NOYB

The battlefield is dumb. No 'instinct' as programmed autonomic behaviors. No self-cognizance of environmental drivers on specific if-this-do-that response. No MQ-9, RQ-4, RQ-180, MQ-20. So whatever is low-value up ahead, getting shot at by everything from MPADS to Pantsirs, isn't there to tweak the enemy's nose and get an emission. Of course, there is no network centric surveillance radar system, blinking on and off, like a Christmas tree, either. And threat vehicles don't skedaddle and aren't dispersed with protective revetments, decoy pits, APS rockets or multi-battery cross coverage to continue to fight, once the basic acquisition and engagement radars are down. As far as the F-35's own sensors...meh. The APG-81 is a tiny aperture with, I dunno, 1,676 TRM. Most of the biggies are around 2,000 with the APG-77V1 having 2,300. APG-85 will be better, except that its GaN is Chinese supplier restricted. Also, despite being an AESA, with very rapid beam pointing, the total sensor cone, as with all PARs, is limited by the number of degrees you can point it, offboresight. Somewhere between 45-60`, the amount of phase rotation 'adjustment' needed to steer the beam, starts to radically effect it's tracking qualities. The one exception to this is the ES-05 Raven, with a repositioner to point the AESA and achieve up to 120` off bore performance. EO wise, the DAS is really just an extended range MAWS with SAIRST capabilities out to about 15-18nm. But if you have an enemy on you at that range, and you're not putting effective fires on him. You're already in trouble. The EOTS is what is intended to help here but it requires an effective ASQ-239 or AWACS etc. global cue to prepoint and it's not the best when it comes to being a pseudo-IRST, being more intended for A2G point target tracking than large volume search like a PIRATE or Skywards-G (Modern IRST with DROIC and QWIP can scan a volume of sky equal to a mechanical scan radar with similar detection probabilities, out to 50-60nm, not your daddy's AAS-42). Radar cannot jam. Stealth is not global but aspect sensitive (which is why blinking radars which come on in your flanks are dangerous) and the APG-81/ASQ-239 do not do cyber stuff to get inside the back end of the radar and mess with it's head. It is this which allows a (standoff) F-35 to bring in Gen-4s to the target area with 10-20km ranged weapons. Which brings us back to a 'smart battlefield' since you are carrying two smart weapons or one rack of small diameter bombs plus a pair of AIM-120s on the doors. Say an AGM-88G and 4 GBU-53. Sounds like a lot. But it isn't. Not when the other side has 4 Pantsir or Tor guarding an S-400V with 22 40N6 and 8 9M96E2. All of which are active homing off an IMU. All of which can be silent-fired based on a cue from an A-50U, 200 miles back. There is a reason the F-35 has an ALE-70 towed decoy. It is not invisible/invulnerable and, unlike the F-22, it's also not doing Mach 1.35 at 40,000ft where the ability to defeat a threat missile is a genuine possibility. A 460sqft wing area, 110psf wingloading 25` wingsweep and T/Wr of around .5 IRT and .8 AB does not a supersonic cruise and maneuver platform make. Take the fight down to 19-25,000ft, tops, depending on whether you want to fight in the conband, and you'd better not be detected because you are kinematically touchable by all the battlefield weapons out there. This is not the 1994 when the F-35 program stood up. Buk is now Viking. Tunguska is now Pantsir. And the Chinese knockoffs of Russian SA-teens are better than the Russian SA-twenties. People are going to find that the F-35 is more of a standoff RQ-4 Blk.40 and a VLO EA-18G than a wolfpack leader. Which is why you're seeing a massive shift from rocket propelled weapons like the JAGM and the Brimstone and even the AARGM-ER towards mini-cruise systems like SPEAR-3, CMMT, Jackal and Barracuda. The bad guys have a _serious_ Air Defense and EW advantage and the best way to deal with it is to start using Gen 4.5 as bomb trucks which can carry a lot of these new mini-cruise missiles with standoffs of 50-100nm and no threat exposure at all. The F-35 can do that mission, but only with a 24hr conversion time to bring pylons on the jet and seal up the plumbing (if they have fuel) then take them off to restore the VLO, each way. This will further crush the Lightning's kinematics. With this in mind, the F-15EX, with its ALQ-250 and APG-83V1 as well as ATP-XR Sniper can likely equal or outrange the F-35 in most active sensor, ELS and jammer capability related areas. That is what we might think about as an adjunct to the modern stealth fleet. Not a dead-and-gone F-15C which is severely over-hours on lifespan and underpowered on engine thrust. Unfortunately, you have the Razbam F-15E to show how bad this can go. Which is all the more a shame because an accurate F-15E is not even self-defending with HARM and mixed VLRAAM plus standoffs. It is typically heavily overfueled to compensate for all the external drag and thus has only 2-4 stations available for droppable ordnance. The F-15EX (SA/QA/I2 etc.) changes all of this with the outboard wing stations and the BRU-61 multiracks. And that is the ONE variant which is not adequately (new engines, better radar, LAD, MAWS, Legion Pod, Shield Pod) depicted, though the Spino Mod at least tries hard.

I never got the fascination with this version. If you have seen the video and stills aftermath of the attack on Qassim Soleimani's vehicle, it is lying in multiple pieces and on fire. This is NOT a 'low collaterals' kill in so far as exploding vehicles make a major mess. Nor could you send such a missile into an enclosed volume like a room in a house and expect to only kill the target themselves. If the motor is still burning it's going to shatter and deflagrate on impact with large incendiary effects. It's a five foot long missile and so the impact energy is likely going to rupture the casing into a lot of splinters and fragments as well. At Mach 1.21 to 1.4, these will go through walls and floors with ease.

Testing, testing... Sorry if this is the wrong place for this. But would a moderator, please get in touch with me. Thanks- NOYB

Not sure of the extent to which DCS core or your own mods will support it but.. AN/TPS-59 Radar, 700km AN/TPS-77 MRR, 470km AN/TPS-80 GATOR 100km <with CRAM support, to replace MPQ-64 Sentinel in a single radar> LTAMDS Radar <MPQ-65A with GaN AESA, probably over 250km, vs. very small RCS targets> These radars operate at L-Band, <1.2 to 1.4GHz>, S-Band <2-4GHz>, X-Band <10-12GHz> and C-band <4-8GHz> respectively and so, the first two at least are not horizon dependent in terms of detection of lolo threats through tropobounce or surface wave effect. Because they operate at longer wavelengths, TPS surveillance systems' precision is not as great. But their range and thus ability to be emplaced well back from the FEBA allow them to operate as divisional level early warning systems which then cue the FAAD level alerters which then allow the last minute activation of engagement radars like the MPQ-53/65/65A on the Patriot or the <coming> Ghost Eye on the NASAMS 3. It is the networking of multiple radars which makes possible serious ballistic missile threat defense as the cuers tell the engagement systems where to point and batteries can fire missiles along coarse bearings BEFORE the engagement radars come up, with the latter, fire control, radars using their specialist sideband datalinks to refine the missile trajectory and seeker pointing index lines of the interceptors into precise target acquisition cubes once they are stabilized, on bearing, at max speed. As an example of how this works Exercise Rapid Arrow 1 Exercise Rapid Arrow 2 The method for implementing this network control, at the tactical <frontal> level is IBCS or the Integrated Air And Missile Defense Battlefield Command System. Army ccdc domes of protection 0 - United States Army Futures Command - Wikipedia Through a specific system called JADC2 or the Joint All Domain Command And Control network United States Army Futures Command - Wikipedia To use Patriot as a system everyone understands, the whole MIM-104 system is upgraded, much like a Windows Update, through what is called PDB or Post Deployment Build software and hardware changes/replacements. As a result of PDB 7 and 8, Patriot can now act as a center post or hub node for a bunch of other radars communicating over the SINCGARS or Link-16 datalink systems. Where a single NASAMS 1 battery system might have eight launchers and two MPQ-64 radars, that translates to a large coverage area as 2-3 NASAMS units can plug into the network and bring the combined coverage of SIX MPQ-64 Sentinel radars to allow the fixed site Patriot to remain completely radar silent, firing PAC-3 missiles forwards, using handed trackfile data which then cues their own autonomous ARH seekers to acquire the target, even against clutter. Even over the horizon from the Patriot battery which fired them. This is why it is essential to use networking because each radar is vulnerable to ARM attack, LAMs or jamming, but collectively they can multistatically triangulate sensor tracks as 'blink on, blink off' single illuminations to track all sub-horizon threats. Including simple GPS homing systems <i.e. systems without complex TERCOM routed waypoints that swerve and circumnavigate around known radar sites>. And the coordination comes from the hub node which not only collates their data but tells them when to come up and on what bearing, to form instantaneous, triangulated, tracks on threats like cruise missiles, in the brief instances they are within horizon for the FAAD alerter radars like Sentinel. The missile trajectories are then refined to line up their seeker cones <which are very narrowly defined, on the order of 10-15 degrees> to acquire a potentially stealthy target, dead centered in it's scan, rather than having to do a volume search, against clutter. For a high speed intercept of a TBM like the 9M-723, the narrowness of this cone is accompanied by a need to be at a stable Mach point, with minimum jitter as the booster shakes the whole missile. So that ONLY the front end ACM <Attitude Control Motors>, in combination with an initial 'play' by the tail controls, can achieve the diverter thrust impulse to hit a selected portion of the threat weapon's missile body, precisely. At higher altitudes, this is all much simpler because there is less air fighting the control system and a more predictable, constant, effector closure rate to make high accuracy range:rate calculations. But you absolutely have to have the interceptor up, out of it's box and downrange to make this happen. You cannot be turning and twisting with the booster still firing. And as such, the surveillance radars, themselves often cued by DSP or SBIRS satellites, are effectively your launch authorization, based on bearing and target speed. The newer TPS-80 and Ghost Eye radars use AESA and GaN <Gallium Nitride> to increase the accuracy and power of the array in tracking these inbound missile targets with some accuracy. But it is the SAM systems Fire Control Radars which still are talking to the missile specific datalinks with X or S band specific antenna. Not AWACS. With Ghost Eye going to the NASAMS 3 and a choice between AN/TPS-77 or TPS-X for early or late cueing, the kill chain starts to look more complete. And by giving the bad guys more radars to try and defeat, things like ARM attack don't mean as much because the EWRs will defend themselves with SAMs fired from batteries between them and the FEBA penetrating weasel aircraft. Two last factors: First, NASAMS 3 is the equivalent of S-350. It is supposed to be the medium maneuver follow-on to Patriot so that advancing 'Ukrainian Counter Offensive' type maneuver forces are not without mobile AD presence. As such, it can be expected to operate more on it's own than within a cluster of carefully site-surveyed surveillance systems. Because of this, it is likely going to have an MSHORAD or even Centurion close-in defense goal keeper <though NASAMs can also fire smaller, more agile, weapons like AIM-9X>. Iskander and presumably Kinzhal and Tsirkon employ penaids in the form of dispensable repeater decoys which mimic target RCS to active <X or Ka band> missile seekers. You may not be able to emulate the full Iskander kinematic profile, with it's drop to low altitude and offset turn-ins to leave cone on single emitter SAM defenses. But could you mimic the equivalent of highly effective chaff? This would allow you to improve the base SSPK of the SAMs by early launch and tight acquisition cone handoff while still employing an effective EXCM last chance seducer to 'dodge intercepts'. Russia’s Use Of Iskander Ballistic Missiles In Ukraine Exposes Secret Decoy Capability (thedrive.com) Thanks for taking the time to read this far and please continue your excellent work.