D-Scythe

Just Mugato? Everyone has been saying Kopp has had an agenda since the beginning. The answer is blatently obvious. The fact that the R-27AE was to be manufactured in Ukraine sorta decimates its chances of being put into service - Ukraine doesn't want it and since when has the Russians been comfortable about buying weapons from other countries instead of developing their own?

The fact is, he has an agenda - to promote the purchase of the F-22 over the JSF. The supposed existence of the R-27AE helps his agenda, and (regardless of whether it's in service or not), he's exploiting the -27AE as a "possible" near-term threat that the RAAF might have to contend with in the future. The fact remains, if someone really wanted to, the R-27AE can possibly be pushed into service, and despite the fact that nobody wants to, the fact that it can be done "legitimizes" his use of the R-27AE as a potential near-term threat. Nobody "dismissed" Dr. Kopp's comments - it was more a case of some people trying to twist his words to prove that the R-27AE is in service, when it is not. Obviously, this was to promote their own agendas of trying to get the R-27AE back into the game, by using Dr. Kopp's articles as a "source" when he himself also has an agenda...Wait, now I'm confused.

I'd like the see his response to this.

Of course it can be picked up. The problem is filtering out a "good" reflection from the bad (i.e. clutter). The normal mechanism for filtering out clutter is by the doppler effect. Targets are filtered out by their doppler return - a very basic equation is this: The part in the equation I want you to look at is v. The variable v is the velocity of the transmitter relative to the receiver. Now, how can your magical receiver array know what is the velocity of the transmitter? It can only pick up radar waves reflecting off the stealth target, but it has no idea what painted the stealth aircraft in the first place - it could be that your AWACS 100 miles from the stealth aircraft, or that Su-27 flight 50 miles away, or that ground-based GCI radar 300 miles away. You can't possibly know. That's why it's impossible to use conventional means of filtering out clutter, because you're reduced to tracking the target passively - that is, your using your receiver array to pick up on radar reflections, without actively transmitting RF waves itself. In a sense, you're basically trying to apply the concept of radar warning receivers (which also passively detects radar waves) and by making a really big RWR system, you intend to use it to track a stealth aircraft by trying to pick up on the radar energy after it is reflected off the target. At least RWR has the advantage of only having to deal with radar waves before it has to reflect off the target. You're kidding right? You must have access to classified information, because it seems that your beliefs arise from information that the rest of us are not aware of.

Filtering objects have been possible and efficient before because the same radar doing the transmitting is also doing the receiving. If you just have a receiver, or an array of receivers, trying to catch radar reflections from other transmitters, you can't use the normal, effective means of filtering anymore. You have to treat every signal as a possible stealth aircraft. And has been stated repeatedly before, for every (weak) signal you "catch" from a stealth aircraft, your receiver array would have to deal with a million different signals from other sources - like aircraft, missile, chaff, ECM, terrain, etc. It's simply not practical. If datalinks were accurate enough to guide AAMs to their targets by itself, the AMRAAM wouldn't need its active radar seeker. Think about it - datalinks only guide to a target's approximate location so the terminal seeker can handle the rest. No. Unless you're packing a nuclear warhead.

Haha, you're gonna have to provide more detail than that if you're gonna convince me that a MiG-29A export with a 40 year old N019 cassegrain-twist radar can achieve first look against a brand new F-16C Block 50, with RAM coatings and radar reflecting canopy, and its APG-68V9 slotted planar array. Really? I'd like to see this.

No, it cannot. Pitting a Block 40/50 F-16C with its APG-68 and applied RAM coatings/tinted canopies against the larger MiG-29G with a first generation N019 radar would give the Viper first look in most scenarios. Consider also that the N001/N019 radars were of older technology than their western contemporaries - in fact, they still used cassegrain antennas that were less capable than the mechanically slotted-array types used by the APG-63/65/69/etc.

No. "Active" stealth is something completely different - such a system would "actively" destroy/cancel out incoming radar waves. The stuff you listed is not active stealth. Where do you get this (false) information with the F-16? You might as well say that a jet has LANTIRN pod capabilities simply because it can call up a FLIR page on its MFDs. The HSD by itself has nothing to do with flying around threat circles - rather, it just takes information received through datalink/HTS and plots the threats on a display for the pilot to see. It's just a page on an MFD screen, a means to present information to the pilot. And all fighters with datalink already has this capability. Furthermore, it doesn't plot threats that are not known - if a previously unknown SA-11 site suddenly comes online 10 miles off your wing, you're f***ed, HSD or not.

I agree that it's possible. But there really is no difference between one big radar or a bunch of smaller radars - they're all gonna get destroyed in short order by ARMs or GPS guided weapons. Well, F-117s are being phased out of service, so it's really a moot point :p

So you're gonna sacrifice these perfectly fine ground-based radars and friendly fighters, offering them up for destruction so that your passive receivers on the ground can detect where that enemy F-22 flight is? Sure, the receivers might be invisible to the enemy, but the point is, your radar source is not. Telling your SAMs and fighters to leave on their radars is ludicrous - you're gonna get them all killed. Doppler radars by their nature filter out almost any clutter. Your receiver array would still be receiving signals from a billion different sources that would never "appear" on the scope of a fighter or ground-based radar, simply because it has been detected, but filtered out. A very good example is chaff. For your theory to even work on paper, all the radars in an entire military would have to in effect act as one giant radar. The whole system would have to be glued together with some insanely fast datalink, to achieve what is basically a giant AESA radar, where each radar is analagous to a a T/R tile and your receivers scattered all over the place to "catch" RF waves that might be reflected off stealth fighters. And there is STILL the problem that an F-22 or F-35 would know, pinpoint and destroy any radar emitter long before it's been detected, by virtue of the 1/R^2 vs. 1/R^4 rule - that is, radar waves arriving at a stealth fighter is at 1/R^2 strength, but that same radar wave after being reflected off the stealth fighter (in whatever direction) back to a receiver would be of 1/R^4 strength. Technically, it'd be at (1/R^2)(1/R'^2) strength, where R' is distance to your receiver(s). (And that assumes perfect reflectivity of the radar waves - even non-stealth fighters like an F-15 would reflect only a very tiny fraction of radar waves back at the source - in reality, it'd be closer to something like 1/(X*R^4), where X is some constant with a ridiculously high value) Thus, the stealth aircraft would always know that it's being painted by an enemy radar before it will be detected.

Both absorption and reflection happens - what energy is reflected would be of much weaker strength than if reflected off a non-RAM coated aircraft. It's not that simple - such a proposed receiver would be subjected to radar reflections from other aircraft, chaff, jammers/ECM, missiles, clouds, birds, atmospherics or even the ground/sea, all of which would produce MUCH more powerful radar returns than those bouncing off a RAM coated stealth aircraft. Furthermore, even if you manage to filter out the clutter and pinpoint that very weak signal amidst the mess in things, you're still tracking your target passively, not actively. That denies a large fraction of what your software and processing units can do, compared to actively tracking a target. In fact, I'd be interested how you can even derive range information without the use of datalink/triangulation. Finally, perhaps the worse thing is that you'd actually have to have a huge, powerful radar flood the skies with radar waves in order to bombard these radar stealth targets with RF energy. Such a radar will get pinpointed and made a priority for destruction from the moment the system turns its radar on - either from a HARM if it's ground based or an AIM-120 through it's tailpipe if its airborne. Such a system may have worked against the F-117, which can only carry LGBs. Against an opponent armed with long-range missiles (like F-35 or B-2) or a kinematically challenging opponent (like the F-22), it would get destroyed within the opening seconds of any conflict. Even against the F-117, there's nothing to stop it from simply flying around the radar receiver array on the ground, or friendly fighters saturating the system with TALD decoys and HARMs.

Yes, airbrake operation is exactly the same as the Raptor.

The F-35's airbrake is everything (rudders, flaps, etc.) - it doesn't have a dedicated airbrake like the F-15, or Flanker. The normal flaps and rudders and whatever are deployed to increase drag, and that's the airbrake.

Haha, cause a mongoose "beats" the cobra. Cute.

The Block 60 F-16C wasn't ready when it "competed" for the UAE contract (that it eventually won). Neither was the F-15K when it competed in the South Korean FX program (or the Su-35 that also competed for the Korean order). When the Su-30MKI won its Indian contract, it too wasn't "ready" per say - indeed, the first batch of Flankers delivered to India were basic two-seat Su-30s. Or the F-15SG for Singapore. Shall I go on?

Although I'd imagine the choice is squarely ED's, I definitely think it would be appreciated by some LOBS customers to have the option to equip their Ka-50s with some sort of AAM.

Great skin Ice. @Prophet - this is gonna be for Walmis' model, although it should work for LO's model as well (though there will be some small misalignments in some areas, but hardly noticeable). @Canuck - Hopefully, about the Modman thing. Thanks for the kind words guys.

With who?

Yup. Thanks, fixed.

I only read Tornado pilots acknowledging the Flanker's superior agility - nothing about the Typhoon, cept that Indian Flanker pilots were "impressed."

Hmm, thought we had a thread on this already. Mostly ACM...here's (a) link: Indra Dhanush 2007 ...And perhaps the part that holds the most interest to some of us: "RAF Tornado pilots were candid in their admission of the Su-30 MKI's superior manoeuvring in the air, just as they had anticipated, but the IAF pilots were also impressed by the Typhoon's agility in the air." BTW, no TVC or radar for the Su-30MKI during the exercise.

EB, has the fourth "block" of the Su-30MKI's been delivered with the TVC engines? Last I heard, and this was a long time ago, the 2nd batch/block was delayed, then I stopped following the program. But if India does have full-spec Su-30MKIs running around, then yes, it is certainly a valid point. Barring the "slow speed" part, do you know if the Su-30MKI can retain its spectacular performance at combat fuel loads and weapon payloads? I know I sound like a chick, but it was more how you presented your argument (how you said it), rather than what you said. You said this: Flyby: "I don't know cumquats from chicken squat about most of what you guys are talking about, But!! all things considered, I think any of you would rather take your chances in a new highly agile fighter like the MiG35 versus a last generation fighter, especially in a knife fight. America's best front line fighters are 30 years old. The newer models (F-22, F-35) are not as agile as the MiG-35. Period. I'm from the good old USA, but I watch the demonstration videos, and I can see with my own eyes which fighters have the better agility. As for offensive/defensive systems, none of these planes have been tested in actual combat. All else is specualtion. ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! there it is." Doesn't sound like you were presenting opinions to me, more like you already assumed what you said was common knowledge. And you're surprised that I'm disagreeing?

The only fact I "presented" was that there is no operational Russian fighter that is more agile than the F-22. The super-agile Flanker and MiG derivatives are not included because they are not operational. If you can't handle that, or see a fact for what it is, then that's your problem, not mine. Right, so it's impossible for the public to grasp even basic facts about the military. The "fact" that the F-15 is equipped with a radar then most also come under intense scrutiny - hell, there's no way we can be sure right? If facts and truth are really as subjective as you think they are, why design flight sims at all? Gee, thanks for your deep and profound words. I now realize the error of my ways and under your guidance will seek a new, more meaningful path toward enlightenment. Speaking from experience? Please, do share.

No, the offset angle is definitely not the same. SIN-1[(45000-1000)/(6076*15)] = 28.9 degrees, NOT 45 degrees. Although pitching your F-15 up 45 degrees shouldn't be affecting your AMRAAMs upon launch. I'll look into it later.

Theoretically, no. Simply, the fighter uploads the target info to the missile prior to launch, so when fired, the missile calculates (and flies) an optimized flight path (by lofting) to the seeker activation point based on the data it has. If the data changes, the missile would simply readjust its flight path on the fly when it receives the updates from its datalink. Lobbing the AMRAAM basically gives it a head start when it lofts - the missile wouldn't have to waste energy pitching up into a climb, because by being lobbed it's already climbing. Provided that the info needed to calculate the missile seeker activation point is being downloaded to the missile prior to launch, it really shouldn't matter what the launching fighter is doing. Since it's LOAL, missile gimbal limits aren't a problem, and since the missile calculates its own trajectory, the launching fighter doesn't play a big role except at the beginning of the launch when the missile inherits its speed, attitude and altitude. Obviously, in real life, it works out differently - you can't be lobbing your AMRAAMs at 45 degree off boresight and expect it to perform just as well as a perfect lob shot, for example.