but MMW seeker can solve that problem , because they can actually see the 3D picture of target thus less affected by clutter , it also less affected by jamming
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By: FBW - 3rd September 2014 at 04:29 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
In theoretical range perhaps, the difference is in operational range. One reason why the USAF was keen on the AMRAAM in the first place was the critical advantage it would have provided the F-15 over Central Europe in conjunction with AWACS. With a SARH missile, the launch aircraft would have to get as close as possible to fire and guide the weapon with as little reaction time as possible. The targeted aircraft's best defense would have been to illuminate and fire toward the launch platform guiding the SARH missile. The idea was to make the attacker break away. With the advent of the AMRAAM that was not really possible. The targeted aircraft may have gotten a twitch on it's RWR, yet the AMRAAM itself would not have gone active until ~10 miles (or less) to the target, giving little time for a counterattack as the targeted aircraft would be forced into the defensive. Obviously, RWR and countermeasures have improved, but your premise that there was not a range advantage is just plain wrong.
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By: obligatory - 3rd September 2014 at 06:34 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
no i'm plain right on range, and 10 miles range at launch would be a rather typical BVR shot,
(if there is such a thing as typical shot, with all the possible closure rates that can be)
pilots & a2a theorists are better suited to distill the primary advantage of an autonomous missile,
my opinion is the primary positive fallout is freedom of maneuver after launch
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By: lukos - 3rd September 2014 at 10:24 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I'm not disbelieving anyone, just pointing out facts.
If it's a commonly acknowledged fact often stated by defence academics, I think the burden of proof rests on you to disprove it.
http://www.satellite-evolution.com/issues-2011/gmc-oct-2011/radar.pdf
'Simultaneously' clearly implies at the same time. Signal processing is then used to detect the response. I can tell you that the amplitude of the different frequencies can also be varied during pulses which leads to a characteristic pattern on the response, which is easily extracted from the noise on return by signal processing. It should be remembered that radar SP is as good as jammer SP and it has the advantage of knowing what it's looking for.
Dubious can simply mean 'misleading'. You still haven't mentioned the radar it was working against. The problem with your reasoning is that you are expecting equal computing technology to be as good a radar back end at detecting its own signal without knowing what it is. That's like putting a needle in a haystack and someone else claiming to be able to find where it is as fast as you with only the same observational powers.
Depends on power. Obviously MWR is range limited due to atmopsheric absorption at the current levels hence why it's no help yet but I'm willing to be that RAM is nowhere near as effective against it. Because stealth aircraft are visible to the human eye, we can deduce that higher frequencies are less well absorbed.
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By: lukos - 3rd September 2014 at 10:34 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Depends on the enemy. Positive ID was specified in Desert Storm simply because Iraqi aircraft, for one reason or another, weren't able to target allied aircraft BVR. If they were, then there's no way pilots are going to be told to wait for positive ID when missiles can be fired at them long before positive ID.
Scepticism is good to a point but overcooked in many case. Modern missiles are tested against manoeuvring aircraft using ECM. This wasn't true in the Vietnam era.
http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/farnborough-air-show/2012-07-08/theres-no-escaping-mbdas-meteor-missile
People claim that Vietnamese pilots were better than Eastern European and Iraqi pilots but in reality, even if they were they weren't, because '60s Soviet MWS and RWR wasn't that great and a pilot can't respond if they don't have SA. The missiles in the Vietnam era just performed worse because they were worse and were under-tested.
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By: lukos - 3rd September 2014 at 10:44 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I believe 21.6nm is the current record for the longest AMRAAM shot in combat but that was 15 years ago or more and the trend is towards increasing range.
Guns (1914-1953: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~0.2nm)
IR missiles (1956-1991: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~5nm)
SARH missiles (1960-1991: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~10nm)
ARH missiles (1992-Present: Maximum combat kill range achieved ~20nm) - Circa 40nm claimed for AIM-54 in Iran-Iraq war.
IIR missiles (1998-Present: 50km tested range)
AESA radar and ramjet missiles (2015-Future: 100+km tested range).
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By: Mercurius - 3rd September 2014 at 12:18 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
You are citing your beliefs based on the facts as you perceive them. I have been talking to persons professionally involved in this field in order to learn what sort of weapons and tactics they are working to develop. As someone once told me, "If you want opinions about dogs, talk to dog owners. If you want facts about dogs, you'd need to talk to the dogs".
"Commonly acknowledged facts" sometimes turn out to be wrong. And I did not say that it was "often stated by defence academics", I merely noted that some have made this error.
Any "burden of proof" lies on those who believe that a coherent wavefront can be created by a cluster of emitters operating at different individual frequencies.
The source you went on to cite is not a technical journal, but a trade magazine, so was written by a journalist, whose limited understanding of the subject is easily illustrated by his statement that "The modules can work together or in groups enabling them to perform multiple tasks at the same time."
In practice, current AESA radars perform multiple tasks by interleaving their operating modes - at any one time the array is performing only one function, but is switching between these modes so rapidly that for practical purposes it will seem to the (user(s) that it is operating in two modes simultaneously.
This is another instance where I have obtained my facts from talking to the dog - or to be precise, one of the main companies involved in AESA development.
Hang on a moment - it is not my reasoning. I'm simply citing what has been published in a widely-respected professional journal dedicated to EW, and noting that the statement has not been challenged. (Although I did take the time back in December to check in the EW literature to see what sort of response times were being described.)
You really think that a seeker designer would have selected a frequency that suffers high atmospheric absorption? The major absorption peaks are at 24 and 60 GHz. Several MMW spectral regions provide 'windows' where propagation can more readily occur - around 35, 94, 140, and 220 GHz.
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By: lukos - 3rd September 2014 at 13:11 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Need to fix a dog, a human has to take it to a vet, who is also human. I stated that IRST works but only at close BVR ranges. That is a fact. In order to use radar-based NG BVRAAMs to against stealth aircraft, first you need stealth beating radar on a fighter. I'm not aware of any such development as of yet.
Having read your last few posts it's clear that you don't understand the technology properly, so it's a waste of time taking the matter further. Basically your tact is to deny all evidence I post and make your own assertions based on hearsay with no substantiation, claiming that the burden of proof still lies on me. No, it lies with you. AESA produces a complex wavefront consisting of a number of frequency components that it is able to reconstruct on receipt due to a knowledge of what they were and signal processing techniques.
Your evidence for this being wrong is based on what exactly, your own opinion? Thanks, I'll just dismiss that.
No doubt.
So you're choosing to believe this journal? You still haven't mentioned the radar type it was against. I've cited plain logical reasoning that refutes the ability to jam the most sophisticated AESAs and so far you've offered no valid counter points. Assuming both radar and jammer have the same signal processing power, the radar knows what it's looking for and only has to detect. The jammer doesn't know what it's looking for and has to detect and develop effective jamming. Seems to me that the radar has the advantage. In knowing what the signal is, it can also employ programmable hardware to do a lot of the processing, which massively speeds things up. The jammer can't because it wouldn't know how to program the hardware.
I didn't say it was the highest attenuation band, I implied it suffered higher attenuation than X-Band, otherwise all fighters would be using it because the resolution is far superior. V-Band suffers even higher attenuation. The MMW attenuation minima is actually at ~96GHz.
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By: Mercurius - 3rd September 2014 at 13:50 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Don't you actually READ the postings you respond to?
I told you that I had obtained this information from a company in the AESA field. (it was from a senior figure in their AESA team.) But you are just going to dismiss it.
Are you claiming to know more about how AESA works than he does?
Or are you claiming that I am not a reliable witness to what was said?
Or perhaps he was one those work-experience interns that you claim post wrong data on company websites...
Either way, this just illustrates the pointlessness of responding to your postings.
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By: lukos - 3rd September 2014 at 14:27 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Sadly, yes.
My own personal knowledge says otherwise. The irony is that you complain about other journalists misunderstanding information passed to them by senior figures.
Depends who he is. Perhaps you've just done the very thing you accuse other journalists and academics of. The latter is actually a valid criticism. Trust me it happens, because some 17 years ago I was an undergraduate doing just that, which is how I know.
So you go against common knowledge and then after receiving evidence you claim the experience to be pointless. It might surprise you to know that pre-AESA radars have been able to swap frequency in between pulses for some time and there's even such a thing as FMCW which has existed for some time, e.g. Clam Shell. If all AESA did was swap frequency between pulses, it wouldn't be particularly new.
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By: FBW - 3rd September 2014 at 14:59 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
You cannot take two charts from POGO as proof of your point. They, like APA, do a great job of producing wonderful official looking charts that are based on biased opinion and flawed analysis of "lessons learned". I've posted quite a few papers on this previously: http://www.scaredscriptless.com/imag...aneuvering.pdf, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24445455/BVR-Missiles, http://www.ipcsit.com/vol16/24-ICICM2011M054.pdf, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/98-210.pdf
and that POGO archives document where you got that chart.
The bottom line is that trying to compare a ARH missile to a SARH missile as far as operational range using 1960's Pk statistics with 1980's tactics isn't going to work. As far as the "Primary positive fallout is freedom of maneuver after the launch", that is the point. A SARH missile (at least those available up to and including the Gulf War) had two disadvantages necessitating launching at as short a range as possible: a. the targeted aircraft was "lit up" the entire flight of the missile allowing the pilot to be forewarned and take evasive action b. the launch aircraft was open to counterattack, if the targeted aircraft counter illuminated and fired back, the launch aircraft would have to break away, lowering the chances of the missile to hit. The ARH missile, after receiving midcourse guidance, is free of those limitations.
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By: obligatory - 3rd September 2014 at 15:11 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
When did this occur and what was the target ?
i'd like info on this event thanks
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By: Mercurius - 3rd September 2014 at 17:06 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I cannot follow the logic of many of your responses. How can your personal knowledge tell you whether or not I discussed radar-mode interleaving with a senior member of an AESA team?
What other journalists talking to what senior figures? I do not understand your use of the word "other". I have only mentioned a single journalist - the one who wrote the AESA article you were citing. It was generally a decent piece - all I did was to point out some errors that showed that he/she was not a specialist in the subject.
In my work as a defence consultant, (that is no secret; I say so in my profile), I have to stay abreast of what is published in the defence and academic press. Naturally, I have learned over the years to know which of the current and former writers have a good track record of getting it right, and (most importantly) in what fields of defence and defence technology their work can be relied on. Inevitably, even the best will sometimes misunderstand what they have been told. This is a particular problem in defence journalism. An academic can try to specialise, but a reporter whose expertise lies in warships and submarines could well make a mess of reporting on a new main battle tank. I sympathise with anyone who is having to operate in this sort of multirole mode.
When I asked (referring to my AESA discussion) if you claimed to know more about how AESA works than my informant did, you replied "Depends who he is". I make the assumption that if I am speaking to a senior member of any profession other than my own, he or she is likely to know more about their subject than I do.
Accused journalists and academics of what? Making a mistake? Making mistakes is something that I do on occasion, and cheerfully owned up to one recently in another thread on this forum. I don't have to go back 17 years to find my last one! But my job basically consists of providing clients with the specialised knowledge that they do not have in house. My error rate is still low enough to ensure than I am kept uncomfortably busy despite being well beyond my biblical three score and ten years.